both sides of an argument without any bias or ridiculing the opposing side
Well thanks. I didn't push any bias because I'm not sure what the solution is. Also, it helps to know the popular arguments on the subjects one is interested in. On one hand, I see communism as a terrible thing and I prefer to boycot it on principle. However, looking at N. Korea and Cuba - we haven't exactly ended their regimes. And now N. Korea has nuclear weapons (maybe) but probably not much of a delivery system to threaten us.
If we had been trading with them, would they have been able to buy more sophisticated systems? China has advanced weapons - I'm not sure if their delivery systems can reach the entire continental US, but I'm sure it can reach the west coast. They are also adapting their government to move towards capitalism. Lots of conflicting sides, and I just don't have an answer. However, as a Libertarian I can say this: it's not the government's job to regulate who we trade with (see: most favored nation status - which is now known as something else.)
said we were helping the same Communist government that gave us Tianamen Square and would continue to repress the Chinese people using this technology
Some people argue we shouldn't trade with china, because it assists them in government repression. Others say we should trade with them, because they will then see how good western capitalist culture is and have to change. See also: Cuba, N. Korea.
They made money off copyright infringement. Granted it was indirect, but it was still making money by facilitating large amounts of copyright infringement.
Cadillac makes lots of money indirectly off of the illegal drug trade. Should they be shutdown as a company, or should the individual drug dealers be prosecuted?
I'm sure we remember when everyone said the RIAA will never really start going after individuals
They wouldn't be if these individuals were fighting the charges (it's tough to argue hundreds of cases accross the country simultaneously.) Incidently, individuals are exactly what the RIAA should have been going after all along (P2P doesn't copyright infringe, people do.)
Actually, what is needed is a clarification of existing computer-cracking law to the effect that any identifiable attempt to circumvent spam filtering is an illegal intrusion just like any other attempt to get into somebody else's computer without permission.
If you're running an SMTP server open to receive mail, you probably want people to send mail to you - which means you are giving them permission to access your system. If you're not running the server, someone is - and they want people to access their system (for the purposes of sending e-mail.)
This is the same concept as leaving telnet and the guest account avliable or anon ftp: clearly, you want random people to access your system (or at least you didn't take any effort to prvent them from doing such). However, I have heard of cases of people being prosecuted for doing just that. I've also heard of cases that if a banner says "welcome" at all this somehow makes it a public system and open to attack (after all, the owner is welcomming you onto the system!)
We don't need new laws - we need better technology. SMTP is admittedly broken. There are ways to fix it.
Government workers (of which law enforcement officers are) aren't known for being industrious
and (my least favourite) meetings
On TV they always have a meeting every mroning before they go out to bust people. But that's tv for you I guess.
I'll take having to clock 8 hours a day in a chat room
I think investigations involve odd and extended hours to catch bad guys.
Now where do I apply for a job like that?
Here if you're in the US - don't forget they polygraph and urinalize. I'm sure police forces accross the country need computer savvy people. Job market slow? Work for the government!
How these people propose to fund the building of the roads that they will march on in protest is unclear
The same way roads were funded up until 1913 (when Amendment XVI was passed allowing an income tax) - excise taxes, tariffs, and salex taxes. Roads of course should be funded by states, and not all states have an income tax - mine only (with a few exceptions) has a sales tax, which is the whole point of these laws.
Their whole argument is that Amendment XVI wasn't passed legitimately. I don't think the courts let them off tho (even if they are sporting the fanciest new tin foil hat.)
US law applies to Americans and those who commit offenses within America. Unless the USA *is* the world, I object to it thinking it may police the world.
Every country has a right to defend itself. Part of an effective national defense is to monitor potential attackers and discover their identities and plans before they are carried out. Thus, we actively spy on the rest of the world to keep our country safe. Every country does the same and that's life.
That said, police are mainly historians. They go to crime scenes, piece together evidence, and figure out what happened after the fact. That's all well and good, but I would much rather be proactive with threats to the nation and our people and stop attacks before they happen than be "investigators" sifting through dead bodies.
How many of the sons and daughters of current politicians serve in the military?
George H.W. Bush served in the national guard (his father was director of the CIA and later president). Al Gore Jr served in vietnam (his father was a US senator.) John McCain spent a lont time in the Hanoi Hilton (his father was an admiral). That's just off the top of my head in recent memory.
Given the many lives at stake, the only people even possibly qualified to make grave decisions about going to war, of authorizing people to kill and to risk being killed, are those that have experienced those same horrors firsthand.
In the chain of command in the united states, the top two people are civillians: the President and the Secretary of the Department of Defense. The top people in each service are civillians: Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of the Army, etc. These people manage the top military brass: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the command staff, etc.
The system works best, in what i've seen, in the following way: the top policy makers should set priorities and schedules (as in: go as soon as you're ready, just standby, don't go - the world changed) based on information avliable from national security sources. The top military men should plan the actions and carry them out appropriately. Two examples of each:
Vietnam: policy makers decided we had to stop communism. But we couldn't be too mean, so they told the top brass how to fight the war. As a result, it was a giant clusterfuck that we didn't win because the policy makers wouldn't let us win. Failure for everyone.
Somolia: policy makers decide we must take out Adid (he's a bad man.) Command at the base requests armor to get the job done - policy makers decide that would be too mean - light armor only. Our elite troops sit around for a month and a half chasing wild geese until finally they roll out - everyone is under prepared, and they don't have armor to back them up. They come back, minus a few men (one dragged through the streets) and a few with bullet holes in them, but they're still ready to carry out their mission. Policy makers decide it isn't worth the media hit (american boys dragged through the streets in Mogisomethingoranother, newws at 11) and pull the troops out. We lost men for something that wasn't worth doing: everyone loses.
Operation Desert Storm (Gulf War I): policy makers decide we must liberate our friend Kuwait from a crazed dictator (keep in mind exactly what the objective is). They go to the joint chiefs and tell them what the goal is. The joint chiefs go to work, plan an extrodinary attack (including using 6 (i believe) SEALS (to keep this on topic) to divert a whole Iraqi division - oustanding) and liberate kuwait. Less than a week later, we have acheived what we wanted - Iraq out of Kuwait. Success accross the board - everyone's happy. Note, the policy makers did not dictate how the action would go - only that it was required and they supplied what the military asked for.
Operation Iraqi Freedom (Gulf War II): policy makers decide the Hussein regime must be taken down. Military planners planned a overly successful attack plan (from boarder to Baghdad in days). Objective complete - the policy makers didn't interfere.
Thus: civillians set priorities (based on avliable information), military men acheive them.
Hotmail was started for the same reason every other web-based free email system was started, and in fact why every other Internet-based business (with the exception of Amazon) was started way back when...because people still thought the advertisement-driven model of Internet-based businesses was tenable.
Porn. It isn't advertising based and has been hugely profitable for a long time on the Internet. In fact, I remember it being the only profitable Internet industry (save ISPs) a few years back.
You can't get rid of the voice actors without killing a part of your show. [...] It's not greedy to ask more money if you deserve it.
If the supply of an acceptable voice is only 1 and the demand is infinate the cost of that voice is going to be very high. Essentially, it's a monopoly (which you call blackmail) for the voices.
Fox has options: they can pay what the voice actors want (which will lower profits, but keep the show at the same quality and retain viewers) or not pay what the voice actors want and either lose actors or find out the voice actors were bluffing (if no one defects there's no loss for Fox, if some defect the show becomes lower quality and they could lose viewers, if everyone defects they could have no show and have 0 viewers). It's a buisness decision - do they make more money with no show or by paying actors the demanded wages?
Wasn't there some discussion about provisions in the CAN-SPAM act to exempt "informative" political messages?
This is something I don't get about the/. crowd and my peers in general. Many desire for the government to solve all social problems, be it feeding and educating our children to funding and regulating all political campaigns (all four are policies that can be found in Europe.) With all of this comes more power for the government - yet that seems to be acceptable...
Until the government decides to do something they don't like, such as allowing political spam (or the DMCA or PATRIOT.) What do people think those giving themselves power (the government) want to do with it?
shout WANKERS! (or whatever you brits say) when something breaks (and believe me, it will) and you have to get it serviced, but you aren't at whatever address you told them to ship it to.
PS: I bought a dell laptop and hated, with passion, every second of it. I would absolutly advise against it.
The DoD is not a major segment of the Internet that end-users or businesses see or care about.
But a significant ammount of DoD traffic is sent over the public internet, which must be a large ammount of data. This data is sent via backbone providers (which are buisnesses). These providers would have to support to IPv6 to interface with DoD systems in the future. This will serve to push IPv6 to wider adoption with connected backbones and out to end users (other buisnesses or individuals.) It's a cascade effect, all because it's often cheaper for DoD to send traffic over the public internet than use their own private networks.
I stand by my statement: citizens (which every military, law enforcement, elected, and appointed person is) have uses for fully automatic weapons. The government is not a super class of people, they make mistakes and have lapses in control just like everyone else. They should not have a monopoly on defense.
Japan also rolled out 3G wireless before everyone else. Have we incorporated as much as Japan? [...] But only because they don't have all of the infrastructure flaws other countries do.
Japan is also much more densly populated, so it's more cost effective to roll out advanced wireless products there. If by "infrastructure flaws" you mean the ability to make an upgrade in a smaller area to benefit more customers, then yes Japan has fewer of those. They also have a state run telephone network that is increadibly expensive - not exactly a desirable infrastructure.
I have never heard anyone explain why a private citizen needs to own a fully automatic assault rifle
The same reason the military needs them: defense. The military and police forces are not some super human tribe of people, they are regular old folks just like you and me. There is nothing special about a soldier or a police officer that makes him/her more qualified to handle weapons. That said, an "assault weapon" can be used to engage multiple targets as required for the situation (quotes because what is an assault weapon anyway?).
The government should not restrict the rights of citizens to own as many flintlock muskets as they want.
Does that mean the First Amendment should only apply to printing presses and screaming (not telecommunications)? What about celebrating Kwanzaa, that wasn't invented until 1966 (far after the First was ratified.)
I'm currently doing my undergrad in computer science, but I would like to go into law. Can you talk about some fields in law that relate to computers? Also, can you name some schools that have good programs in these fields?
I was attempting to quote from memory a report I saw on Fox News earlier in the week about homeownership. It seems to me whoever it was must have said that ownership was close to 70% (as opposed to 80% which I posted earlier.) I apologize for my error, and hope this clears it up.
This new ability to crank out more and bigger houses for less money makes it possible for a lot of people to buy houses, but it doesn't say that much about economic policy in general.
Well the grandparent was referring to the american dream. Our economy is strong, the best in the world. England's economy was outstanding in the 1850s when the luddites started freaking out because the power loom was invented. Sure, they got put out of work. But the country improved. Same will happen to us, provided we can innovate sufficiently.
Slashdot Mirror
If we had been trading with them, would they have been able to buy more sophisticated systems? China has advanced weapons - I'm not sure if their delivery systems can reach the entire continental US, but I'm sure it can reach the west coast. They are also adapting their government to move towards capitalism. Lots of conflicting sides, and I just don't have an answer. However, as a Libertarian I can say this: it's not the government's job to regulate who we trade with (see: most favored nation status - which is now known as something else.)
The event horizon of telephony perhaps?
This is the same concept as leaving telnet and the guest account avliable or anon ftp: clearly, you want random people to access your system (or at least you didn't take any effort to prvent them from doing such). However, I have heard of cases of people being prosecuted for doing just that. I've also heard of cases that if a banner says "welcome" at all this somehow makes it a public system and open to attack (after all, the owner is welcomming you onto the system!)
We don't need new laws - we need better technology. SMTP is admittedly broken. There are ways to fix it.
That said, police are mainly historians. They go to crime scenes, piece together evidence, and figure out what happened after the fact. That's all well and good, but I would much rather be proactive with threats to the nation and our people and stop attacks before they happen than be "investigators" sifting through dead bodies.
The system works best, in what i've seen, in the following way: the top policy makers should set priorities and schedules (as in: go as soon as you're ready, just standby, don't go - the world changed) based on information avliable from national security sources. The top military men should plan the actions and carry them out appropriately. Two examples of each:
Vietnam: policy makers decided we had to stop communism. But we couldn't be too mean, so they told the top brass how to fight the war. As a result, it was a giant clusterfuck that we didn't win because the policy makers wouldn't let us win. Failure for everyone.
Somolia: policy makers decide we must take out Adid (he's a bad man.) Command at the base requests armor to get the job done - policy makers decide that would be too mean - light armor only. Our elite troops sit around for a month and a half chasing wild geese until finally they roll out - everyone is under prepared, and they don't have armor to back them up. They come back, minus a few men (one dragged through the streets) and a few with bullet holes in them, but they're still ready to carry out their mission. Policy makers decide it isn't worth the media hit (american boys dragged through the streets in Mogisomethingoranother, newws at 11) and pull the troops out. We lost men for something that wasn't worth doing: everyone loses.
Operation Desert Storm (Gulf War I): policy makers decide we must liberate our friend Kuwait from a crazed dictator (keep in mind exactly what the objective is). They go to the joint chiefs and tell them what the goal is. The joint chiefs go to work, plan an extrodinary attack (including using 6 (i believe) SEALS (to keep this on topic) to divert a whole Iraqi division - oustanding) and liberate kuwait. Less than a week later, we have acheived what we wanted - Iraq out of Kuwait. Success accross the board - everyone's happy. Note, the policy makers did not dictate how the action would go - only that it was required and they supplied what the military asked for.
Operation Iraqi Freedom (Gulf War II): policy makers decide the Hussein regime must be taken down. Military planners planned a overly successful attack plan (from boarder to Baghdad in days). Objective complete - the policy makers didn't interfere.
Thus: civillians set priorities (based on avliable information), military men acheive them.
Fox has options: they can pay what the voice actors want (which will lower profits, but keep the show at the same quality and retain viewers) or not pay what the voice actors want and either lose actors or find out the voice actors were bluffing (if no one defects there's no loss for Fox, if some defect the show becomes lower quality and they could lose viewers, if everyone defects they could have no show and have 0 viewers). It's a buisness decision - do they make more money with no show or by paying actors the demanded wages?
Until the government decides to do something they don't like, such as allowing political spam (or the DMCA or PATRIOT.) What do people think those giving themselves power (the government) want to do with it?
Step 7:
shout WANKERS! (or whatever you brits say) when something breaks (and believe me, it will) and you have to get it serviced, but you aren't at whatever address you told them to ship it to.
PS: I bought a dell laptop and hated, with passion, every second of it. I would absolutly advise against it.
I stand by my statement: citizens (which every military, law enforcement, elected, and appointed person is) have uses for fully automatic weapons. The government is not a super class of people, they make mistakes and have lapses in control just like everyone else. They should not have a monopoly on defense.
I'm currently doing my undergrad in computer science, but I would like to go into law. Can you talk about some fields in law that relate to computers? Also, can you name some schools that have good programs in these fields?
I was attempting to quote from memory a report I saw on Fox News earlier in the week about homeownership. It seems to me whoever it was must have said that ownership was close to 70% (as opposed to 80% which I posted earlier.) I apologize for my error, and hope this clears it up.