The Bush Administration seeks changes that may destroy our national security, economic well-being, and the stability of the world order. These changes are going on way over your head - 50 miles above to be precise. The Neo-Cons aim to make outer space the new theater of war. Their blind ambitions threaten to ignite a new and ruinously expensive arms race that could destroy the international norms that have made outer space a vital and growing part of the world's civilian economy and a lynchpin of America's long-term security.
Pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2000, the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization undertook a study of our vulnerabilities and military capabilities in space. Donald Rumsfeld chaired the Commission until a few weeks before their report was issued, when Bush appointed him Secretary of Defense. Given this fact, little about the Commission's report will surprise you.
The Commission report warned of significant vulnerabilities in both civilian and military space assets that must be addressed. As there have not been any attacks on space borne assets to date, it is difficult to quantify how serious or how likely various threats might be. The Commission supports their recommendations with worse-case assumptions out of any proportion to likely threats. They insisting we prepare to meet a possible 'Pearl Harbor in space' where no enemy is known to exist. In their estimation, that preparation entails nothing less than the head-long introduction of weapons into space.
The world's consensus is that spaced borne weaponry is inconsistent with the "peaceful purposes" for which space is reserved by the Outer Space Treaty. However, the current legal regime does not specifically disallow weaponization of space, except for nuclear weapons and other WMD. Thus, this Administration advances an extreme interpretation that space based weapons systems are consistent with "peaceful uses" so long as they are not used for aggressive military operations. This means that development and deployment of first-strike capable anti-satellite and ground targeting weapons systems in orbit would be lawful as long as they are only used in a defensive capacity - and we all now know how flexible the concept of defense can become.
What kind of weapons might we see deployed in space? Anti-satellite weapons to destroy or disable an enemy's space assets, and systems to protect our own satellites. Space-based weapons platforms carrying lasers, particle beams, kinetic weapons, and other systems to disrupt or destroy targets on the ground or in the atmosphere. Contrary to common conception it does not include "Star Wars", the National Missile Defense (NMD) system. Only sensors and command and control systems of NMD would be in orbit as the system is currently concieved.
The Commission report is unequivocal in its judgment that deployment of weapons in space is purely a winning proposition, enhancing the security of our space-based assets and extending the reach and speed of our military options. Military planners see a golden moment in history and they want to seize it. No other nation can deploy military space systems that could match ours, and being first to the high ground of space allows us to dictate the terms of access. We are presented an opportunity to unilaterally shift the fulcrum of the world's strategic military balance in our favor. The Commission makes it plain that they believe weaponization of space will assure U.S. military predominance and preparedness for the forseeable future.
The question we must ask, is whether we should allow it. Will the militarization of space enhance or degrade our long-term security? One obvious reason not to place weapons in space is that despite any temporary strategic advantage we might gain, proliferation and an arms race are inevitable, though not necessarily immediate. Consider the obvious military advantages conveyed by t
Dean has, of course, posted to the official campaign blog, so Dean's posting to a blog is certainly not unprecedented, not even very exciting. What is exciting is Dean deliberately seeking a highly knowledgeable and highly critical constituency via Lessig's blog. If one had to choose a single site as the beating heart of criticism of what is wrong with the way government interacts with the internet, you would be hard pressed to choose better than Lessig's blog. It is you, the audience, Dean wants.
Dean will not presume to teach you anything about the internet with his guest blogging. He's a doctor and politician, not a geek. You will see many more questions from him than answers. What we are seeing here is a Presidential candidate who has decided to seek a crash education on government policy and the internet, on the internet, and from the people best able to give it to him: geeks. Such willingness to put himself in the line of fire of some of the best minds in the field displays great intellectual courage and tremendous confidence in us, his constituents, to be his foils, his educators, and his policy team. The reason people don't know Dean's positions on many of the issues which concern us is because he doesn't yet have any worth mentioning - we are still 6 months from the earliest primaries, after all. This guest-blog is likely to be his deepest education on these topics to date and will likely help him form the very opinions, if not the very policies, he will carry into the battle for the Presidency. He knows that the positions many of you advocate are tested by intense peer scrutiny (unlike the product of most think-tanks these days), tested in the market place, yet leavened by the insights of technologists and philosophers. I hope every geek in the realm will be pounding madly at their keyboards to help educate Dean. What you say here may well find it's way into the policies advocated by a Dean Administration. You may be educating our future President, the first Internet President; don't let your President down.
The problem with the Green Party is they have never heard of, or don't understand, Duverger's Law. A single member majority or first past the post system (SMM or SMFPTP) invariably creates a fairly stable two party system in which the parties are coalitional in nature. Somehow, Greens think it is possible to buck this law. It is not.
Greens should seek to eliminate the Apportionment Act which mandates states use SMM districting. In the mean-time they should ally themselves with the Democrats in national elections, work their way into the Democratic Party structure to affect candidate selection and funding, and run separately ticketed candidates only in the alternative electoral systems which exist in some city and local elections. They should work to expand local use of proportional representation systems using the wedge of minority equity and fairness to third parties.
Once they have succeeded in destroying the Apportionment Act, they can work state by state to encourage a switch to proportional systems for selection of Federal and State level offices. Until all this work is accomplished and the Greens have taken a controlling coalitional position in at least one house of Congress and control a number of State Houses and Governorships, they should forget about running any President candidates.
Nader's 2000 bid was a stunt to generate national awareness and ease ballot access for the Greens and it damaged the nation deeply. Fire whatever moron devised this strategy! Already, I personally know many people who would have voted for Green candidates in the future, who have been permanently driven away from the Party because of the Green's apparent complicity in Bush's election.
If one applies the "shoe on the other foot" test as recommended, one must switch the viewpoint of the investigator as well. Thus, if a Republican discovered the ability to change the vote in elections built into voting machines built and designed by a Democrat owned company, not only would they cry conspiracy, they would kick themselves or not thinking of it first.
Bias consists in interpreting facts which have more than one interpretation in only one way. It does consist in laying out a possible case and asking the opposition to refute it. I don't see a lot of conservative commentators or even those directly involved rushing to defend themselves. The reason? To do so would draw more attention to the conspiracy which has now been revealed.
The saddest thing about Polaroid going 'rupt is it's effect on intimate photography. The technology is perfect for those special moments that you want to record, but don't want to share with the photolab techs or have hacked out of your computer and posted on the internet. With polaroids, you had a unique confidence that private records would stay that way.
First of all, the idea that a private organization or individual is in any way prevented from prior restraint of free speech by the Constitution must be disposed of. Microsoft does have the ability to enter into a contract with a user of their software which would constitute a prior restraint on free speech if done by the government. There is the rub, the Constitution restricts governments, not private persons, in their behavior. In short, free speech guarantees and civil rights don't enter into this issue at all.
The second issue here is whether a contract with these terms would be upheld by a court. The answer is not really clear, we need some litigation to set some predictable precedents. The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UTICA) would probably be the context in which such contracts would be evaluated. There are two problems with this contract which could be the basis for not enforcing the offensive provisions.
First, a court would likely find that these terms are of a nature so unexpected and objectionable that an end-user would not have agreed to them if they knew they were there (after-all only the deepest of geeks actually read their EULAs). UTICA provides for recission of such terms by the court.
Secondly, the terms may be held to be unconscionable as against public policy. This artguement seems much less likely to suceed . As I pointed out earlier prior restraint of free speech does not apply to private parties and thus any argument on free speech grounds would be quite weak. There may be other public policy grounds one could drum up in support of unconscionability, but none occur to me right now.
Of course, one also has to wonder if MS would ever seek to enforce such a thing. I rather doubt it, but it might give them a tool of harrassment to threaten people with a lawsuit to get them to remove content they don't like. Rational people are likely to remove the offending content rather than wrestle with MS's legal staff. Thus it really doesn't matter if a court would enforce it, the fact that MS can drag you into expensive litigation on the slim chance that a court MIGHT uphold it is the chilling effect that they are after. That is why they are slime for including it in their EULAs.
Slashdot Mirror
The Bush Administration seeks changes that may destroy our national security, economic well-being, and the stability of the world order. These changes are going on way over your head - 50 miles above to be precise. The Neo-Cons aim to make outer space the new theater of war. Their blind ambitions threaten to ignite a new and ruinously expensive arms race that could destroy the international norms that have made outer space a vital and growing part of the world's civilian economy and a lynchpin of America's long-term security.
Pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2000, the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization undertook a study of our vulnerabilities and military capabilities in space. Donald Rumsfeld chaired the Commission until a few weeks before their report was issued, when Bush appointed him Secretary of Defense. Given this fact, little about the Commission's report will surprise you.
The Commission report warned of significant vulnerabilities in both civilian and military space assets that must be addressed. As there have not been any attacks on space borne assets to date, it is difficult to quantify how serious or how likely various threats might be. The Commission supports their recommendations with worse-case assumptions out of any proportion to likely threats. They insisting we prepare to meet a possible 'Pearl Harbor in space' where no enemy is known to exist. In their estimation, that preparation entails nothing less than the head-long introduction of weapons into space.
The world's consensus is that spaced borne weaponry is inconsistent with the "peaceful purposes" for which space is reserved by the Outer Space Treaty. However, the current legal regime does not specifically disallow weaponization of space, except for nuclear weapons and other WMD. Thus, this Administration advances an extreme interpretation that space based weapons systems are consistent with "peaceful uses" so long as they are not used for aggressive military operations. This means that development and deployment of first-strike capable anti-satellite and ground targeting weapons systems in orbit would be lawful as long as they are only used in a defensive capacity - and we all now know how flexible the concept of defense can become.
What kind of weapons might we see deployed in space? Anti-satellite weapons to destroy or disable an enemy's space assets, and systems to protect our own satellites. Space-based weapons platforms carrying lasers, particle beams, kinetic weapons, and other systems to disrupt or destroy targets on the ground or in the atmosphere. Contrary to common conception it does not include "Star Wars", the National Missile Defense (NMD) system. Only sensors and command and control systems of NMD would be in orbit as the system is currently concieved.
The Commission report is unequivocal in its judgment that deployment of weapons in space is purely a winning proposition, enhancing the security of our space-based assets and extending the reach and speed of our military options. Military planners see a golden moment in history and they want to seize it. No other nation can deploy military space systems that could match ours, and being first to the high ground of space allows us to dictate the terms of access. We are presented an opportunity to unilaterally shift the fulcrum of the world's strategic military balance in our favor. The Commission makes it plain that they believe weaponization of space will assure U.S. military predominance and preparedness for the forseeable future.
The question we must ask, is whether we should allow it. Will the militarization of space enhance or degrade our long-term security? One obvious reason not to place weapons in space is that despite any temporary strategic advantage we might gain, proliferation and an arms race are inevitable, though not necessarily immediate. Consider the obvious military advantages conveyed by t
Dean will not presume to teach you anything about the internet with his guest blogging. He's a doctor and politician, not a geek. You will see many more questions from him than answers. What we are seeing here is a Presidential candidate who has decided to seek a crash education on government policy and the internet, on the internet, and from the people best able to give it to him: geeks. Such willingness to put himself in the line of fire of some of the best minds in the field displays great intellectual courage and tremendous confidence in us, his constituents, to be his foils, his educators, and his policy team. The reason people don't know Dean's positions on many of the issues which concern us is because he doesn't yet have any worth mentioning - we are still 6 months from the earliest primaries, after all. This guest-blog is likely to be his deepest education on these topics to date and will likely help him form the very opinions, if not the very policies, he will carry into the battle for the Presidency. He knows that the positions many of you advocate are tested by intense peer scrutiny (unlike the product of most think-tanks these days), tested in the market place, yet leavened by the insights of technologists and philosophers. I hope every geek in the realm will be pounding madly at their keyboards to help educate Dean. What you say here may well find it's way into the policies advocated by a Dean Administration. You may be educating our future President, the first Internet President; don't let your President down.
The problem with the Green Party is they have never heard of, or don't understand, Duverger's Law. A single member majority or first past the post system (SMM or SMFPTP) invariably creates a fairly stable two party system in which the parties are coalitional in nature. Somehow, Greens think it is possible to buck this law. It is not.
Greens should seek to eliminate the Apportionment Act which mandates states use SMM districting. In the mean-time they should ally themselves with the Democrats in national elections, work their way into the Democratic Party structure to affect candidate selection and funding, and run separately ticketed candidates only in the alternative electoral systems which exist in some city and local elections. They should work to expand local use of proportional representation systems using the wedge of minority equity and fairness to third parties.
Once they have succeeded in destroying the Apportionment Act, they can work state by state to encourage a switch to proportional systems for selection of Federal and State level offices. Until all this work is accomplished and the Greens have taken a controlling coalitional position in at least one house of Congress and control a number of State Houses and Governorships, they should forget about running any President candidates.
Nader's 2000 bid was a stunt to generate national awareness and ease ballot access for the Greens and it damaged the nation deeply. Fire whatever moron devised this strategy! Already, I personally know many people who would have voted for Green candidates in the future, who have been permanently driven away from the Party because of the Green's apparent complicity in Bush's election.
If one applies the "shoe on the other foot" test as recommended, one must switch the viewpoint of the investigator as well. Thus, if a Republican discovered the ability to change the vote in elections built into voting machines built and designed by a Democrat owned company, not only would they cry conspiracy, they would kick themselves or not thinking of it first.
Bias consists in interpreting facts which have more than one interpretation in only one way. It does consist in laying out a possible case and asking the opposition to refute it. I don't see a lot of conservative commentators or even those directly involved rushing to defend themselves. The reason? To do so would draw more attention to the conspiracy which has now been revealed.
The saddest thing about Polaroid going 'rupt is it's effect on intimate photography. The technology is perfect for those special moments that you want to record, but don't want to share with the photolab techs or have hacked out of your computer and posted on the internet. With polaroids, you had a unique confidence that private records would stay that way.
Sigs are for kids
First of all, the idea that a private organization or individual is in any way prevented from prior restraint of free speech by the Constitution must be disposed of. Microsoft does have the ability to enter into a contract with a user of their software which would constitute a prior restraint on free speech if done by the government. There is the rub, the Constitution restricts governments, not private persons, in their behavior. In short, free speech guarantees and civil rights don't enter into this issue at all.
The second issue here is whether a contract with these terms would be upheld by a court. The answer is not really clear, we need some litigation to set some predictable precedents. The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UTICA) would probably be the context in which such contracts would be evaluated. There are two problems with this contract which could be the basis for not enforcing the offensive provisions.
First, a court would likely find that these terms are of a nature so unexpected and objectionable that an end-user would not have agreed to them if they knew they were there (after-all only the deepest of geeks actually read their EULAs). UTICA provides for recission of such terms by the court.
Secondly, the terms may be held to be unconscionable as against public policy. This artguement seems much less likely to suceed . As I pointed out earlier prior restraint of free speech does not apply to private parties and thus any argument on free speech grounds would be quite weak. There may be other public policy grounds one could drum up in support of unconscionability, but none occur to me right now.
Of course, one also has to wonder if MS would ever seek to enforce such a thing. I rather doubt it, but it might give them a tool of harrassment to threaten people with a lawsuit to get them to remove content they don't like. Rational people are likely to remove the offending content rather than wrestle with MS's legal staff. Thus it really doesn't matter if a court would enforce it, the fact that MS can drag you into expensive litigation on the slim chance that a court MIGHT uphold it is the chilling effect that they are after. That is why they are slime for including it in their EULAs.
Sigs are for kids