Even if Biden has a track record of voting against freedom or privacy, your argument is still an appeal to fear. Biden, if Obama is elected, will be bound to the policy of the President. Whether that is good or bad for civil liberties and constitutional rights is still anyone's guess, but given McCain's stated policies, IMO a better guess than going with the GOP ticket.
And yes, voting third party is an option. You just have to convince the rest of the electorate to do so.
Congress: How about we get started with an investigation by your Justice Department? Mukasey: I'm afraid we're fresh out of investigations, sir. Congress: No matter, well then a special prosecutor, if you please. Mukasey: Ordinarily, sir, yes. This term, we can't get Ken Starr.... Congress: A hearing, perhaps? Mukasey: Ah, we can do a hearing! Congress: Excellent! Mukasey: Yes, um... the officials are a bit "runny". Congress: Oh, I like them runny. Mukasey:... Actually, they're very runny, sir. Congress: No matter, fetch hither the officials for me to grill! Mukasey: I think they're runnier than you'd like, sir. Congress: I don't care how fucking runny they are, bring them to me with all speed. Mukasey: OH!!... Congress:... What now? Mukasey: The cat's eaten them. Congress:...... Has he? Mukasey: She, sir.
(It would be much funnier if it weren't actually resembling reality...)
Develop a thug caste: Not yet, I think so at least.
Oh, they're way ahead of you.
Suppose you're an immigrant who has applied for permanent residency through your spouse (an American citizen). It's a long, grueling process that requires mucho paperworko and at least a couple of years to process and analyze the applicant, with enough draconian rules to make an eary 20th-century Ellis Island official blanch. Because, you know, we gotta make sure that them immigrants ain't terr'rists, nevermind that real terrorists would no longer use official routes, nor necessarily be foreign nationals.
Now, suppose your spouse dies in a car accident. Common sense would allow some time for you to grieve over your loss and maybe find some way for you to stay or pursue citizenship.
Under the Bush administration, they give you a notice to get out of the country ASAP. Now, the more legalistic among us would agree with the government on this one: their rationale for staying was just taken away from them, so their application may be rendered void. But it becomes complicated if you managed to have children by this time. Okay, says the Bush administration immigration officials, the kids can stay 'cause they're citizens, but you're leaving. Bullshit! you say and hire a lawyer. After a long, protracted process where the government plays all the dirty tricks that SCO and the various RIAA member companies played, the judge becomes pissed and orders the government to allow you to stay and finish the application. Victory?
Nope, there was a law signed ca. 2004 that gives the DHS and immigration expanded powers, to wit: they can kick you out for any reason, without recourse or appeal, or even an explanation. They legislated in a trump-card because they don't want to follow the law.
And that's just the lawyers and USCIS officials. Should we honestly expect the DEA, ATF, CIA, FBI, Secret Service, US Marshals, or the military to be free from political corruption, given it was this easy for the government to destroy someone's hopes, then spit and piss on them on the way out?
The problem that it's apparently trying to solve is that an ATM manufacturer executive is a good friend of politicians (or is a politician himself) and wants the government to buy some shit from his company. The politicians he's affiliated with wants some way to prevent the "liberals" from taking their power, revolving door, and money streams away from them*. Any American over the age of 25 might recall the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ad by now: "Your voting machines can mess with vote counts!" "Your voters are like raccoons and like shiny objects!" "... Hey..."
Being the pro-capitalist country we are, we don't review government contracts with American companies, and so the electoral process is vulnerable to scams like Diebold/PES.
* Yes, the Democrats are just as corrupt, but that's rather beside the point in Ohio.
... both made "Knight-Ridder" look like "Knight Rider", and I thought they were beaming electronic messages to modified black Trans Ams. The thing that makes reality even stranger is that the show was airing in the same time period.
Okay, put down the pitchfork. I'm getting off your lawn.
Wasn't there a small incident within a couple of years ago, when bloggers were given a "sort-of" pass and were essentially treated as second-class journalists (You may only come up to this line, unless you shelled out for the full press pass)?
Probably information poisoning from digg, but given how some journalists and politicians view bloggers...
Any sane company would refrain from the act in question, in order to prevent more evidence from being used against them in criminal court, and possibly civil court.
Of course, this is RIAA's member companies and Media Sentry we're talking about. The only difference between these guys and the mob is that they have sanctioned lobbyists in Washington and abroad. Either that, or they've fooled all the politicians into thinking that they (the executives, not the artists, lyricists, arrangers, composers, etc.) are a sacred industry to be protected.
I should really concentrate on the small victories in IP law to keep myself from turning into a bad Lewis Black impersonation, like Jack Thompson getting the hammer from the Florida Bar, the Thomas ruling in reconsideration, Andersen getting a major win and clearance to pursue a countersuit, SCO literally on life support after an Enron-esque scam by Darl McBride.
Now if the backward dolts in Washington would repeal the inane Sonny Bono Act, drop Pro-IP and its House counterpart, and revise the DMCA*...
* It was misused often, but some important provisions are a part of the bill, like the counter-takedown notice and definitions of safe harbor for ISPs.
The Republicans, at least, are using the blogs as an opportunity to spread their neoconservatism farther than Rush Limbaugh could ever dream of doing with radio.
That's going to be hit with an injunction faster than you can say, "trademark infringement".
I wonder where AMD is aiming their marketing, if they are marketing at all-- perhaps they can no longer afford to spend the big bucks there? A conventional approach won't work because Intel will simply outspend them. They can't demo their latest and greatest against Penryn and Nehalem, because they're now being outperformed. They'll have to throw everything behind their hybrid GPU/CPU R&D effort, and they're in the best position to streamline the datapath between the CPU and GPU.
The story in the market that AMD has great technology, but is led by managers who don't have much to work with financially. Turning that around will be incredibly hard, but I've seen bigger companies cut down to size and smaller companies thrive with less resources.
A possible hidden angle: it might not be for the kids, but for the parents, teachers, local politicians, and school administrators-- those who can use their power to stop kids. The sad thing is, many of the poorly-informed and/or outright bought members of this group will simply take the judges' association at their word. Heck, a good number of the well-informed and honest will have doubts when they read this crap, and will steer the kids away "just in case".
... because now they won't be able to afford their 10th Lear jet or 4th luxury sports car or huge mansion because people are waking up and realizing that this is BS.
The artists that did this early in their careers are either selling those things, or are so indebted financially to their labels that they will retire in utter poverty. Do you honestly think that the majority (let alone all) of the artists in the major labels keep enough revenue to support such lifestyles?
"Pot is okay in moderation, but heroin is really, really bad"
Do you know why they never said this? Because the local PTA, every parent's group in the country, the DEA, and the FBI would've been all over them. Any national campaign will be forced to lie at some point or another, because they would otherwise be shut down by political, legal, or financial pressure.
Now mp3s actually have a good chance of surviving the parents' wrath-- just equate it to the cassette tape "rips" that your parents doubtless made of radio and LPs, and even CDs (in their infancy). The recording industry put up a token fight about it initially, but it's a recognized example of the fair use concept. The only thing that can't be compared to cassettes is the ease of transmission to unknown third parties; perhaps file sharers should focus first on building a community for swapping favorite music, so the emphasis is "Hey, listen to this, friend!" rather than "Free music for download!" Both expand the artists' audience, but the latter gets the stiffs in the labels all worked up even more.
Here's Bob Cringely's take on the comics. Although his futurisms tend to be disproved with time, he does have insight when it comes to the present:
The Recording Industry Association of America probably sees itself as a band of caped crusaders fighting for truth, justice and the American way. (And in this case, "American Way" translates into propping up a dying cartel seeking to squeeze as many pennies out of consumers as possible before they sink into the ooze.)
Probably a fitting description of that cartel if there was any.
The second set of comics by the NCSC deals with another topic that's touchy with libertarians: eminent domain. You know, the concept where the government can ignore the idea that your property is yours and simply take it because they're sovereign (and, most likely, because you're a convicted felon)?
It's both interesting and disturbing that "several legal scholars" would green-light a publication that depicts file-sharing as criminal infringement. Notice also that a known conservative ad agency wrote the thing, and we all know how the so-called media "conservatives" love corporations. How dare the students steal stuff from the defenseless record companies. We oughta lock them up with the murderers and rapists and destroy their lives before they realize that they should've been tried in civil court.
This isn't "education". It's right-wing media propaganda.
Because, as always, Washington values the flow of money to companies or themselves more than the 4th and 5th amendments that restrict their desire to lock someone up for any reason. The RIAA member companies are effectively acting as proxies for those who want to use intimidation and arbitrary law, because as long as they use their overbroad definition of infringement, they will continue to set precedent that can be used in criminal trials.
Of course, the federal courts are catching on, and the wiser judges are standing up to the multibillion-dollar bully industry. The root cause of many of the abuses of citizens' rights is the ability for bullies and sociopaths to "get things done". As admirable as being punctual is, I think Americans have comparatively devalued those who take their time and try to get things done well, which is why there are people like Steve Jobs at top levels of the corporate world and many American governments.
What competitors? Comcast either owns all the coax already or will buy out the rest of the competition there. Fibre/DSL is split between Verizon and AT&T, and they rent out the lines to so-called 3rd party ISPs.
Capitalism of the sort you're talking about only works when there are more than 2 choices for high-speed internet. At the moment, there are only 2: Cable (rapidly eaten by Comcast/Time Warner), and Telecom (rapidly eaten by AT&T). One is crummy, the other is worse. You decide which.
FiOS? Excuse me while I die laughing. AT&T and Comcast wouldn't let them near their customers.
but ignore the real world, lets worry about the Bush Dynasty and it's heinous attempts at holding a free election in Iraq.
Quit tossing out red herrings/false dilemmas. We want Bush, Cheney, and the entire White House from 2000 to 2008 to have their day in court for dragging us into a hugely distracting war with repeated lies and manufactured intelligence. We also want the US to hunt down al Qaeda and stop the Iranians and radical Islamists, who would love nothing more than see the Israelis and Americans reduced to radioactive dust, from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Now if they'll come up with non-human judging for extremely subjective events like gymnastics, artistic skating, or diving, we'd be in business. These two events are dominated by the whim of the judges and their respective federations, so even if a professional or most of the audience objectively thinks one routine is better than another, that can be overridden by a judge or a director on a power trip.
An example is a FIBA secretary general changing the outcome of a close basketball game against the rules in Munich. Granted, the referees and scorekeepers really destroyed any semblance of fairness in the gold metal match, but if he was interested in a fair match, he shouldn't have done it when the appeals board was dominated by pro-Soviet countries. There was a big enough stink about it (the USA refused the silver medals) that FIBA instated better rules and procedures. If the FIG had any desire to make sure the judges rule fairly, they should have permitted more challenges of scores from coaches with high-speed camera replays from several angles, rather than including a "difficulty bonus" score. That way the judges really have to answer to the eyes of the world, rather than behave in the dickish "I'm right and there's nothing you can do about it" attitude.
Or give all the judges LSD prior to events. I don't know.
If you want to be rubbing for a few minutes (a few hours if you're like me and the Mythbusters build team and suck at generating the requisite friction), sure. For a faster light, I'd go with flint (glass) and steel, a convex lens, or even better, firesteel.
It was probably the blog post praising Groklaw featured here on Slashdot and a general lack of sleep, but I read this story's title as "Microsoft to Buy $100M More SCO Support Vouchers".
Eh, I'll blame China, the IOC, and NBC for not running the Olympics at a time slot that's further away from midnight.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if Biden has a track record of voting against freedom or privacy, your argument is still an appeal to fear. Biden, if Obama is elected, will be bound to the policy of the President. Whether that is good or bad for civil liberties and constitutional rights is still anyone's guess, but given McCain's stated policies, IMO a better guess than going with the GOP ticket.
And yes, voting third party is an option. You just have to convince the rest of the electorate to do so.
The federal government wants not only to catch crime before it happens (0.001%), but they want to contain political opposition in any and all forms.
Congress: How about we get started with an investigation by your Justice Department? ... ... Actually, they're very runny, sir. ... What now? ... ... Has he?
Mukasey: I'm afraid we're fresh out of investigations, sir.
Congress: No matter, well then a special prosecutor, if you please.
Mukasey: Ordinarily, sir, yes. This term, we can't get Ken Starr.
Congress: A hearing, perhaps?
Mukasey: Ah, we can do a hearing!
Congress: Excellent!
Mukasey: Yes, um... the officials are a bit "runny".
Congress: Oh, I like them runny.
Mukasey:
Congress: No matter, fetch hither the officials for me to grill!
Mukasey: I think they're runnier than you'd like, sir.
Congress: I don't care how fucking runny they are, bring them to me with all speed.
Mukasey: OH!!...
Congress:
Mukasey: The cat's eaten them.
Congress:
Mukasey: She, sir.
(It would be much funnier if it weren't actually resembling reality...)
Oh, they're way ahead of you.
Suppose you're an immigrant who has applied for permanent residency through your spouse (an American citizen). It's a long, grueling process that requires mucho paperworko and at least a couple of years to process and analyze the applicant, with enough draconian rules to make an eary 20th-century Ellis Island official blanch. Because, you know, we gotta make sure that them immigrants ain't terr'rists, nevermind that real terrorists would no longer use official routes, nor necessarily be foreign nationals.
Now, suppose your spouse dies in a car accident. Common sense would allow some time for you to grieve over your loss and maybe find some way for you to stay or pursue citizenship.
Under the Bush administration, they give you a notice to get out of the country ASAP. Now, the more legalistic among us would agree with the government on this one: their rationale for staying was just taken away from them, so their application may be rendered void. But it becomes complicated if you managed to have children by this time. Okay, says the Bush administration immigration officials, the kids can stay 'cause they're citizens, but you're leaving. Bullshit! you say and hire a lawyer. After a long, protracted process where the government plays all the dirty tricks that SCO and the various RIAA member companies played, the judge becomes pissed and orders the government to allow you to stay and finish the application. Victory?
Nope, there was a law signed ca. 2004 that gives the DHS and immigration expanded powers, to wit: they can kick you out for any reason, without recourse or appeal, or even an explanation. They legislated in a trump-card because they don't want to follow the law.
And that's just the lawyers and USCIS officials. Should we honestly expect the DEA, ATF, CIA, FBI, Secret Service, US Marshals, or the military to be free from political corruption, given it was this easy for the government to destroy someone's hopes, then spit and piss on them on the way out?
Reference: "The Audacity of Government".
The problem that it's apparently trying to solve is that an ATM manufacturer executive is a good friend of politicians (or is a politician himself) and wants the government to buy some shit from his company. The politicians he's affiliated with wants some way to prevent the "liberals" from taking their power, revolving door, and money streams away from them*. Any American over the age of 25 might recall the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ad by now: "Your voting machines can mess with vote counts!" "Your voters are like raccoons and like shiny objects!" "... Hey..."
Being the pro-capitalist country we are, we don't review government contracts with American companies, and so the electoral process is vulnerable to scams like Diebold/PES.
* Yes, the Democrats are just as corrupt, but that's rather beside the point in Ohio.
... both made "Knight-Ridder" look like "Knight Rider", and I thought they were beaming electronic messages to modified black Trans Ams. The thing that makes reality even stranger is that the show was airing in the same time period.
Okay, put down the pitchfork. I'm getting off your lawn.
Wasn't there a small incident within a couple of years ago, when bloggers were given a "sort-of" pass and were essentially treated as second-class journalists (You may only come up to this line, unless you shelled out for the full press pass)?
Probably information poisoning from digg, but given how some journalists and politicians view bloggers...
Any sane company would refrain from the act in question, in order to prevent more evidence from being used against them in criminal court, and possibly civil court.
Of course, this is RIAA's member companies and Media Sentry we're talking about. The only difference between these guys and the mob is that they have sanctioned lobbyists in Washington and abroad. Either that, or they've fooled all the politicians into thinking that they (the executives, not the artists, lyricists, arrangers, composers, etc.) are a sacred industry to be protected.
I should really concentrate on the small victories in IP law to keep myself from turning into a bad Lewis Black impersonation, like Jack Thompson getting the hammer from the Florida Bar, the Thomas ruling in reconsideration, Andersen getting a major win and clearance to pursue a countersuit, SCO literally on life support after an Enron-esque scam by Darl McBride.
Now if the backward dolts in Washington would repeal the inane Sonny Bono Act, drop Pro-IP and its House counterpart, and revise the DMCA*...
* It was misused often, but some important provisions are a part of the bill, like the counter-takedown notice and definitions of safe harbor for ISPs.
The Republicans, at least, are using the blogs as an opportunity to spread their neoconservatism farther than Rush Limbaugh could ever dream of doing with radio.
That's going to be hit with an injunction faster than you can say, "trademark infringement".
I wonder where AMD is aiming their marketing, if they are marketing at all-- perhaps they can no longer afford to spend the big bucks there? A conventional approach won't work because Intel will simply outspend them. They can't demo their latest and greatest against Penryn and Nehalem, because they're now being outperformed. They'll have to throw everything behind their hybrid GPU/CPU R&D effort, and they're in the best position to streamline the datapath between the CPU and GPU.
The story in the market that AMD has great technology, but is led by managers who don't have much to work with financially. Turning that around will be incredibly hard, but I've seen bigger companies cut down to size and smaller companies thrive with less resources.
A possible hidden angle: it might not be for the kids, but for the parents, teachers, local politicians, and school administrators-- those who can use their power to stop kids. The sad thing is, many of the poorly-informed and/or outright bought members of this group will simply take the judges' association at their word. Heck, a good number of the well-informed and honest will have doubts when they read this crap, and will steer the kids away "just in case".
... because now they won't be able to afford their 10th Lear jet or 4th luxury sports car or huge mansion because people are waking up and realizing that this is BS.
The artists that did this early in their careers are either selling those things, or are so indebted financially to their labels that they will retire in utter poverty. Do you honestly think that the majority (let alone all) of the artists in the major labels keep enough revenue to support such lifestyles?
"Pot is okay in moderation, but heroin is really, really bad"
Do you know why they never said this? Because the local PTA, every parent's group in the country, the DEA, and the FBI would've been all over them. Any national campaign will be forced to lie at some point or another, because they would otherwise be shut down by political, legal, or financial pressure.
Now mp3s actually have a good chance of surviving the parents' wrath-- just equate it to the cassette tape "rips" that your parents doubtless made of radio and LPs, and even CDs (in their infancy). The recording industry put up a token fight about it initially, but it's a recognized example of the fair use concept. The only thing that can't be compared to cassettes is the ease of transmission to unknown third parties; perhaps file sharers should focus first on building a community for swapping favorite music, so the emphasis is "Hey, listen to this, friend!" rather than "Free music for download!" Both expand the artists' audience, but the latter gets the stiffs in the labels all worked up even more.
Here's Bob Cringely's take on the comics. Although his futurisms tend to be disproved with time, he does have insight when it comes to the present:
Probably a fitting description of that cartel if there was any.
The second set of comics by the NCSC deals with another topic that's touchy with libertarians: eminent domain. You know, the concept where the government can ignore the idea that your property is yours and simply take it because they're sovereign (and, most likely, because you're a convicted felon)?
It's both interesting and disturbing that "several legal scholars" would green-light a publication that depicts file-sharing as criminal infringement. Notice also that a known conservative ad agency wrote the thing, and we all know how the so-called media "conservatives" love corporations. How dare the students steal stuff from the defenseless record companies. We oughta lock them up with the murderers and rapists and destroy their lives before they realize that they should've been tried in civil court.
This isn't "education". It's right-wing media propaganda.
Because, as always, Washington values the flow of money to companies or themselves more than the 4th and 5th amendments that restrict their desire to lock someone up for any reason. The RIAA member companies are effectively acting as proxies for those who want to use intimidation and arbitrary law, because as long as they use their overbroad definition of infringement, they will continue to set precedent that can be used in criminal trials.
Of course, the federal courts are catching on, and the wiser judges are standing up to the multibillion-dollar bully industry. The root cause of many of the abuses of citizens' rights is the ability for bullies and sociopaths to "get things done". As admirable as being punctual is, I think Americans have comparatively devalued those who take their time and try to get things done well, which is why there are people like Steve Jobs at top levels of the corporate world and many American governments.
Bah! I knew you were a fraud, since your name isn't Bruce.
Tell that to the Gardners, AKA the Motley Fool.
What competitors? Comcast either owns all the coax already or will buy out the rest of the competition there. Fibre/DSL is split between Verizon and AT&T, and they rent out the lines to so-called 3rd party ISPs.
Capitalism of the sort you're talking about only works when there are more than 2 choices for high-speed internet. At the moment, there are only 2: Cable (rapidly eaten by Comcast/Time Warner), and Telecom (rapidly eaten by AT&T). One is crummy, the other is worse. You decide which.
FiOS? Excuse me while I die laughing. AT&T and Comcast wouldn't let them near their customers.
but ignore the real world, lets worry about the Bush Dynasty and it's heinous attempts at holding a free election in Iraq.
Quit tossing out red herrings/false dilemmas. We want Bush, Cheney, and the entire White House from 2000 to 2008 to have their day in court for dragging us into a hugely distracting war with repeated lies and manufactured intelligence. We also want the US to hunt down al Qaeda and stop the Iranians and radical Islamists, who would love nothing more than see the Israelis and Americans reduced to radioactive dust, from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Perhaps it's time for a standards body that won't take money or volunteers from corporations.
(Is it typical geek fashion to tell someone to RTFM without providing TFM?)
Here's a summary of the miscreant trying to monopolize "stealth".
Now if they'll come up with non-human judging for extremely subjective events like gymnastics, artistic skating, or diving, we'd be in business. These two events are dominated by the whim of the judges and their respective federations, so even if a professional or most of the audience objectively thinks one routine is better than another, that can be overridden by a judge or a director on a power trip.
An example is a FIBA secretary general changing the outcome of a close basketball game against the rules in Munich. Granted, the referees and scorekeepers really destroyed any semblance of fairness in the gold metal match, but if he was interested in a fair match, he shouldn't have done it when the appeals board was dominated by pro-Soviet countries. There was a big enough stink about it (the USA refused the silver medals) that FIBA instated better rules and procedures. If the FIG had any desire to make sure the judges rule fairly, they should have permitted more challenges of scores from coaches with high-speed camera replays from several angles, rather than including a "difficulty bonus" score. That way the judges really have to answer to the eyes of the world, rather than behave in the dickish "I'm right and there's nothing you can do about it" attitude.
Or give all the judges LSD prior to events. I don't know.
If you want to be rubbing for a few minutes (a few hours if you're like me and the Mythbusters build team and suck at generating the requisite friction), sure. For a faster light, I'd go with flint (glass) and steel, a convex lens, or even better, firesteel.
It was probably the blog post praising Groklaw featured here on Slashdot and a general lack of sleep, but I read this story's title as "Microsoft to Buy $100M More SCO Support Vouchers".
Eh, I'll blame China, the IOC, and NBC for not running the Olympics at a time slot that's further away from midnight.