taking a newspaper article, cutting it out, posting it on a bulletin board
Single use. If you cut out the article and put it on the bulletin board, then you gave away your legally-obtained copy of the article, and you'll notice that it's not in your paper anymore. If you Xerox (TM diluted) the article and post in on the bulleting board, that's technically a no-no and that's what Free Republic does.
teacher taking an article out of a paper and bringing it to her class
Again, single use, and also that copywright laws make specific exceptions for academic uses. (This was one of the big challenges to the DMCA, that it violates "fair use" because you can't excerpt from a DVD without first DeCSS-ing it. Not getting it, the judge said "rent the VHS," apparently not realizing that much DVD content isn't on the VHS. But anyway...)
So why go after Free Republic? The "gather 'round the water cooler" analogy has a hard time reconciling:
1. There's only so much room on the bulletin board next to the water cooler. On the Internet, there are hardly such constraints. So the amount of "piracy" is potentially much greated
2. At the water cooler, the potential audience is your co-workers. On the Internet the potential audience is millions of people. So the damage from "piracy" is potentially millions of lost customers.
Interesting, I bet the courts will determine that it's okay to link to the article but not copy its contents. That's pretty much goes against what the courts decided in the 2600 case, where linking was the big no-no. I suppose there's a subtle legal difference depending what you're linking to: If it's "legit" content, you can put in the http: and if it's "circumvention device" then you can't.
On one point I agree, that the "digital age" makes all of these issues extremely unclear and will ultimately force a paradigm shift regarding copywright and IP. Like any revolution, it will take a while, and there will be plenty of resistance, esp. from the monied interests.
Thank you for making the point that Jon Katz seems to be ambling towards.
Many people have responded to here writing that "look, on the Internet I found people I never would have met who share my interests in snow globes, therefore the Internet makes my personal community stronger."
WRONG. Where are your Internet friends when your car needs a jump? Will they call 911 when your house catches fire? Would they even recognize you on the street?
Of course there are exceptions to this, such as the couple who meets on line, falls in love, and marries in real life, but those are exceptions and not the rule. I have met face-to-face with a few people I've met online, and it didn't add any value to the relationship. In fact we don't talk at all anymore.
Saying that the friends you've met on the internet enriches your circle of friends/personal community is like counting your pen pal as a real friend. Again, there's the example of pen pals getting together in person, but that's the exception not the norm.
I am not arguing that Internet friends and communities are a Bad Thing and should be Avioded. Rather, one must recognize that true community, the kind where you know your neighbors and have spoken with your postal carrier, is an element of social capital which probably needs greater focus in your personal social portfolio.
This "obvious fact" ties into so many elements of society, I could go on and on. One observation is that social capital of this nature has no value in a capitalist society, and we have to call it "social capital" to even try to make it fit our current paradigm of value. As a consumer in a capitalist society, it doesn't really matter if you talk to your neighbors or not. In fact it's probably better if you pay AOL $20 a month so you can talk to your "friends," pay the cable company $70 a month so you can sit inside and watch movies, and so on. From a purely capitalist view, there is little if any ROI on time spent socializing. (Of course, if you choose to socialize at TGI Fridays, that's okay too. Just don't meet at the Public Library.)
In the real world, of course, any CEO will tell you that it's all about Networking (i.e. socializing) and that there is a definite ROI on social interaction. But you don't NEED to develop strong social bonds in order to be a consumer.
SirSlud brought up a great related point, which is that adversity and challenge is what makes us strong. I've heard this about antibacterial soap -- that doctors recommend you NOT let your children use antibacterial soap, since all those bacteria give the immune system something to fight. (Somewhat akin to when kids get Chicken Pox it's no big deal but an adult with Shingles is in for a rough time.) Similarly, think about your "formative" high school or junior high years. They probably sucked. But have you ever met someone who didn't have struggles and challenges growing up? They are usually pretty boring.
I had another point about how if America only loses a handful of troops to the enemy's thousands upon thousands, that doesn't really represent true adversity either, and it shouldn't really be described as a War if it's really just a slaughter conducted by the military. Somehow this ties in with our nation being fat, dumb, and happy. And we've got the strongest military on the planet. As a result, we're never forced to rationally and productively deal with world concerns because we can just ignore them (Kyoto, ABM, Land Mines) or bomb them (War on Terror, Iraq, Insert Country Name Here).
Excellent point. A friend of mine recently visited Romania, not a country I thought of as being incredibly poor. He could get a room and three meals for five dollars a day. The average salary in Romania is something on the order of a hundred dollars a month. And this is in Europe.
I recently bought Adobe Acrobat 5 for Windows, it cost $220. With slight apologies to DeBeers, I have to ask -- will the average Romanian spend two month's salary on a software package? (Far from lasting forever, it becomes obsolete every few years!)
To look at this issue another way, I recommend this article (Scientific American), if only for the sidebar which reads:
For every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology would require four more planet Earths.
Adobe cannot realistically expect to fund the development of products for the third-world market from the revenue those products will generate. People will not buy too much software when each product costs as much as the average "knowledge worker's" annual salary.
On the other hand, an Indian software company, employing Indians, could afford to sell their product for far less than Adobe, since they can pay their developers much much less. Especially if it runs on a free operating system.
When that happens, and it won't be too long, I look forward to increasingly restrictive licensing agreements, huge tarriffs on software imported from third-world countries, and less functionality. As well as long lines at the unemployment office in Redmond. I think that this fear is largely responsible for recent trends such as Region Coding, the DMCA and the SSSCA, and the general rush to Protect American Business from the Threat of Illicit Ones and Zeros.
The game developers *won't* go after them, because it's not hurting sales.
That is not the issue! Did Napster hurt record sales? Probably not, many feel that it may have helped sales. The issue here is CONTROL. It's pretty evident that large publishers tend towards ever-increasing control of their copywritten works -- witness region-coding on DVDs, those new "un-rippable" audio CDs, and Microsoft Product Activation.
Speaking of Microsoft, I'll give a little prediction of what to expect in the game console market. Within a year Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft will file C&D letters with anyone who provides info on hardware mods or "unauthorized" devices for their consoles.
I would expect them to come out with their own GameShark-esque device, which of course isn't quite as robust as what's currently available. Then they will sue the pants off of anyone who tries to bring a similar product to market. Yes, it may hurt their product's overall sales, but they will take the hit in order to have more control of the marketspace. It sucks, but that's just the way things are now.
I ordered one of these nForce motherboards, from MSI. (It seems to be the only one vendors are actually offering.)
My philosophy when buying computers is to buy the cheapest new technology out there. The nForce motherboard is a steal at $189, you get GeForce2 graphics (~$60 value), a really nice audio chipset (~$90 value); those two things almost pay for the board right there. Sure, I would love to have the MB that scored 5% faster on the benchmarks, but to put together a similar system on a KT266A MB would cost at least $50 more.
I did get the Athlon XP 1600+ processor. It was literally $1 more than the 1500. I'll pay a buck for a five percent speed increase, but I won't pay fifty.
we just want our government to stop caring for other countries. You say you want our government to stop caring for other countries. We do not "care for" other countries, we exploit them as best we can. Those millions we give in "foreign aid"; it's a bribe, it's a payoff, it's a way of ensuring their friendship because we give them money and they buy F-16s with it. Then they feel "protected" by the U.S. and we hope that, now that we've armed the bullies and have made it clear they are not to directly engage each other, they will maintain ORDER in the Middle East. Not democracy, not justice, just ORDER. Keep that oil comin' boys.
Let our citizens decide if they want to buy or trade with other countries, any countries. I have no idea how, as a plebe citizen, I would initiate trade with other countries, aside from going to Pier 1 or something.
Stop giving money to other countries' governments, which only harbor war, and only help keep dictators in power. But Dictatorships (like the Saudis) are nice and stable, and they get us our oil for cheap.
Bring all our troops home. Stop selling weapons to any other countries. If we stop selling weapons to other countries, Boeing will go out of business. Not to mention the thousands of govt workers involved in foreign military sales. (I used to be one.)
Leave NATO and the UN. The U.N was created by FDR to carry out U.S. foreign policy.
Recognize the scope of the problem you are facing: You are talking about a revolution! The Pentagon reduced to a skeleton staff, tens of thousands laid off at Boeing and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and so on.
The United States established its independence from the British with the help of the gun makers, and our government and arms merchants have been in bed together ever since. Asking us to "bring the boys home" is swimming upstream against hundreds of years of American tradition, from the Monroe Doctrine to Commodore Perry to Gunboat Diplomacy, to Korea and Desert Storm (not to mention the Trail of Tears, or Waco). We ARE a military-industrial complex, it's the underpinning of what America is. Look at our worlds-best military, that's what it means to be an American.
Someday, there may be people living here, actually participating in a free market, unchecked by government favoritism, but those people won't call themselves The United States of America.
(Arrogant caveat: I'm an American, so "our" means U.S.)
Without worldwide trade our country will crumble. Isolationism is simply not a realistic path. One of many factors that led us into the Great Depression of the 1930s was isolationist trade policies such as high tarriffs that blocked U.S. goods from European markets, and vice versa. I am not trying to be a WTO apologist here, I am simply explaining why isolationism is frivolous. Do you think GM, Boeing, etc. can survive if America becomes isolated? Of course not.
As for "fixing" the problems of the Middle East, consider that the West has militarized that region for the past half century, because WE *NEED* THE OIL TO SUSTAIN OUR ECONOMY.
We have chosen to pursue our interests in the Middle East by aligning ourselves with a racist/Zionist state (Israel) and a dictatorship/Kingdom (Saudi Arabia), our number one and number two benefactors in the Middle East. Meanwhile we hate those darned Iraqis, who hold almost as much oil as the Saudis. Ironic? Yes. A psychological gambit you'd pull on children? Yes. Do children throw temper tantrums when they perceive they're being treated unfairly? Yes!
We don't know if this stuff will go away, no matter how much we fight it, because we've been dumping gasoline on the fire for the past TEN YEARS with constant bombings of Iraq, Osama bin Laden, and so on.
Sometimes the BULLY (that's us) gets a punch to the face, a little bloody nose, and it shocks him for a second. That was today. How we react in the coming months will determine if we continue to be a bully or maybe we grow up a little bit. I'm expecting the former but hoping for the latter, and I vote.
That was a great speech. It was written by Peggy Noonan. I do remember that speech and I'm feeling today much like I did on Jan 28 1986. It's tough to tell right now, but I think this is worse than the Challenger disaster.
Bush will not be able to pull off a speech as good as Reagan's, regarless of who writes it. Reagan was a STAR HOLLYWOOD ACTOR, Bush was a BASEBALL TEAM OWNER. Do you really think someone in the same league as Marge Schottenheimer or George Steinbrenner can give a useful speech at a time like this?
But there is an important difference. In Red Russia, the Government would throw you in jail if you poase a threat the Govenrment. In America, the Government throws you in jajil if you pose a threat to a Corporation. Our New U.S. Flag makes it easier to understand.
That guy with the sig, the quote by the president of Visa, has got it right.
After reading this article, I'm wondering why I stayed up for four nights reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
In ten minutes this guy drops just as many names as Stephenson, and the -1 comments are just like the sex between the fat unix guy and America Shaftoe.
Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!
The phone company owns the wires that carry your conversations. So I guess they have the right to "listen in," since you're using their equipment?
It's not quite that bad, yet, but the courts have ruled the the phone company has the right to sell your phone records; i.e. who you call, how often, and so on.
This got some coverage on EPIC , where somebody did their homework and linked to these articles on Wired, MSN, and The New York Times.
Back to the issue: The boss, who "owns your time," wants to make sure he's getting all he's paid for. What's next? No posting of Dibert cartoons on your cubicle, since your co-workers will waste precious man-hours chuckling? No newspapers in tne bathroom, since they tend to encourage extra-long bathroom breaks? No more decaf?
I'm not saying that companies should or shouldn't have an absolute right to record your phone calls, read all your email, and require you to be fingerprinted. I am saying that micro-managerial, reactive approaches to eliminating "wasted time" seldom work. Happy employees free to spend a few moments surfing the web or answering a personal email will be more productive than unhappy employees living in fear of a draconian computer use policy.
The winning car averaged 40 MPH during the race. maybe it didn't weigh two tons, or have xtra-large cupholders, but it's still pretty impressive for a "car" powered entirely by 8 square meters of solar cells.
The TRS-80 laptop with the "acoustic coupled" modem is the ultimate hacker tool. I saw a guy who had one of these at one of those hacker conventions. It fits in your back pack. The 7-11 has more batteries if you run out. You can hack from a phreaking pay phone. They will Never Catch You.
The downside of 300 baud is, while most probably can't type that fast with just two fingers, you can certainly read far faster than that thing spits letters across the screen. A 300 baud modem will take longer to download the ASCII art version of your favorite picture than your 56K modem will take to download the jpg.
If you want to move your servers into an old NORAD facility, "Built to withstand a 10-megaton strike within ¼ mile of the facility...," then HostPro can accomodate your colocation needs.
Here at Two Party Systems, we make voting machines. We manufacture the hardware which counts ballots, and the software which tells the machines how to count those ballots. The software is tailored for each electoral district using our product. This software is encrypted before it leaves our factory and is decrypted inside the voting machines, where it is run.
A candidate thinks she lost the election because of some suspicious results coming from one precinct. She would like to scrutinize the code of the vote counting program. In doing so she would discover that an unscrupulous employee from Two Party Systems has deliberately programmed the machine to miscount votes, in such a way that her opponent gains the edge. However her legal team informs her that decrypting the source code is a violation of the DMCA, and that public opinino of bringing disputed election results before the court is at an all-time low.
A recount by machine in the questionable districts produces the same results as before. Calls for a hand count of the ballots are dismissed, since machines are not subject to the bias of partisan politics.
This idea came from an article in The New Republic, http://www.tnr.com/120400/dugger120400.html
Slashdot Mirror
taking a newspaper article, cutting it out, posting it on a bulletin board
Single use. If you cut out the article and put it on the bulletin board, then you gave away your legally-obtained copy of the article, and you'll notice that it's not in your paper anymore. If you Xerox (TM diluted) the article and post in on the bulleting board, that's technically a no-no and that's what Free Republic does.
teacher taking an article out of a paper and bringing it to her class
Again, single use, and also that copywright laws make specific exceptions for academic uses. (This was one of the big challenges to the DMCA, that it violates "fair use" because you can't excerpt from a DVD without first DeCSS-ing it. Not getting it, the judge said "rent the VHS," apparently not realizing that much DVD content isn't on the VHS. But anyway...)
So why go after Free Republic? The "gather 'round the water cooler" analogy has a hard time reconciling:
1. There's only so much room on the bulletin board next to the water cooler. On the Internet, there are hardly such constraints. So the amount of "piracy" is potentially much greated
2. At the water cooler, the potential audience is your co-workers. On the Internet the potential audience is millions of people. So the damage from "piracy" is potentially millions of lost customers.
Interesting, I bet the courts will determine that it's okay to link to the article but not copy its contents. That's pretty much goes against what the courts decided in the 2600 case, where linking was the big no-no. I suppose there's a subtle legal difference depending what you're linking to: If it's "legit" content, you can put in the http: and if it's "circumvention device" then you can't.
On one point I agree, that the "digital age" makes all of these issues extremely unclear and will ultimately force a paradigm shift regarding copywright and IP. Like any revolution, it will take a while, and there will be plenty of resistance, esp. from the monied interests.
--I think I spelled copywright wrong.
Thank you for making the point that Jon Katz seems to be ambling towards.
Many people have responded to here writing that "look, on the Internet I found people I never would have met who share my interests in snow globes, therefore the Internet makes my personal community stronger."
WRONG. Where are your Internet friends when your car needs a jump? Will they call 911 when your house catches fire? Would they even recognize you on the street?
Of course there are exceptions to this, such as the couple who meets on line, falls in love, and marries in real life, but those are exceptions and not the rule. I have met face-to-face with a few people I've met online, and it didn't add any value to the relationship. In fact we don't talk at all anymore.
Saying that the friends you've met on the internet enriches your circle of friends/personal community is like counting your pen pal as a real friend. Again, there's the example of pen pals getting together in person, but that's the exception not the norm.
I am not arguing that Internet friends and communities are a Bad Thing and should be Avioded. Rather, one must recognize that true community, the kind where you know your neighbors and have spoken with your postal carrier, is an element of social capital which probably needs greater focus in your personal social portfolio.
This "obvious fact" ties into so many elements of society, I could go on and on. One observation is that social capital of this nature has no value in a capitalist society, and we have to call it "social capital" to even try to make it fit our current paradigm of value. As a consumer in a capitalist society, it doesn't really matter if you talk to your neighbors or not. In fact it's probably better if you pay AOL $20 a month so you can talk to your "friends," pay the cable company $70 a month so you can sit inside and watch movies, and so on. From a purely capitalist view, there is little if any ROI on time spent socializing. (Of course, if you choose to socialize at TGI Fridays, that's okay too. Just don't meet at the Public Library.)
In the real world, of course, any CEO will tell you that it's all about Networking (i.e. socializing) and that there is a definite ROI on social interaction. But you don't NEED to develop strong social bonds in order to be a consumer.
SirSlud brought up a great related point, which is that adversity and challenge is what makes us strong. I've heard this about antibacterial soap -- that doctors recommend you NOT let your children use antibacterial soap, since all those bacteria give the immune system something to fight. (Somewhat akin to when kids get Chicken Pox it's no big deal but an adult with Shingles is in for a rough time.) Similarly, think about your "formative" high school or junior high years. They probably sucked. But have you ever met someone who didn't have struggles and challenges growing up? They are usually pretty boring.
I had another point about how if America only loses a handful of troops to the enemy's thousands upon thousands, that doesn't really represent true adversity either, and it shouldn't really be described as a War if it's really just a slaughter conducted by the military. Somehow this ties in with our nation being fat, dumb, and happy. And we've got the strongest military on the planet. As a result, we're never forced to rationally and productively deal with world concerns because we can just ignore them (Kyoto, ABM, Land Mines) or bomb them (War on Terror, Iraq, Insert Country Name Here).
I recently bought Adobe Acrobat 5 for Windows, it cost $220. With slight apologies to DeBeers, I have to ask -- will the average Romanian spend two month's salary on a software package? (Far from lasting forever, it becomes obsolete every few years!)
To look at this issue another way, I recommend this article (Scientific American), if only for the sidebar which reads:
Adobe cannot realistically expect to fund the development of products for the third-world market from the revenue those products will generate. People will not buy too much software when each product costs as much as the average "knowledge worker's" annual salary.
On the other hand, an Indian software company, employing Indians, could afford to sell their product for far less than Adobe, since they can pay their developers much much less. Especially if it runs on a free operating system.
When that happens, and it won't be too long, I look forward to increasingly restrictive licensing agreements, huge tarriffs on software imported from third-world countries, and less functionality. As well as long lines at the unemployment office in Redmond. I think that this fear is largely responsible for recent trends such as Region Coding, the DMCA and the SSSCA, and the general rush to Protect American Business from the Threat of Illicit Ones and Zeros.
The game developers *won't* go after them, because it's not hurting sales.
That is not the issue! Did Napster hurt record sales? Probably not, many feel that it may have helped sales. The issue here is CONTROL. It's pretty evident that large publishers tend towards ever-increasing control of their copywritten works -- witness region-coding on DVDs, those new "un-rippable" audio CDs, and Microsoft Product Activation.
Speaking of Microsoft, I'll give a little prediction of what to expect in the game console market. Within a year Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft will file C&D letters with anyone who provides info on hardware mods or "unauthorized" devices for their consoles.
I would expect them to come out with their own GameShark-esque device, which of course isn't quite as robust as what's currently available. Then they will sue the pants off of anyone who tries to bring a similar product to market. Yes, it may hurt their product's overall sales, but they will take the hit in order to have more control of the marketspace. It sucks, but that's just the way things are now.
I ordered one of these nForce motherboards, from MSI. (It seems to be the only one vendors are actually offering.)
My philosophy when buying computers is to buy the cheapest new technology out there. The nForce motherboard is a steal at $189, you get GeForce2 graphics (~$60 value), a really nice audio chipset (~$90 value); those two things almost pay for the board right there. Sure, I would love to have the MB that scored 5% faster on the benchmarks, but to put together a similar system on a KT266A MB would cost at least $50 more.
I did get the Athlon XP 1600+ processor. It was literally $1 more than the 1500. I'll pay a buck for a five percent speed increase, but I won't pay fifty.
we just want our government to stop caring for other countries.
You say you want our government to stop caring for other countries. We do not "care for" other countries, we exploit them as best we can. Those millions we give in "foreign aid"; it's a bribe, it's a payoff, it's a way of ensuring their friendship because we give them money and they buy F-16s with it. Then they feel "protected" by the U.S. and we hope that, now that we've armed the bullies and have made it clear they are not to directly engage each other, they will maintain ORDER in the Middle East. Not democracy, not justice, just ORDER. Keep that oil comin' boys.
Let our citizens decide if they want to buy or trade with other countries, any countries.
I have no idea how, as a plebe citizen, I would initiate trade with other countries, aside from going to Pier 1 or something.
Stop giving money to other countries' governments, which only harbor war, and only help keep dictators in power.
But Dictatorships (like the Saudis) are nice and stable, and they get us our oil for cheap.
Bring all our troops home. Stop selling weapons to any other countries.
If we stop selling weapons to other countries, Boeing will go out of business. Not to mention the thousands of govt workers involved in foreign military sales. (I used to be one.)
Leave NATO and the UN.
The U.N was created by FDR to carry out U.S. foreign policy.
Recognize the scope of the problem you are facing: You are talking about a revolution! The Pentagon reduced to a skeleton staff, tens of thousands laid off at Boeing and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and so on.
The United States established its independence from the British with the help of the gun makers, and our government and arms merchants have been in bed together ever since. Asking us to "bring the boys home" is swimming upstream against hundreds of years of American tradition, from the Monroe Doctrine to Commodore Perry to Gunboat Diplomacy, to Korea and Desert Storm (not to mention the Trail of Tears, or Waco). We ARE a military-industrial complex, it's the underpinning of what America is. Look at our worlds-best military, that's what it means to be an American.
Someday, there may be people living here, actually participating in a free market, unchecked by government favoritism, but those people won't call themselves The United States of America.
(Arrogant caveat: I'm an American, so "our" means U.S.)
Without worldwide trade our country will crumble. Isolationism is simply not a realistic path. One of many factors that led us into the Great Depression of the 1930s was isolationist trade policies such as high tarriffs that blocked U.S. goods from European markets, and vice versa. I am not trying to be a WTO apologist here, I am simply explaining why isolationism is frivolous. Do you think GM, Boeing, etc. can survive if America becomes isolated? Of course not.
As for "fixing" the problems of the Middle East, consider that the West has militarized that region for the past half century, because WE *NEED* THE OIL TO SUSTAIN OUR ECONOMY.
We have chosen to pursue our interests in the Middle East by aligning ourselves with a racist/Zionist state (Israel) and a dictatorship/Kingdom (Saudi Arabia), our number one and number two benefactors in the Middle East. Meanwhile we hate those darned Iraqis, who hold almost as much oil as the Saudis. Ironic? Yes. A psychological gambit you'd pull on children? Yes. Do children throw temper tantrums when they perceive they're being treated unfairly? Yes!
We don't know if this stuff will go away, no matter how much we fight it, because we've been dumping gasoline on the fire for the past TEN YEARS with constant bombings of Iraq, Osama bin Laden, and so on.
Sometimes the BULLY (that's us) gets a punch to the face, a little bloody nose, and it shocks him for a second. That was today. How we react in the coming months will determine if we continue to be a bully or maybe we grow up a little bit. I'm expecting the former but hoping for the latter, and I vote.
That was a great speech. It was written by Peggy Noonan. I do remember that speech and I'm feeling today much like I did on Jan 28 1986. It's tough to tell right now, but I think this is worse than the Challenger disaster.
Bush will not be able to pull off a speech as good as Reagan's, regarless of who writes it. Reagan was a STAR HOLLYWOOD ACTOR, Bush was a BASEBALL TEAM OWNER. Do you really think someone in the same league as Marge Schottenheimer or George Steinbrenner can give a useful speech at a time like this?
But there is an important difference. In Red Russia, the Government would throw you in jail if you poase a threat the Govenrment. In America, the Government throws you in jajil if you pose a threat to a Corporation. Our New U.S. Flag makes it easier to understand.
That guy with the sig, the quote by the president of Visa, has got it right.
After reading this article, I'm wondering why I stayed up for four nights reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
In ten minutes this guy drops just as many names as Stephenson, and the -1 comments are just like the sex between the fat unix guy and America Shaftoe.
Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!
The phone company owns the wires that carry your conversations. So I guess they have the right to "listen in," since you're using their equipment?
It's not quite that bad, yet, but the courts have ruled the the phone company has the right to sell your phone records; i.e. who you call, how often, and so on. This got some coverage on EPIC , where somebody did their homework and linked to these articles on Wired, MSN, and The New York Times.
Back to the issue: The boss, who "owns your time," wants to make sure he's getting all he's paid for. What's next? No posting of Dibert cartoons on your cubicle, since your co-workers will waste precious man-hours chuckling? No newspapers in tne bathroom, since they tend to encourage extra-long bathroom breaks? No more decaf?
I'm not saying that companies should or shouldn't have an absolute right to record your phone calls, read all your email, and require you to be fingerprinted. I am saying that micro-managerial, reactive approaches to eliminating "wasted time" seldom work. Happy employees free to spend a few moments surfing the web or answering a personal email will be more productive than unhappy employees living in fear of a draconian computer use policy.
The winning car averaged 40 MPH during the race. maybe it didn't weigh two tons, or have xtra-large cupholders, but it's still pretty impressive for a "car" powered entirely by 8 square meters of solar cells.
The TRS-80 laptop with the "acoustic coupled" modem is the ultimate hacker tool. I saw a guy who had one of these at one of those hacker conventions. It fits in your back pack. The 7-11 has more batteries if you run out. You can hack from a phreaking pay phone. They will Never Catch You.
The downside of 300 baud is, while most probably can't type that fast with just two fingers, you can certainly read far faster than that thing spits letters across the screen. A 300 baud modem will take longer to download the ASCII art version of your favorite picture than your 56K modem will take to download the jpg.If you want to move your servers into an old NORAD facility, "Built to withstand a 10-megaton strike within ¼ mile of the facility ...," then HostPro can accomodate your colocation needs.
Here at Two Party Systems, we make voting machines. We manufacture the hardware which counts ballots, and the software which tells the machines how to count those ballots. The software is tailored for each electoral district using our product. This software is encrypted before it leaves our factory and is decrypted inside the voting machines, where it is run.
A candidate thinks she lost the election because of some suspicious results coming from one precinct. She would like to scrutinize the code of the vote counting program. In doing so she would discover that an unscrupulous employee from Two Party Systems has deliberately programmed the machine to miscount votes, in such a way that her opponent gains the edge. However her legal team informs her that decrypting the source code is a violation of the DMCA, and that public opinino of bringing disputed election results before the court is at an all-time low.A recount by machine in the questionable districts produces the same results as before. Calls for a hand count of the ballots are dismissed, since machines are not subject to the bias of partisan politics.
This idea came from an article in The New Republic, http://www.tnr.com/120400/dugger120400.html