And it will end up being cracked as well not long after it comes out. Face it, there is no such thing as a protection scheme, or security measure that cannot be cracked.
Actualy, there is one that MAY be uncrackable... Lock up all the CD's and don't let anyone ever have one. But then, someone can always break into the warehouse and steal them.:)
As for the hackers getting the money, more power to them. $5K would buy me a nice multi-alpha Linux box. I'd certainly not turn it down:)
"That same holds true for the internet. Chalk email up to the current level of privacy you get from radio... Now, if all those web based email services adopt encyption of your messages in one form or another, you'll get an added level of security. Yes, law enforcement will still in all likely hood be able to get at your messages, but they'll stay out of the hands of "hackers, crackers and bears (oh my!)"."
Actually, you have a much better chance of keeping your mail out of the hands of law enforcement than you do hackers, crackers (oh my)
Hackers and crackers are a risk we all have to take, because there is no such thing as a system that cannot be broken.
However, I greatly object to allowing law enforcement (government) reading my e-mail. The 5th Amendment is supposed to be absolute protection against self-incrimination. Not that I do anything incriminating, I'm just paranoid. I've seen government become more intrusive and more corrupt in the last 15 years, and it's only prudent to feel some degree of paranoia. Particularly when your political beliefs do not jibe too well with government/establishment types.
I will be setting up my own POP3 server using Sendmail as soon as I get my own permanent internet connection (DSL/cable, etc). That alone is a lot of protection. However, I will also encrypt my data so that even if some FBI goon seizes my computer because I happened to visit a website that was hacked, they won't be able to read anything. Even if all that is there are portions of my still incomplete sci-fi novel.
It's the principle of the thing. I believe government has no right to read what is on my computer, so I will take all technical measures within my ability to deny them this.
This is not a good thing. For one thing, Yahoo has a history of folding every time user information, etc is demanded of them. This does not at ALL give me confidence in them as an "encrypted" e-mail provider.
Furthermore, the fact that it IS encrypted will fool many of the less technical users into thinking that it's safe. It isn't.
Of course, there is no such thing as a totally secure communications system. But, the most secure that can be used by most of us is to use PGP yourself on your own machine. Then it doesn't matter WHICH e-mail service you use.
Of course, the safest possible way is to run your own Sendmail server on your Linux box (possible if you have DSL/Cable/ISDN), that way you defeat Carnivore and the UK's RIP law.
Remember though, your "secure" e-mail is also only as secure as the recepient treats it.
Offering encrypted e-mail service is a good idea. But I'd think that a company that had policies refusing to use Carnivore, and deleted their logs every half-hour would inspire more confidence.
"It might interest you to know that the Founders put the commerce clause in the Constitution so that States couldn't put tariffs on goods from other States (as happened under the Articles of Confederation).
So then, does this mean that no state could (or should) be able to pass a law declaring a new internet commerce tax for online purchases?"
I think you are right. The Internet so far has been governed by the precedents set for mail-roder/catalog sales. States can pass sales taxes, because they are taxing INTRA-State commerce. However, mail order, internet, etc, commonly pass state lines.
Legally, it is the responsibility of the person buying the items to turn in the sales tax to their state on their return. State's don't like it this way because typically very few, if any, people actually do this, and there isnt' an easy way to enforce it.
And, I think it's unfair to put the burden on an Internet seller to have to comply with and collect taxes for 50 different states.
Preventing burdens like that is the purpose of the (much abused) commerce clause, and why it had a very noble purpose for being there. Interstate companies are supposed to be regulated by the Feds, not the States. State sales taxes, IMO, are the same as tariffs on interstate goods.
ANY government depends on having moral, honest people IN government to function lawfully and for the good of the people. Read the writings of the founders. It's the fundamental weakness of a Republic, is the dependancy on honesty.
"The reason the DMCA hasn't been struck down is twofold: Kaplan didn't really have the power to (although there were options he could take in that direction),"
Kaplan and any Federal judge has the power to find that there is no crime because the law is Unconstitutional. Which the DMCA is. If a picture of Christ in a jar of urine is speech (ruled as such by Federal judges) then code can be speech (and is according to one ruling). If it's speech then the 1st Amendment trumps any statutory law.
"and the MPAA and RIAA have just plain paid the right people too much money for it to die easily. From what I heard, it was passed by a near-unanimous vote in Congress, and signed by the president almost immediately."
Are you aware HOW insidiously the DMCA was passed? It was passed by affirmation, a voice vote. It was passed unanimously by Congress. This was done for a couple of reasons... First, it shows just how far the MPAA/RIAA's influence goes.. Secondly, it was done this way so the individual congressmen didn't have to be accountable when we found out what they had done.
"It is exactly the opposite! The reason radio and TV are like minded, etc, is because of the corporate ownership. Because of their profit obsessiveness, you see very little innovation unless it "shows a profit".
Why is it that PBS is so much better than regular television? It's because of the government involvement, so that producers only have to focus on quality rather than the "bottom line"."
While I will agree with you that most all PBS programming is far and above better quality than what is on commercial TV, I disagree STRONGLY with respect to their news reporting and opinon.
PBS is if anything even MORE pro-establishment than commercial media. But, like the differences between the parties, it's not much different.
"Quite frankly, we need to remove corporatism from the airwaves, and let the government publicly fund all programming. Only then is the corporate greed removed."
Government has no business having anything to do with news reporting. Not even CNN is as bad as PRAVDA would be. Look at the USSR and China, that's what you get with government run media.
Now, I don't like the megacorps either, I don't think they do much better.
The Internet is the answer. Old broadcast media requires a LOT of money to run. It's way beyond what most individuals can afford, but the Internet is open to all to report. No secret is safe. And there are very few secrets that a truly honest (oxymoron) government should have.
That's the threat of the `net. Even socialist-communist-fascist countries like China, Indonesia, Cuba, etc can't completely filter out the truth from their people, even though they try.
"And before you tell me that all we have to do is change the government through the available democratic mechanisms, I think you better give your head a shake. There is not two systems (public and private), there is one society dominated by the self-appointed elite. "
You are correct. So long as the US is a 2-party system, and the two partys don't differ more than 20% or so in their beliefs (if that much) things will always be so. I think one reason why things have gone downhill so rapidly in the 20th century (which we are still in, BTW) is because since the late 19th Century, the two party system has stabilized. In the early-mid 19th Century, it was commonplace for a major party to rise, fall, and be replaced by a new party.
Also, the one form of mass media of that time, the newspaper, was COMPLETELY unregulated by government, because the Constitution expressly forbid it.
I think the invention of rapid communication and new ELECTRONIC mass media have helped entrench the dominant parties.
ALL forms of electronic mass media (except so far, the Internet) are regulated by the government. There is no freedom of speech on TV or Radio, and never has been. It wasn't until the late 80's that the so-called "fairness doctrine" which prevented people from expressing opinion without giving "equal time" to any and all opposing views prevented almost any form of debate in media.
Is it any wonder that after 70 years of government restriction and regulation, that the mass media eventually all became like minded and pro-establishment?
The Internet is a threat to all that, because everyone can be a reporter. The ultimate target of the censors is not porn, it's not bomb plans, or DECSS, it's Matt Drudge and anyone else who in the future may use the Internet to do what he did.
"The ruling states that the Commerce Clause may also be grounds for the statute in question to be declared unConstitutional. Interstate commerce can only be the target of federal legislation as per the Constitution. If this is true, perhaps the Circuit Court is claiming that the Internet, as interstate "commerce", is entirely out of the juristdiction of states."
That is a VERY intriguing point. Of course, the Feds have used and abused the "commerce" clause to justify everything from seat belt laws to banning effective crypto. The 10th Amendment specifically FORBIDS the Feds from having any power not specifically granted them in the Constitution.
It might interest you to know that the Founders put the commerce clause in the Constitution so that States couldn't put tariffs on goods from other States (as happened under the Articles of Confederation).
Going after state internet censorship and mandatory censorware under the Commerce clause is probably the only way other than the 1st Amendment to fight it. Since the Internet is interstate and international, no State actually has ANY authority to regulate it at all.
And, the Feds are stopped Constitutionally by the 1st and 10th Amendments. They are stopped from implimenting something like the UK's RIP law (where you are required to hand over your crypto keys on request to "secret" police and forbidden to tell anyone, on threat of prison) by the 1st, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 14th Amendments.
One advantage our friends in the UK don't have, a Constitution. Of course, those in power here in the US have shown an alarming lack of respect for law lately, so we get the CDA, CDA II, COPA, DMCA, etc. They are going to keep throwing these things against the wall until one sticks.
Passing any kind of restriction on speech is a slippery slope that we don't want to go down...
Let's face it, guys and gals, the Internet as it is today (cheap, international, instantaneous) is threatening to ALL establishment powers. Finally, access to almost infinate information is there for the taking for anyone with a cheap PC and a modem.
All you have to do is look at the election coverage to know what is at stake here... There is a lot that went on in the Algore recount-until-I-win fury that the FCC licenced and regulated dominant media didn't report. The Internet allows anyone with information to distribute it worldwide. The Internet enabled people like Matt Drudge to tell the world about Monica and the presidentially semen stained blue dress when the dominant media had been sitting on the story for weeks. No longer do all the like-thinking editors in the press decide what is and isn't distributed to the people. You or I can tell the WORLD anything, and there's not a thing any politico can do to stop it.
THAT is power. And it scares politicos. This power has NEVER in history belonged to so many! So they are going after the `net, hot and heavy. They are trying desperately to get SOME kind of regulation of the Internet that will stick, so that it can be extended.
EVERYTHING the government touches eventually ends up under it's domination. Jefferson wrote that the "natural way of things is for government to get more powerful" (paraphrase).
So, they go after regulating prOn (for the children, of course), then they go after those posting bomb plans, etc. Censors always start censoring those that most ordinary people find offensive. But it never ENDS there. The personal freedom-control Nazis always want more and more.
ANY kind of Internet censorship at all is just the thin edge of a wedge.
What I find pitiful is that so far, the only legal Internet censorship that hasn't been struck down by a court is that resulting from the DMCA... Thaks to Judge Kaplan and his MPAA financed retirement fund.
Here's some things that RAMBUS is still in DE-Nile of (and not the river in Egypt):
1. No matter HOW they try to spin it with Perot-Esque charts, current RAMBUS designs will never have the potential speed of DDR, and probably never will. Pumping data really really fast 16-bits at a time just simply can't compete with pumping data not quite as fast (yet) 64-bits at a time. RAMBUS is like figuring out a way to run a `286 really really REALLY insanely fast, but it's still only 16-bits.
Because of these limitations, RAMBUS has been proven time and again to be slower than even CURRENT PC-133 SDRAM. Even Intel unwittingly published proof of this. DDR vs RDRAM shouldn't even be a contest.
2. RAMBUS is and always will be more expensive to produce than DDR or other types of SDRAM. This is why RAMBUS is trying to slap the "RAMBUS tax" on all competing memory, to artificially raise prices, and gouge the customer.
3. RAMBUS's policy of suing EVERYBODY for royalties on technology that RAMBUS had no part in developing has left them completely friendless. They are a pariah in the market. Not even Microsoft has (yet) done what RAMBUS has done to their partners.
4. RAMBUS's claims on their SDRAM patent is very thin. For one thing, the entered into a legal agreement with the JEDEC group that was developing SDRAM to not do so, and reveal any relevant patents or patent applications to the group. JEDEC was formed to create an open INDUSTRY STANDARD, not to use one company's proprietary technology. Now that they've finally pissed off the biggest kid on the block (Micron), the validity of their spurious patent claims may finally be heard in a court.
5. RAMBUS's threats to sue VIA, AMD, Intel,and anyone else who even THOUGHT of making a chipset that allows a CPU to talk to memory is probably the last straw... Even IF RAMBUS somehow prevailed in court on SDRAM and SDRAM chipsets, these companies (and the memory companies like Micron) WILL come up with a future memory technology that makes RAMBUS's dominance at best a few years.
6. RAMBUS is a company that earns all revenues from dubious IP, royalties and lawsuits. This is not a sound business model. And back once upon a time when there were engineers on the RAMBUS payroll instead of lawyers, they should have hired BETTER ones to come up with better memory.
Just my thoughts. Check out The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk) and Toms Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com) for articles backing up most of what I stated.
"NOTE:Whenever said user admits freely and openly to listening to Rush Limbaugh, please ignore all subsequent statements as they are irrational, unfounded and unnecessary.
Please continue with your regularly scheduled/."
Not only do I listen to Rush Limbaugh, I also used to host a talk radio program on AM 930 WRVC in my home town about 2 years ago.
What's wrong with conservative views? Don't mistake conservatives for Republicans who like corps. I don't.
"..I just want a *fair* count...
You have had a FAIR count. Al Gump has just been allowed to play dirty and politicize the happenings. He is afraid since hillary has said she would like to run for Fuhr in 2004 and she would beat him like a woman. Plus Clinton/Gore type democrats are criminals who need to be executed."
I do agree that Hillary (oh GOD NO) may be the frontrunner in 2004 for the Dems. But, things can change in 4 years. Hillary is probably going to embarass herself in the Senate. If you want to talk qualifications... What has SHE ever accomplished, besides cover up for all her husbands affairs?
Hillary may end up a Ted Kennedy... Unassailable in the Senate race, but poison outside NY.
Gore I think has damaged himself beyond all hope of getting his party's nomination in 2004.
I mean, the guy pretty much is content to be APPOINTED President by some unelected judge!
"Of the recounts he wanted the only one was finished, two more where cut short due to time constraints (Yeah, we like democracy, but we really need to hurry to get Bush in office in January now).The Democratic counties use older, more faulty machinery
and... and... and"
I never thought I'd think of Richard Nixon in a more positive light than anyone else... Nixon in 1960 could have done all this, and probably would have won.
JFK won the election by the thinnest of margins, largely from votes in Cook County, Il (Chicago). Mayor Dailey (ironically one of his sons is one of Gore's operatives). The fact that Mayor Dailey stacked the ballot boxes is not even argued anymore.
Nixon didn't do what Gore is doing now because he didn't want to damage the country.
"This might be the end of the matter as far as Slashdot is concerned--this is, after all, Rob's baby--but it's far from the end for the rest of the world."
Sadly, it isn't. Gore is going to sue and sue and sue, send in team of lawyer goons after teams of lawer goons, until some judge somewhere appoints him President.
My gut feeling is that he's going to have a hard time even getting a Democrat judge in Florida to do that for him. The Florida Supreme court already denied his case to force Dade county, for example, to resume the hand count after they ended it.
The "dimpled" ballots that made up most of Gore's gains also may end up being tossed out entirely, the precedent in Illinois that Gore's lawyer (Boyd) submitted an affidavit on was falsely done. They claimed that the court in Cook, County, IL ALLOWED dimpled ballots to count, when in fact, they did NOT allow them.
This does not bode well for Gore's chances to get the supreme court to force recounts on that issue.
"The only thing that can end this mess quickly is a concession speech, and neither candidate has given any indication of any sort of willingness or intention to do so."
Bush has no reason to concede, NO count, no matter how biased has EVER shown him behind in Florida. Even when the networks called Gore the winner of Florida, Gore was not leading the vote.
Gore on the other hand is looking like a power mad tyrant, who will do ANYTHING to be President. I am scared at the thought of someone who wants that power THAT badly... Gore's only chance to preserve any dignity would be to concede. He will not do that. In fact, I don't think he ever will, even when Bush is sworn in.
"Well, at least bush will be the winner until the idiot lawyers get their hands on it tomarrow and steal the election from him. Quite frankly, I think that the hand counting is biased, because quite frankly humans are not impartial,"
I agree with you on this. Especially hand counts of ballots meant to be read by machines. Machines may leave something to be desired, but they are unbiased.
I heard an expert on the particular voting machines used in Florida. He stated that by law they have to be certified to a certain accuracy, and the machines in Florida are over 99.9% accurate. He said something like it will get maybe 2 votes in a MILLION wrong. This fact has not been widely reported.
The margin of error when humans, particularly ones overwealmingly allied to one of the parties that has interest in the counting, is considerably higher.
Gore has lost 3 and sometimes 4 counts of the ballots, including ones in the BEST possible bias towards him. He has clearly lost.
And before anyone brings up Gore's (narrow) win of the popular vote, the Electoral College exists for a very important purpose: to prevent small areas with dense populations to be able to run a tyranny over the rest of the people.
That vote map that had Gore winning only in the biggest metro areas was striking.
I am a Republican, and voted for Bush, so obviously I'm biased.
However, I clearly think that if Gore continues to go ahead with his lawyers in front of Democrat judges (who already have rewritten the law, in effect changing the rules of the game after the ball has been put in play), he's going to destroy his party.
Americans hate lawyers, as do I. In my view, the person who, after multiple counts and recounts is resorting to using lawyers for the sole purpose of getting a judge to appoint him President.
I believe that at this point he doesn't stand much of a chance of succeding... Surprisingly, weeks of recounts being done in Democrat counties that voted OVERWEALMINGLY for him, using hand recount rules made and remade on the fly by DEMOCRATS didn't change the results.
Gore going any further proves that Gore thinks more of himself than the country to continue to be the cause of damaging faith in the Constitution, law, and fairness. And he is the SOLE cause of all this. Some day, when less biased historians write of this era will paint this election and Gore's actions as the final chapter of the corrupt Clinton machine.
BTW, Gore's lawyer, Boyd, is the lead government lawyer in the Microsoft case, don't know if anyone's mentioned that yet. This shakes my faith in the Reno case against them, IMO, he has damaged his credibility severely by arguing specious cases on Gore's behalf.
"Lucas's statements has been that he wants to release a good DVD, with lots of extras and such. There's no effort involved in VHS rereleases, since they're mostly just shoving the movie onto tape."
Similarly, there isn't much effort needed to put the thing on DVD. I don't really understand Lucas's attitude towards DVD. He was one of the early adopter of the old Laserdisc format. I've seen the Star Wars Trilogy on that format and it's much better than VHS.
I don't WANT to pay a premium for all those extras. Who cares? I just want to own my 3 favorite movies of all time in the format that I can best see them in at home.
The only "secret" rationale I can see for Lucas not releasing on DVD is that he doens't want to hurt the Trilogy and Episode I's re-release in theater value...
"Of course..there is a potential problem doing a movie all digital...you can get the pixelization affect and you don't really get true color the whole time....it is a lot easier for editing and such...but there are problems with pixelization and not having real color. "
You do have a great point there. Anything digital will involve some sort of limitation of resolution and color. The great thing about analog is that the limits are at the top and bottom of the color spectrum, with virtually infinate possibilities in-between. Even 32-bit color doens't make for every possible color.
However, I suppose that with the increased sharpness, the limitations of pixelization and color depth can't be discerned by 99% of the people watching it.
Also, digital filming has many great advantages that make up for any possible trade offs:
1. The 9999th generation copy is as sharp as the first.
2. It will end up being much less expensive.
3. It will be a lot easier to preserve digital films... People could go to a theater in the year 3001 and see Star Wars Episode II in the same sharpness and quality as when it was originally released.
There are a lot of classic films deteriorating now because they exist only in traditional film format.
"Why should we leave the capability to doctor evidence in the hands of highly paid lawyers and big corporations? Now the little guy can doctor his own evidence. I call that a level playing field."
ROFL! And also what's to stop someone from doctoring a film digitally and then transcribing it to analog (tape) media? And watermarks can be faked and hacked. SDMI didn't last long. And SDMI 2.0 won't last any longer than the first did.
There is no such thing as a secure system or secure copy protection. Name me one that has never been broken.
I don't know, there are a lot of nice potential fringe benefits to helping some nice young secretaries out:)
But I do see your point. If I'd wanted to be a teacher, I'd have not dropped out of college to become a computer tech in 1992...
I also had to do a lot of hand-holding. Mostly for WV State government techs who were SUPPOSED to know what they were doing. They'd do shit like diagnose a machine with a hard drive that sounds like a metal grinder as a defective motherboard, etc... And the worst, having to constantly fix sales person's machines because they all "thought" they were computer experts (yeah right, if they were they'd have been working in the tech department!).
I suppose you should do what I did.. Parley all that experience into a better job. Experience with Unix admin should net you a LARGE jump up in pay next time out. And you should be able to choose a good company to work for.
Do what I did, get a headhunter agency and go in on a contract-to-hire. That way you have certain protections, and if things don't work out, you can go elsewhere. If they do, they will be happy to give you a nice raise to go on permanent staff.
"Yeah right, a 7+ year A+ tech with Novell, NT and Linux experience isn't worth more than $10/hr?"
Hey! I make $5.25/hr!
Hmm...but I work at Subway so that kind of makes sense..."
Dude, get your A+ certification and come down to North Carolina... The opportunity is endless and so is the pay. Hell, McDonalds pays $7/hr down here!
"It seems that the old-school management still cling to the notion that employees do not discuss compensation packages with each other.
I know that, for the most part, all the geeks I work with will happily disclose their salary and compensation history with the company.
I have yet to see a potential employment contract that indicates I cannot do this."
I actually have seen this before. But still, the spread of such information will happen even so. Our tech department was a pretty close bunch, after all, we are all fellog geeks! We hung out together, went and drank beer every Friday together, etc. I was actually HAPPY for the guy who got the raise, he deserved it. But if they could give him $3/hr more, they could have given me $1.
Besides, how is a company going to keep such records as who gets paid what secret from the tech department that maintains the server and systems? Ain't gonna happen.
"I can't seen how requiring a 1-year contract for training is going to be a long-run winner for a company. Perhaps the company can tie down the newly skilled employee at their current pay, but the employee is sure going to resent this arrangement, and fly the coop as soon as the contract is up"
Yup, exactly. This was the attitude of my former employer, who wanted a TWO year contract even to buy me books and a self study course. And this company badly needed a Novell CNE because of it's obligation to their bid contract with the state. Basically they wanted to sign me up with no guarantee of job security, or a raise. I didn't want to be a $25K/year network engineer...
I'm not totally opposed to contracts, but they should be no longer than 6 months, maximum, and pro-rated, from the time the certification is achieved, and include specific criteria for regular raises. They also should include language that if you are fired/let go for ANY reason at all (except criminal activity) then your obligation to repay anything is void.
Any company that NEEDS to use a contract to keep employees isn't going to, irregardless of whether they have contracts or not. Draconian contracts will chase away good people and only keep you people like "paper" MCSE's.
People in IT get paid a lot more than average for several reasons, foremost among them is DEMAND. IT is also a demanding profession, we ALL have to constantly upgrade our skills, because technology is not static. It's only in the employer's best interest to provide training. If it's done unconditionally, or on a very reasonable contact of short length, this INCREASES loyalty.
There simply are not enough good IT people to go around, and there probably never will be. Not everyone, even smart people, have the work ethic and flat out interest in computer and networking technology to invest so much of themselves to stay in the game. If I were a manager, and one of my techs wanted to be a MCSE/RHCE/CNE, whatever, I'd be happy to assist in all reasonable ways.
"I don't get it. What's with all these "raise offers?" I never received a raise offer, it was simply understood that I would be getting a raise every review period."
So did I. And our review periods were after 90 days, then at the end of the first year. My review was then done 4 months late, actually (deliberately, I found out later). Every tech the company had get to that point had ALWAYS received at leat $1/hr more. I went in EXPECTING this, especially because of my job performance/productivity. After they treated me with such incredible disrespect (and I found out an inexperienced guy who had just gotten to his 90 day review got a $3 raise) I was livid and put my resume on the headhunter block. I had never been dissatisfied with what I made before that point, even though I knew it was a lot less than I could make. Basically it's one of those moments of lucidity when you SEE with perfect clarity what your boss thinks you are worth.
This company had seen 90% turnover (only the owner and one other person still there from when I was first hired), and I was 2nd in the whole company in seniority. No company that turns over 90% of it's employees every year is going to succeed.
Slashdot Mirror
And it will end up being cracked as well not long after it comes out. Face it, there is no such thing as a protection scheme, or security measure that cannot be cracked.
:)
:)
Actualy, there is one that MAY be uncrackable... Lock up all the CD's and don't let anyone ever have one. But then, someone can always break into the warehouse and steal them.
As for the hackers getting the money, more power to them. $5K would buy me a nice multi-alpha Linux box. I'd certainly not turn it down
"That same holds true for the internet. Chalk email up to the current level of privacy you get from radio... Now, if all those web based email services adopt encyption of your messages in one form or another, you'll get an added level of security. Yes, law enforcement will still in all likely hood be able to get at your messages, but they'll stay out of the hands of "hackers, crackers and bears (oh my!)"."
Actually, you have a much better chance of keeping your mail out of the hands of law enforcement than you do hackers, crackers (oh my)
Hackers and crackers are a risk we all have to take, because there is no such thing as a system that cannot be broken.
However, I greatly object to allowing law enforcement (government) reading my e-mail. The 5th Amendment is supposed to be absolute protection against self-incrimination. Not that I do anything incriminating, I'm just paranoid. I've seen government become more intrusive and more corrupt in the last 15 years, and it's only prudent to feel some degree of paranoia. Particularly when your political beliefs do not jibe too well with government/establishment types.
I will be setting up my own POP3 server using Sendmail as soon as I get my own permanent internet connection (DSL/cable, etc). That alone is a lot of protection. However, I will also encrypt my data so that even if some FBI goon seizes my computer because I happened to visit a website that was hacked, they won't be able to read anything. Even if all that is there are portions of my still incomplete sci-fi novel.
It's the principle of the thing. I believe government has no right to read what is on my computer, so I will take all technical measures within my ability to deny them this.
This is not a good thing. For one thing, Yahoo has a history of folding every time user information, etc is demanded of them. This does not at ALL give me confidence in them as an "encrypted" e-mail provider.
Furthermore, the fact that it IS encrypted will fool many of the less technical users into thinking that it's safe. It isn't.
Of course, there is no such thing as a totally secure communications system. But, the most secure that can be used by most of us is to use PGP yourself on your own machine. Then it doesn't matter WHICH e-mail service you use.
Of course, the safest possible way is to run your own Sendmail server on your Linux box (possible if you have DSL/Cable/ISDN), that way you defeat Carnivore and the UK's RIP law.
Remember though, your "secure" e-mail is also only as secure as the recepient treats it.
Offering encrypted e-mail service is a good idea. But I'd think that a company that had policies refusing to use Carnivore, and deleted their logs every half-hour would inspire more confidence.
"It might interest you to know that the Founders put the commerce clause in the Constitution so that States couldn't put tariffs on goods from other States (as happened under the Articles of Confederation).
So then, does this mean that no state could (or should) be able to pass a law declaring a new internet commerce tax for online purchases?"
I think you are right. The Internet so far has been governed by the precedents set for mail-roder/catalog sales. States can pass sales taxes, because they are taxing INTRA-State commerce. However, mail order, internet, etc, commonly pass state lines.
Legally, it is the responsibility of the person buying the items to turn in the sales tax to their state on their return. State's don't like it this way because typically very few, if any, people actually do this, and there isnt' an easy way to enforce it.
And, I think it's unfair to put the burden on an Internet seller to have to comply with and collect taxes for 50 different states.
Preventing burdens like that is the purpose of the (much abused) commerce clause, and why it had a very noble purpose for being there. Interstate companies are supposed to be regulated by the Feds, not the States. State sales taxes, IMO, are the same as tariffs on interstate goods.
ANY government depends on having moral, honest people IN government to function lawfully and for the good of the people. Read the writings of the founders. It's the fundamental weakness of a Republic, is the dependancy on honesty.
"The reason the DMCA hasn't been struck down is twofold: Kaplan didn't really have the power to (although there were options he could take in that direction),"
Kaplan and any Federal judge has the power to find that there is no crime because the law is Unconstitutional. Which the DMCA is. If a picture of Christ in a jar of urine is speech (ruled as such by Federal judges) then code can be speech (and is according to one ruling). If it's speech then the 1st Amendment trumps any statutory law.
"and the MPAA and RIAA have just plain paid the right people too much money for it to die easily. From what I heard, it was passed by a near-unanimous vote in Congress, and signed by the president almost immediately."
Are you aware HOW insidiously the DMCA was passed? It was passed by affirmation, a voice vote. It was passed unanimously by Congress. This was done for a couple of reasons... First, it shows just how far the MPAA/RIAA's influence goes.. Secondly, it was done this way so the individual congressmen didn't have to be accountable when we found out what they had done.
"It is exactly the opposite! The reason radio and TV are like minded, etc, is because of the corporate ownership. Because of their profit obsessiveness, you see very little innovation unless it "shows a profit".
Why is it that PBS is so much better than regular television? It's because of the government involvement, so that producers only have to focus on quality rather than the "bottom line"."
While I will agree with you that most all PBS programming is far and above better quality than what is on commercial TV, I disagree STRONGLY with respect to their news reporting and opinon.
PBS is if anything even MORE pro-establishment than commercial media. But, like the differences between the parties, it's not much different.
"Quite frankly, we need to remove corporatism from the airwaves, and let the government publicly fund all programming. Only then is the corporate greed removed."
Government has no business having anything to do with news reporting. Not even CNN is as bad as PRAVDA would be. Look at the USSR and China, that's what you get with government run media.
Now, I don't like the megacorps either, I don't think they do much better.
The Internet is the answer. Old broadcast media requires a LOT of money to run. It's way beyond what most individuals can afford, but the Internet is open to all to report. No secret is safe. And there are very few secrets that a truly honest (oxymoron) government should have.
That's the threat of the `net. Even socialist-communist-fascist countries like China, Indonesia, Cuba, etc can't completely filter out the truth from their people, even though they try.
"And before you tell me that all we have to do is change the government through the available democratic mechanisms, I think you better give your head a shake. There is not two systems (public and private), there is one society dominated by the self-appointed elite. "
You are correct. So long as the US is a 2-party system, and the two partys don't differ more than 20% or so in their beliefs (if that much) things will always be so. I think one reason why things have gone downhill so rapidly in the 20th century (which we are still in, BTW) is because since the late 19th Century, the two party system has stabilized. In the early-mid 19th Century, it was commonplace for a major party to rise, fall, and be replaced by a new party.
Also, the one form of mass media of that time, the newspaper, was COMPLETELY unregulated by government, because the Constitution expressly forbid it.
I think the invention of rapid communication and new ELECTRONIC mass media have helped entrench the dominant parties.
ALL forms of electronic mass media (except so far, the Internet) are regulated by the government. There is no freedom of speech on TV or Radio, and never has been. It wasn't until the late 80's that the so-called "fairness doctrine" which prevented people from expressing opinion without giving "equal time" to any and all opposing views prevented almost any form of debate in media.
Is it any wonder that after 70 years of government restriction and regulation, that the mass media eventually all became like minded and pro-establishment?
The Internet is a threat to all that, because everyone can be a reporter. The ultimate target of the censors is not porn, it's not bomb plans, or DECSS, it's Matt Drudge and anyone else who in the future may use the Internet to do what he did.
"The ruling states that the Commerce Clause may also be grounds for the statute in question to be declared unConstitutional. Interstate commerce can only be the target of federal legislation as per the Constitution. If this is true, perhaps the Circuit Court is claiming that the Internet, as interstate "commerce", is entirely out of the juristdiction of states."
That is a VERY intriguing point. Of course, the Feds have used and abused the "commerce" clause to justify everything from seat belt laws to banning effective crypto. The 10th Amendment specifically FORBIDS the Feds from having any power not specifically granted them in the Constitution.
It might interest you to know that the Founders put the commerce clause in the Constitution so that States couldn't put tariffs on goods from other States (as happened under the Articles of Confederation).
Going after state internet censorship and mandatory censorware under the Commerce clause is probably the only way other than the 1st Amendment to fight it. Since the Internet is interstate and international, no State actually has ANY authority to regulate it at all.
And, the Feds are stopped Constitutionally by the 1st and 10th Amendments. They are stopped from implimenting something like the UK's RIP law (where you are required to hand over your crypto keys on request to "secret" police and forbidden to tell anyone, on threat of prison) by the 1st, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 14th Amendments.
One advantage our friends in the UK don't have, a Constitution. Of course, those in power here in the US have shown an alarming lack of respect for law lately, so we get the CDA, CDA II, COPA, DMCA, etc. They are going to keep throwing these things against the wall until one sticks.
Passing any kind of restriction on speech is a slippery slope that we don't want to go down...
Let's face it, guys and gals, the Internet as it is today (cheap, international, instantaneous) is threatening to ALL establishment powers. Finally, access to almost infinate information is there for the taking for anyone with a cheap PC and a modem.
All you have to do is look at the election coverage to know what is at stake here... There is a lot that went on in the Algore recount-until-I-win fury that the FCC licenced and regulated dominant media didn't report. The Internet allows anyone with information to distribute it worldwide. The Internet enabled people like Matt Drudge to tell the world about Monica and the presidentially semen stained blue dress when the dominant media had been sitting on the story for weeks. No longer do all the like-thinking editors in the press decide what is and isn't distributed to the people. You or I can tell the WORLD anything, and there's not a thing any politico can do to stop it.
THAT is power. And it scares politicos. This power has NEVER in history belonged to so many! So they are going after the `net, hot and heavy. They are trying desperately to get SOME kind of regulation of the Internet that will stick, so that it can be extended.
EVERYTHING the government touches eventually ends up under it's domination. Jefferson wrote that the "natural way of things is for government to get more powerful" (paraphrase).
So, they go after regulating prOn (for the children, of course), then they go after those posting bomb plans, etc. Censors always start censoring those that most ordinary people find offensive. But it never ENDS there. The personal freedom-control Nazis always want more and more.
ANY kind of Internet censorship at all is just the thin edge of a wedge.
What I find pitiful is that so far, the only legal Internet censorship that hasn't been struck down by a court is that resulting from the DMCA... Thaks to Judge Kaplan and his MPAA financed retirement fund.
Here's some things that RAMBUS is still in DE-Nile of (and not the river in Egypt):
1. No matter HOW they try to spin it with Perot-Esque charts, current RAMBUS designs will never have the potential speed of DDR, and probably never will. Pumping data really really fast 16-bits at a time just simply can't compete with pumping data not quite as fast (yet) 64-bits at a time. RAMBUS is like figuring out a way to run a `286 really really REALLY insanely fast, but it's still only 16-bits.
Because of these limitations, RAMBUS has been proven time and again to be slower than even CURRENT PC-133 SDRAM. Even Intel unwittingly published proof of this. DDR vs RDRAM shouldn't even be a contest.
2. RAMBUS is and always will be more expensive to produce than DDR or other types of SDRAM. This is why RAMBUS is trying to slap the "RAMBUS tax" on all competing memory, to artificially raise prices, and gouge the customer.
3. RAMBUS's policy of suing EVERYBODY for royalties on technology that RAMBUS had no part in developing has left them completely friendless. They are a pariah in the market. Not even Microsoft has (yet) done what RAMBUS has done to their partners.
4. RAMBUS's claims on their SDRAM patent is very thin. For one thing, the entered into a legal agreement with the JEDEC group that was developing SDRAM to not do so, and reveal any relevant patents or patent applications to the group. JEDEC was formed to create an open INDUSTRY STANDARD, not to use one company's proprietary technology. Now that they've finally pissed off the biggest kid on the block (Micron), the validity of their spurious patent claims may finally be heard in a court.
5. RAMBUS's threats to sue VIA, AMD, Intel,and anyone else who even THOUGHT of making a chipset that allows a CPU to talk to memory is probably the last straw... Even IF RAMBUS somehow prevailed in court on SDRAM and SDRAM chipsets, these companies (and the memory companies like Micron) WILL come up with a future memory technology that makes RAMBUS's dominance at best a few years.
6. RAMBUS is a company that earns all revenues from dubious IP, royalties and lawsuits. This is not a sound business model. And back once upon a time when there were engineers on the RAMBUS payroll instead of lawyers, they should have hired BETTER ones to come up with better memory.
Just my thoughts. Check out The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk) and Toms Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com) for articles backing up most of what I stated.
How is it a TROLL to state facts?
"NOTE:Whenever said user admits freely and openly to listening to Rush Limbaugh, please ignore all subsequent statements as they are irrational, unfounded and unnecessary.
/."
Please continue with your regularly scheduled
Not only do I listen to Rush Limbaugh, I also used to host a talk radio program on AM 930 WRVC in my home town about 2 years ago.
What's wrong with conservative views? Don't mistake conservatives for Republicans who like corps. I don't.
"..I just want a *fair* count...
You have had a FAIR count. Al Gump has just been allowed to play dirty and politicize the happenings. He is afraid since hillary has said she would like to run for Fuhr in 2004 and she would beat him like a woman. Plus Clinton/Gore type democrats are criminals who need to be executed."
I do agree that Hillary (oh GOD NO) may be the frontrunner in 2004 for the Dems. But, things can change in 4 years. Hillary is probably going to embarass herself in the Senate. If you want to talk qualifications... What has SHE ever accomplished, besides cover up for all her husbands affairs?
Hillary may end up a Ted Kennedy... Unassailable in the Senate race, but poison outside NY.
Gore I think has damaged himself beyond all hope of getting his party's nomination in 2004.
I mean, the guy pretty much is content to be APPOINTED President by some unelected judge!
"Of the recounts he wanted the only one was finished, two more where cut short due to time constraints (Yeah, we like democracy, but we really need to hurry to get Bush in office in January now).The Democratic counties use older, more faulty machinery ... and ... and"
and
I never thought I'd think of Richard Nixon in a more positive light than anyone else... Nixon in 1960 could have done all this, and probably would have won.
JFK won the election by the thinnest of margins, largely from votes in Cook County, Il (Chicago). Mayor Dailey (ironically one of his sons is one of Gore's operatives). The fact that Mayor Dailey stacked the ballot boxes is not even argued anymore.
Nixon didn't do what Gore is doing now because he didn't want to damage the country.
"This might be the end of the matter as far as Slashdot is concerned--this is, after all, Rob's baby--but it's far from the end for the rest of the world."
Sadly, it isn't. Gore is going to sue and sue and sue, send in team of lawyer goons after teams of lawer goons, until some judge somewhere appoints him President.
My gut feeling is that he's going to have a hard time even getting a Democrat judge in Florida to do that for him. The Florida Supreme court already denied his case to force Dade county, for example, to resume the hand count after they ended it.
The "dimpled" ballots that made up most of Gore's gains also may end up being tossed out entirely, the precedent in Illinois that Gore's lawyer (Boyd) submitted an affidavit on was falsely done. They claimed that the court in Cook, County, IL ALLOWED dimpled ballots to count, when in fact, they did NOT allow them.
This does not bode well for Gore's chances to get the supreme court to force recounts on that issue.
"The only thing that can end this mess quickly is a concession speech, and neither candidate has given any indication of any sort of willingness or intention to do so."
Bush has no reason to concede, NO count, no matter how biased has EVER shown him behind in Florida. Even when the networks called Gore the winner of Florida, Gore was not leading the vote.
Gore on the other hand is looking like a power mad tyrant, who will do ANYTHING to be President. I am scared at the thought of someone who wants that power THAT badly... Gore's only chance to preserve any dignity would be to concede. He will not do that. In fact, I don't think he ever will, even when Bush is sworn in.
"Well, at least bush will be the winner until the idiot lawyers get their hands on it tomarrow and steal the election from him. Quite frankly, I think that the hand counting is biased, because quite frankly humans are not impartial,"
I agree with you on this. Especially hand counts of ballots meant to be read by machines. Machines may leave something to be desired, but they are unbiased.
I heard an expert on the particular voting machines used in Florida. He stated that by law they have to be certified to a certain accuracy, and the machines in Florida are over 99.9% accurate. He said something like it will get maybe 2 votes in a MILLION wrong. This fact has not been widely reported.
The margin of error when humans, particularly ones overwealmingly allied to one of the parties that has interest in the counting, is considerably higher.
Gore has lost 3 and sometimes 4 counts of the ballots, including ones in the BEST possible bias towards him. He has clearly lost.
And before anyone brings up Gore's (narrow) win of the popular vote, the Electoral College exists for a very important purpose: to prevent small areas with dense populations to be able to run a tyranny over the rest of the people.
That vote map that had Gore winning only in the biggest metro areas was striking.
I am a Republican, and voted for Bush, so obviously I'm biased.
However, I clearly think that if Gore continues to go ahead with his lawyers in front of Democrat judges (who already have rewritten the law, in effect changing the rules of the game after the ball has been put in play), he's going to destroy his party.
Americans hate lawyers, as do I. In my view, the person who, after multiple counts and recounts is resorting to using lawyers for the sole purpose of getting a judge to appoint him President.
I believe that at this point he doesn't stand much of a chance of succeding... Surprisingly, weeks of recounts being done in Democrat counties that voted OVERWEALMINGLY for him, using hand recount rules made and remade on the fly by DEMOCRATS didn't change the results.
Gore going any further proves that Gore thinks more of himself than the country to continue to be the cause of damaging faith in the Constitution, law, and fairness. And he is the SOLE cause of all this. Some day, when less biased historians write of this era will paint this election and Gore's actions as the final chapter of the corrupt Clinton machine.
BTW, Gore's lawyer, Boyd, is the lead government lawyer in the Microsoft case, don't know if anyone's mentioned that yet. This shakes my faith in the Reno case against them, IMO, he has damaged his credibility severely by arguing specious cases on Gore's behalf.
"Lucas's statements has been that he wants to release a good DVD, with lots of extras and such. There's no effort involved in VHS rereleases, since they're mostly just shoving the movie onto tape."
Similarly, there isn't much effort needed to put the thing on DVD. I don't really understand Lucas's attitude towards DVD. He was one of the early adopter of the old Laserdisc format. I've seen the Star Wars Trilogy on that format and it's much better than VHS.
I don't WANT to pay a premium for all those extras. Who cares? I just want to own my 3 favorite movies of all time in the format that I can best see them in at home.
The only "secret" rationale I can see for Lucas not releasing on DVD is that he doens't want to hurt the Trilogy and Episode I's re-release in theater value...
"Of course..there is a potential problem doing a movie all digital...you can get the pixelization affect and you don't really get true color the whole time....it is a lot easier for editing and such...but there are problems with pixelization and not having real color. "
You do have a great point there. Anything digital will involve some sort of limitation of resolution and color. The great thing about analog is that the limits are at the top and bottom of the color spectrum, with virtually infinate possibilities in-between. Even 32-bit color doens't make for every possible color.
However, I suppose that with the increased sharpness, the limitations of pixelization and color depth can't be discerned by 99% of the people watching it.
Also, digital filming has many great advantages that make up for any possible trade offs:
1. The 9999th generation copy is as sharp as the first.
2. It will end up being much less expensive.
3. It will be a lot easier to preserve digital films... People could go to a theater in the year 3001 and see Star Wars Episode II in the same sharpness and quality as when it was originally released.
There are a lot of classic films deteriorating now because they exist only in traditional film format.
"Why should we leave the capability to doctor evidence in the hands of highly paid lawyers and big corporations? Now the little guy can doctor his own evidence. I call that a level playing field."
ROFL! And also what's to stop someone from doctoring a film digitally and then transcribing it to analog (tape) media? And watermarks can be faked and hacked. SDMI didn't last long. And SDMI 2.0 won't last any longer than the first did.
There is no such thing as a secure system or secure copy protection. Name me one that has never been broken.
I don't know, there are a lot of nice potential fringe benefits to helping some nice young secretaries out :)
But I do see your point. If I'd wanted to be a teacher, I'd have not dropped out of college to become a computer tech in 1992...
I also had to do a lot of hand-holding. Mostly for WV State government techs who were SUPPOSED to know what they were doing. They'd do shit like diagnose a machine with a hard drive that sounds like a metal grinder as a defective motherboard, etc... And the worst, having to constantly fix sales person's machines because they all "thought" they were computer experts (yeah right, if they were they'd have been working in the tech department!).
I suppose you should do what I did.. Parley all that experience into a better job. Experience with Unix admin should net you a LARGE jump up in pay next time out. And you should be able to choose a good company to work for.
Do what I did, get a headhunter agency and go in on a contract-to-hire. That way you have certain protections, and if things don't work out, you can go elsewhere. If they do, they will be happy to give you a nice raise to go on permanent staff.
"Yeah right, a 7+ year A+ tech with Novell, NT and Linux experience isn't worth more than $10/hr?"
Hey! I make $5.25/hr!
Hmm...but I work at Subway so that kind of makes sense..."
Dude, get your A+ certification and come down to North Carolina... The opportunity is endless and so is the pay. Hell, McDonalds pays $7/hr down here!
"It seems that the old-school management still cling to the notion that employees do not discuss compensation packages with each other.
I know that, for the most part, all the geeks I work with will happily disclose their salary and compensation history with the company.
I have yet to see a potential employment contract that indicates I cannot do this."
I actually have seen this before. But still, the spread of such information will happen even so. Our tech department was a pretty close bunch, after all, we are all fellog geeks! We hung out together, went and drank beer every Friday together, etc. I was actually HAPPY for the guy who got the raise, he deserved it. But if they could give him $3/hr more, they could have given me $1.
Besides, how is a company going to keep such records as who gets paid what secret from the tech department that maintains the server and systems? Ain't gonna happen.
"I can't seen how requiring a 1-year contract for training is going to be a long-run winner for a company. Perhaps the company can tie down the newly skilled employee at their current pay, but the employee is sure going to resent this arrangement, and fly the coop as soon as the contract is up"
Yup, exactly. This was the attitude of my former employer, who wanted a TWO year contract even to buy me books and a self study course. And this company badly needed a Novell CNE because of it's obligation to their bid contract with the state. Basically they wanted to sign me up with no guarantee of job security, or a raise. I didn't want to be a $25K/year network engineer...
I'm not totally opposed to contracts, but they should be no longer than 6 months, maximum, and pro-rated, from the time the certification is achieved, and include specific criteria for regular raises. They also should include language that if you are fired/let go for ANY reason at all (except criminal activity) then your obligation to repay anything is void.
Any company that NEEDS to use a contract to keep employees isn't going to, irregardless of whether they have contracts or not. Draconian contracts will chase away good people and only keep you people like "paper" MCSE's.
People in IT get paid a lot more than average for several reasons, foremost among them is DEMAND. IT is also a demanding profession, we ALL have to constantly upgrade our skills, because technology is not static. It's only in the employer's best interest to provide training. If it's done unconditionally, or on a very reasonable contact of short length, this INCREASES loyalty.
There simply are not enough good IT people to go around, and there probably never will be. Not everyone, even smart people, have the work ethic and flat out interest in computer and networking technology to invest so much of themselves to stay in the game. If I were a manager, and one of my techs wanted to be a MCSE/RHCE/CNE, whatever, I'd be happy to assist in all reasonable ways.
"I don't get it. What's with all these "raise offers?" I never received a raise offer, it was simply understood that I would be getting a raise every review period."
So did I. And our review periods were after 90 days, then at the end of the first year. My review was then done 4 months late, actually (deliberately, I found out later). Every tech the company had get to that point had ALWAYS received at leat $1/hr more. I went in EXPECTING this, especially because of my job performance/productivity. After they treated me with such incredible disrespect (and I found out an inexperienced guy who had just gotten to his 90 day review got a $3 raise) I was livid and put my resume on the headhunter block. I had never been dissatisfied with what I made before that point, even though I knew it was a lot less than I could make. Basically it's one of those moments of lucidity when you SEE with perfect clarity what your boss thinks you are worth.
This company had seen 90% turnover (only the owner and one other person still there from when I was first hired), and I was 2nd in the whole company in seniority. No company that turns over 90% of it's employees every year is going to succeed.