As I understand it, MS's reasoning is that under the new law, it's illegal to a) circumvent the licence, b) explain how to circumvent the licence, and c) produce software ('tools') that allow others to circumvent the licence.
Focusing on point (c) for a moment: Does this mean that as soon as this licencing agreement was written, WinZip (and other zip extraction tools that can bypass the licencing acceptance code) suddenly became illegal?
Pretty much. Basically, these sweepingly broad clauses have been drafted with an eye towards selective enforcement, which is a nice way of saying that only those who can afford to wage protracted war in the courtroom can develop inter-operable software. (Yes, I know there's allegedly an exception for interoperability, but that applies AFAIK only to reverse-engineering; tools which make infringement possible are illegal under the DMCA, period.)
I wouldn't be suprised to see archiving/compression tools like WinZip but w/ "rights-management features" (think SDMI) built into Windoze at some point, followed by a rash of DMCA-derived lawsuits. In their zeal to ensure an eternal gravy-train to holders of "intellectual property" (who happen to be major campaign contributors), Congress may well drive the most innovative (not in the sense MS abuses the term) software development out of this country, killing the proverbial goose. It's already happened with encryption, where the recent changes to our export laws were too little, too late. The industry had already moved off-shore.
Of course, the masses won't take any notice until it's too late; in 1994, I was written off as a kook for my opposition to the DMCA, but then the masses get their information spoon-fed to them by the very same media companies who pushed for the law. Noam Chomsky knows what's up.
It seems like the Palm CEO is referring to Palm competitors when he says this, but if he is, it doesn't seem to make much sense, with the way about one-third of the Palm's supposed screen size is wasted with the silly silk-screen thingy.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to Palm screens.
And if you think the silk-screened digitizer area is silly, you haven't owned a Palm for any length of time. After a year of heavy use, the only area of my Palm V screen showing wear is in the silk-screened Graffiti area. The same was true on my Pilot 5000. If this area had more LCD screen area underneath it, it'd be illegible by now.
It's details like this which set the useful devices apart from mere gadgets.
-Isaac
Applying a bit of counterspin....
on
Pay Lars
·
· Score: 2
Well, on the Rap scene Dr. Dre is screeming bloody murder. His lawyers wrote a letter to napster demanding that they remove all of his music from thier databases. As if they have any control over that.
I'd just like to point out that Andre Young (aka Dr. Dre) may or may not be screaming bloody murder. To quote the Reuters article [emphasis added]:
"We wrote a letter yesterday on behalf of Dr. Dre to Napster basically putting them on notice that the listing of his songs and masters on Napster and the facilitation of the transfer of those files constitutes an infringement of his copyrights," said Howard King, an attorney who sent the letter on behalf of Andre Young, known as Dr. Dre.
"Dr. Dre has not committed to suing them, but that would be the logical conclusion if they don't take it off their site," said King, who also is representing Metallica.
So the lawyer behind Metallica's suit is behind "Dr. Dre's" letter. Hmm...
I'd like to hear Dre's take on the subject from his own damn mouth.
For the life of me, I can't contemplate any legal use for Napster. The only thing I can think of would be to download songs you already own on CD, but that's just too impractical to be useful. There are plenty of rippers out there that make it really easy to rip your songs into mp3 - and it's a hell of a lot faster than downloading it over a 56k Modem.
I use Napster for one thing: MP3s of music I own on vinyl. I don't have a working phonograph, and a good chunk of these records are out of print in any format, but I can find MP3s of the contents on Napster.
This book, though the "profits" are going to some unspecified "charity", is still going to be *sold*, and "expenses" recouped (expenses including the time and salaries of the folk who put it together).
I post on this forum because it is freely available to the world. I understand the philosophical unease someone might have with formerly "free" comments being gathered and edited for a non-free publication, for someone else's benefit.
People post comments, to make their ideas heard, but their choice of forum is also a comment, if that makes sense. Some people want ideas to be exchanged freely. I know I feel that way, and so I don't willingly donate my free time to creating content that someone else plans to package and sell.
I suspect I'm not alone in feeling this way. (Though I stop short of condemning this book. My feelings are mixed on this subject.)
ObOT: I am, however, livid about Slashdot's new affiliation w/ DoubleClick. I encourage all readers to grab a fresh copy of Junkbuster and terminate Slashdot's ad revenue w/ extreme prejudice.
Don't moderate this down. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no "-1, Unpatriotic" moderation. Also contrary to popular opinion, free speech is only one good thing among many, and should not be such a sacred cow. Property rights, for example, are a much stronger defence against government tyranny than the protection of the speech of people with nothing to say. There ought to be discussion on this issue, and that discussion should not be hampered by the refusal of some people to even consider part of the problem.
Without your free speech rights, your property rights are up for grabs and there's nothing you can say about it. There's a solid reason why the First Amendment is the FIRST amendment.
I think the obvious implication of this type of decision is to discourage ISPs, through threat of liability under copyright (in this case) or libel (think Demon), from allowing individual users to post their own content online. Who stands to benefit from an internet with higher barriers to entry for producing content? Existing media companies (who don't want the competition) and governments (who are already cozy with these established players).
I fully expect to see more of these cases arise, all over the world; this is the future of the mainstream internet.
High capital gains taxes discourage people from investing for the future - which is a prudent thing for a person and a family. Prudence is an important Christian virtue, particularly when it relates to the future of one's family. It might not appeal to many of us here, but Reed's formulation isn't far-fetched at all.
I always thought the Work Ethic was a more important "Christian virtue" - how is it moral to tax *earned* income at twice or thrice the rate of "capital gains" (a fancy way to say, unearned income from investments, disproportionately owned by wealthy Americans)?
This is not to disparage you personally, MattXVI, just to raise awareness about what I percieve to be a particularly egregious example of Ralph Reed's craven, self-interested behaviour at the helm of the Christian Coalition.
I give communities and publications billing themselves as "for women" exactly the same respect as I give communities and publications "for men", which is to say, absolutely none at all. (Disclaimer: the only time I feel sex-segregation makes sense is for sex-specific medical information.)
Bully for you if you want to be a "ChickClicker" or read "Maxim", but I'll think less of you either way.
PE was one of the first major acts to put free, full, downloadable tracks online (not in MP3 format, unfortunately, but as self-playing executables. I'll forgive them for this lack of cross-platform savvy, given that this was in 1998, early in the MP3-era). The tracks lasted all of a few days before their label ordered them removed, under legal threat; thereafter, Chuck D posted a message on the website exhorting fans who had managed to download the tracks to spread them far and wide. He's a long-time fan of downloadable music and a longer-time critic of the RIAA!
So... what if I put up a whole page of _links_ to child pornography. Call it www.kiddiesex.com, but I don't host any of the images. However, I scour the net every day to find images, and keep my links up to date, sort of a convenient one-stop-shop for your kiddie porn needs.
Would this be legal?
The legality of putting up such a site isn't important - you would be breaking the law by scouring the net for kiddie porn, and that is how you would be prosecuted. If you put up such a site, and allowed individuals instead to submit links, I suspect your site would be kept alive by law enforcement agencies looking for such content.
Your ISP might find you in violation of your TOS, though, and I'm sure Johnny Law would find some way to shut you down, once you outlived your usefulness.
In any case, drawing a parallel between DeCSS and child pornography is specious, as I'm not aware that DeCSS had been ruled as contraband yet. I'm only aware of preliminary injunctions against certain website operators. The (il)legal status of kiddie porn, however, is well-established.
As if any modern newsgathering organization would piss off an advertiser. The only investigative coverage it's possible to find in mainstream media these days is in government scandals (and even then, only personal scandals that don't upset the advertisers or parent companies).
Wish I could find that Eisner quote, something to the effect of "ABC News shouldn't bite the hand that feeds them" (in reference to critical coverage of Disney). That rare moment of candor pretty much confirms what we surely know to be true; that corporate media serves the corporate master first, and above all other priorities.
The reason I like this site is that while corporate flacks are free to post comments, so is anyone, and they all get the same exposure. Makes for a much broader range of opinions and insight than the pablum they're feeding us at CNN.
AC-3 and DTS are compressed formats for canned playback (a la MP3). The overhead involved in compressing a raw 5+1 bitstream to AC-3 or DTS is significant.
This is why other surround formats and APIs are used for interactive media (i.e. games).
And that's worth putting some nice kids, who did nothing to anyone, through a lot of pain?
I certainly agree with the goals, but I dislike the kind of tactics that make innocent people suffer for a cause.
Think for a moment; you know plenty of kids are going to suffer under this regime. Eventually, some kids w/ influential parents will suffer, and that will be the end this misguided plan. It seems to me eminently logical that these children-of-influence be targeted first, to spare the much larger number of other children, whose parent's voices are marginal, the same suffering. If the goal is to bring down this system quickly, I think the original poster is dead on.
I don't expect you to like this idea. Personally, I think it's devilishly clever, and hope to see someone try this, but soon.
As to innocents not suffering for a cause, I've yet to hear of a worthwhile cause that innocents haven't suffered for.
The dirty little secret of this business is that foreign nationals, even at the same salaries as local workers, end up being cheaper for the company over the long term. Why? They can't leave their sponsor company! (This isn't strictly true - they're free to leave if they pay back their employer for the fees incurred, typically $5k-$10k or more. They also have to have another sponsor or leave the country. Frequently, there's not much real choice.)
Given the rate of turnover in this industry (I've never worked for the same company longer than a year, ever, and I get the sense that my experience is typical of younger employees in the market), I'm not remotely surprised that lobbying for more H1B visas is the #1 legislative priority for American technology companies. That's why you constantly hear the wailing about a shortage of tech workers - there's a real agenda being pushed in furthering that notion.
For the record, I feel I should note that I personally oppose all restrictions on the movement of humans across national borders. I'm no xenophobe, I'm just making an observation about our present situation.
Csound is to other composing software what C is to VB or Delphi. It's a completely modular software synthesis tool, but with no limits on the number of oscillators or filters. It can be a bit cryptic, but is phenomenally powerful. It's also older than dirt - I've been using it under NEXTSTEP and Linux since 1996, and it was at that time already 10 years old, having been developed in the mid-80s by Barry L. Vercoe at the MIT media lab. New features have been added over time, naturally, and it's available for pretty much any OS, or as source should you want to port it to your own favorite environment.
I haven't the time to explain it further, but it is far and away the most powerful sound package I've ever used. Even without a pretty GUI for composing, it's worth checking out.
Certainly you own your own body. This means that among other things, you own your brain. Your brain (at least according to generally accepted theory) houses your mind, and you own that too because it's a part of you. What does the mind do? It produces thought. I don't think anyone here will argue against the assertion that the mind is (or at least should be) sacrosanct, not something that anyone else has the right to interfere with, if only because each person owns his own mind.
You may own your body, but you're in error if you think you can do anything to it that you like. Suicide is a crime in many jurisdictions (although enforcement is a bit of a problem). You do not have the right to determine what you put in your own body (see the "War On Drugs"). Altering your own brain/body chemistry without government approval IS a criminal offense. In many places, it's a felony. That's right, if you put the wrong thing in your body, and your government finds out, men from said government will come with guns to put you in a cage.
If we can't, as a nation, accept that people have the natural right to do to their own bodies as they see fit, then we shouldn't be surprised when we find our other freedoms abridged.
Thoughtcrime isn't a crime yet, but only because it's not yet possible to police. Don't you thing EMI or Bertelsmann would love to take a penny every time you hum/remember a tune they own? Don't you think they'd require it if they could?
Because OpenGL is their baby. SGI's GL pipeline is its raison d'etre. If developers stop using it, SGI doesn't exist. I don't mean game developers, either, I mean developers of real visualization apps (3d packages, CAD, scientific visualization, etc).
Lots of these developers want to extend to cheaper hardware. Lots have NT ports already. SGI's NT workstations tried to capture this market, by using the same GL pipeline, making NT ports of SGI pack. They failed for a number of reasons, including the fact that limiting the market to SGI's NT boxes removes most of the advantages to an NT port of such software.
Now they're focusing on providing this functionality under linux. Why, one might ask? Well, porting IRIX apps to linux, when linux has the same GL pipeline is easier than porting to NT. Developers of 3d apps have shown interest in linux already (Houdini comes to mind - a linux port is apparently in the works). And if these developers stick with OpenGL at the low end, even on non-SGI hardware, SGI will still have a market for high-end GL pipelines (on their own big iron), where they've always been most competent.
This is not about games, this is about taking back/retaining the CAD and visualization markets.
I have seen DVD players at Fry's that claimed to be capable of playing VCDs. Would I be asking too much for a single component that would play: DVD, VCD, AUDIO CD and MP3 CD? If there is such a unit available (or soon to be, PSX2???) I'd jump on it ASAP.
The Apex does this. It also handles CD-RW media as well, which is a sweet feature - get tired of yr MP3 party mix? Reuse the media!
...and stop bitching about what your customers want! Either give them what they want or be an asshole about it, but don't bitch that "Something needs to be done!"
Installing 100 copies when only one is licensed is ALREADY a copyright violation. Or did you mean, you want to shut your customers up?
And you wonder why "the general public has no respect for software licenses or software companies".
Sounds like you want it both ways... I guess you would perfer it if only things that you agreed with were brought to vote. (Acutally, given the sanctimonious tone of most of these YRO articles, I bet you would prefer it).
Pardon, but who wouldn't?
Personally, I think there's plenty of evidence that ballot initiatives are at best a mixed blessing, and more commonly a device to enforce the so-called "tyranny of the majority." California is a perfect example of the initiative process run amok; witness how many initiatives have been struck down or are tied up in court (Prop 187 is one of the more recent, notorious examples).
The idea of a democratic republic is to buffer the body of law against passing whims of the majority. (I would maintain that this is of increasing importance when said majority is heavily influenced in this day and age by a multitude of media outlets controlled by an already-tiny-and-getting-smaller set of people and interests, but I digress.) Generally speaking, those most in need of protection are the unpopular minority views, not the cause du jour of the majority. Mobs are fickle and easily manipulated; that's why mob rule gets messy very quickly. (cf the Terror following the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution and what sprung from that.)
It seems pretty clear to me that the founding fathers recognized this danger, and incorporated safeguards against it in the very structure of our government.
Damn, I haven't seen an old-school troll like this since I was moderating the local abortion debate FidoNet echo in the Deep South, back in the early '90s.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty much. Basically, these sweepingly broad clauses have been drafted with an eye towards selective enforcement, which is a nice way of saying that only those who can afford to wage protracted war in the courtroom can develop inter-operable software. (Yes, I know there's allegedly an exception for interoperability, but that applies AFAIK only to reverse-engineering; tools which make infringement possible are illegal under the DMCA, period.)
I wouldn't be suprised to see archiving/compression tools like WinZip but w/ "rights-management features" (think SDMI) built into Windoze at some point, followed by a rash of DMCA-derived lawsuits. In their zeal to ensure an eternal gravy-train to holders of "intellectual property" (who happen to be major campaign contributors), Congress may well drive the most innovative (not in the sense MS abuses the term) software development out of this country, killing the proverbial goose. It's already happened with encryption, where the recent changes to our export laws were too little, too late. The industry had already moved off-shore.
Of course, the masses won't take any notice until it's too late; in 1994, I was written off as a kook for my opposition to the DMCA, but then the masses get their information spoon-fed to them by the very same media companies who pushed for the law. Noam Chomsky knows what's up.
-Isaac
I'm pretty sure he's referring to Palm screens.
And if you think the silk-screened digitizer area is silly, you haven't owned a Palm for any length of time. After a year of heavy use, the only area of my Palm V screen showing wear is in the silk-screened Graffiti area. The same was true on my Pilot 5000. If this area had more LCD screen area underneath it, it'd be illegible by now.
It's details like this which set the useful devices apart from mere gadgets.
-Isaac
I'd just like to point out that Andre Young (aka Dr. Dre) may or may not be screaming bloody murder. To quote the Reuters article [emphasis added]:
So the lawyer behind Metallica's suit is behind "Dr. Dre's" letter. Hmm...
I'd like to hear Dre's take on the subject from his own damn mouth.
-Isaac
I use Napster for one thing: MP3s of music I own on vinyl. I don't have a working phonograph, and a good chunk of these records are out of print in any format, but I can find MP3s of the contents on Napster.
Just one data point.
-Isaac
I post on this forum because it is freely available to the world. I understand the philosophical unease someone might have with formerly "free" comments being gathered and edited for a non-free publication, for someone else's benefit.
People post comments, to make their ideas heard, but their choice of forum is also a comment, if that makes sense. Some people want ideas to be exchanged freely. I know I feel that way, and so I don't willingly donate my free time to creating content that someone else plans to package and sell.
I suspect I'm not alone in feeling this way. (Though I stop short of condemning this book. My feelings are mixed on this subject.)
ObOT: I am, however, livid about Slashdot's new affiliation w/ DoubleClick. I encourage all readers to grab a fresh copy of Junkbuster and terminate Slashdot's ad revenue w/ extreme prejudice.
-Isaac
How's life?
-isaac@ticalc.org
Take taxes from you?
Like the Microsoft Tax?
Start wars?
You mean like Hearst, and the Spanish-American War?
Engage in gross acts of waste?
You mean like logging the Amazon rainforests?
And these aren't the only examples, by any means. You sound awfully naive about corporate power.
-Isaac
Without your free speech rights, your property rights are up for grabs and there's nothing you can say about it. There's a solid reason why the First Amendment is the FIRST amendment.
-Isaac
I think the obvious implication of this type of decision is to discourage ISPs, through threat of liability under copyright (in this case) or libel (think Demon), from allowing individual users to post their own content online. Who stands to benefit from an internet with higher barriers to entry for producing content? Existing media companies (who don't want the competition) and governments (who are already cozy with these established players).
I fully expect to see more of these cases arise, all over the world; this is the future of the mainstream internet.
Waxing cynical,
-Isaac
I always thought the Work Ethic was a more important "Christian virtue" - how is it moral to tax *earned* income at twice or thrice the rate of "capital gains" (a fancy way to say, unearned income from investments, disproportionately owned by wealthy Americans)?
This is not to disparage you personally, MattXVI, just to raise awareness about what I percieve to be a particularly egregious example of Ralph Reed's craven, self-interested behaviour at the helm of the Christian Coalition.
Smells pretty stinky to me.
-Isaac
I give communities and publications billing themselves as "for women" exactly the same respect as I give communities and publications "for men", which is to say, absolutely none at all. (Disclaimer: the only time I feel sex-segregation makes sense is for sex-specific medical information.)
Bully for you if you want to be a "ChickClicker" or read "Maxim", but I'll think less of you either way.
-Isaac
PE was one of the first major acts to put free, full, downloadable tracks online (not in MP3 format, unfortunately, but as self-playing executables. I'll forgive them for this lack of cross-platform savvy, given that this was in 1998, early in the MP3-era). The tracks lasted all of a few days before their label ordered them removed, under legal threat; thereafter, Chuck D posted a message on the website exhorting fans who had managed to download the tracks to spread them far and wide. He's a long-time fan of downloadable music and a longer-time critic of the RIAA!
-Isaac
The legality of putting up such a site isn't important - you would be breaking the law by scouring the net for kiddie porn, and that is how you would be prosecuted. If you put up such a site, and allowed individuals instead to submit links, I suspect your site would be kept alive by law enforcement agencies looking for such content.
Your ISP might find you in violation of your TOS, though, and I'm sure Johnny Law would find some way to shut you down, once you outlived your usefulness.
In any case, drawing a parallel between DeCSS and child pornography is specious, as I'm not aware that DeCSS had been ruled as contraband yet. I'm only aware of preliminary injunctions against certain website operators. The (il)legal status of kiddie porn, however, is well-established.
-Isaac
As if any modern newsgathering organization would piss off an advertiser. The only investigative coverage it's possible to find in mainstream media these days is in government scandals (and even then, only personal scandals that don't upset the advertisers or parent companies).
Wish I could find that Eisner quote, something to the effect of "ABC News shouldn't bite the hand that feeds them" (in reference to critical coverage of Disney). That rare moment of candor pretty much confirms what we surely know to be true; that corporate media serves the corporate master first, and above all other priorities.
The reason I like this site is that while corporate flacks are free to post comments, so is anyone, and they all get the same exposure. Makes for a much broader range of opinions and insight than the pablum they're feeding us at CNN.
-Isaac
This is why other surround formats and APIs are used for interactive media (i.e. games).
-Isaac
Think for a moment; you know plenty of kids are going to suffer under this regime. Eventually, some kids w/ influential parents will suffer, and that will be the end this misguided plan. It seems to me eminently logical that these children-of-influence be targeted first, to spare the much larger number of other children, whose parent's voices are marginal, the same suffering. If the goal is to bring down this system quickly, I think the original poster is dead on.
I don't expect you to like this idea. Personally, I think it's devilishly clever, and hope to see someone try this, but soon.
As to innocents not suffering for a cause, I've yet to hear of a worthwhile cause that innocents haven't suffered for.
-Isaac
Given the rate of turnover in this industry (I've never worked for the same company longer than a year, ever, and I get the sense that my experience is typical of younger employees in the market), I'm not remotely surprised that lobbying for more H1B visas is the #1 legislative priority for American technology companies. That's why you constantly hear the wailing about a shortage of tech workers - there's a real agenda being pushed in furthering that notion.
For the record, I feel I should note that I personally oppose all restrictions on the movement of humans across national borders. I'm no xenophobe, I'm just making an observation about our present situation.
-Isaac
Here are a couple of good links on the subject:
http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/lin ux_csound.html
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-boo ks/csound/frontpage.html
I haven't the time to explain it further, but it is far and away the most powerful sound package I've ever used. Even without a pretty GUI for composing, it's worth checking out.
-Isaac
You may own your body, but you're in error if you think you can do anything to it that you like. Suicide is a crime in many jurisdictions (although enforcement is a bit of a problem). You do not have the right to determine what you put in your own body (see the "War On Drugs"). Altering your own brain/body chemistry without government approval IS a criminal offense. In many places, it's a felony. That's right, if you put the wrong thing in your body, and your government finds out, men from said government will come with guns to put you in a cage.
If we can't, as a nation, accept that people have the natural right to do to their own bodies as they see fit, then we shouldn't be surprised when we find our other freedoms abridged.
Thoughtcrime isn't a crime yet, but only because it's not yet possible to police. Don't you thing EMI or Bertelsmann would love to take a penny every time you hum/remember a tune they own? Don't you think they'd require it if they could?
Waxing cynical,
-Isaac
Yep, congress acting to protect you from dangerous new ideas.
Can't believe moderators are ignoring this!
-Isaac
Why is SGI cooperating here?
Because OpenGL is their baby. SGI's GL pipeline is its raison d'etre. If developers stop using it, SGI doesn't exist. I don't mean game developers, either, I mean developers of real visualization apps (3d packages, CAD, scientific visualization, etc).
Lots of these developers want to extend to cheaper hardware. Lots have NT ports already. SGI's NT workstations tried to capture this market, by using the same GL pipeline, making NT ports of SGI pack. They failed for a number of reasons, including the fact that limiting the market to SGI's NT boxes removes most of the advantages to an NT port of such software.
Now they're focusing on providing this functionality under linux. Why, one might ask? Well, porting IRIX apps to linux, when linux has the same GL pipeline is easier than porting to NT. Developers of 3d apps have shown interest in linux already (Houdini comes to mind - a linux port is apparently in the works). And if these developers stick with OpenGL at the low end, even on non-SGI hardware, SGI will still have a market for high-end GL pipelines (on their own big iron), where they've always been most competent.
This is not about games, this is about taking back/retaining the CAD and visualization markets.
-Isaac
The Apex does this. It also handles CD-RW media as well, which is a sweet feature - get tired of yr MP3 party mix? Reuse the media!
It is a bargain, definitely.
-Isaac
...and stop bitching about what your customers want! Either give them what they want or be an asshole about it, but don't bitch that "Something needs to be done!"
Installing 100 copies when only one is licensed is ALREADY a copyright violation. Or did you mean, you want to shut your customers up?
And you wonder why "the general public has no respect for software licenses or software companies".
-Isaac
Pardon, but who wouldn't?
Personally, I think there's plenty of evidence that ballot initiatives are at best a mixed blessing, and more commonly a device to enforce the so-called "tyranny of the majority." California is a perfect example of the initiative process run amok; witness how many initiatives have been struck down or are tied up in court (Prop 187 is one of the more recent, notorious examples).
The idea of a democratic republic is to buffer the body of law against passing whims of the majority. (I would maintain that this is of increasing importance when said majority is heavily influenced in this day and age by a multitude of media outlets controlled by an already-tiny-and-getting-smaller set of people and interests, but I digress.) Generally speaking, those most in need of protection are the unpopular minority views, not the cause du jour of the majority. Mobs are fickle and easily manipulated; that's why mob rule gets messy very quickly. (cf the Terror following the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution and what sprung from that.)
It seems pretty clear to me that the founding fathers recognized this danger, and incorporated safeguards against it in the very structure of our government.
-Isaac
Damn, I haven't seen an old-school troll like this since I was moderating the local abortion debate FidoNet echo in the Deep South, back in the early '90s.
Kudos, for giving me a good laugh!
-Isaac