The fact is, there exists both a cure for anthrax and even a vaccine. There's an article on ABCNews [204.202.137.111] that explains how anthrax works, and that if caught early enough, it can be treated with penicillin.
The vaccine is currently reserved for US Military personnel. The company that produces it isn't even capable of meeting the military's needs. Plus, there are a lot of fears about the side effects; some people think it's at least partially responsible for Gulf War Syndrome.
Pulmonary Anthrax can be treated with antibiotics up to a point. After serious symptoms develop, antibiotics aren't particularly effective. Treating the disease requires knowing that you've been exposed (or may have been exposed), then getting medicated ASAP. In a serious attack, there's no guarantee that these things could happen quickly enough to avoid a good number of deaths.
My theory is that the anthrax infections we've been reading about are not the responsibility of terrorists, but just some nutcase somewhere in the country who is trying to scare the hell out of everyone
It's a good theory. But it's still scary to think that there's somebody in the country who's a) got Anthrax, and b) is willing to use it on innocent people. It's not a huge step from there to releasing it in a public place. At this point, our best hope is that they don't have a good mix of the stuff.
Another issue, one that comes to mind with your passport analogy, is how easily these IDs can be revoked?
It is a common practice to revoke the passports of US Citizens who are believed to be engaged in unsavory activity outside of US borders. For instance, if you have dual nationality and are discovered running around the Cayman islands doing a lot of banking, you might find your ability to return to the US hampered. As far as I know, this can be done with no notification or trial.
So the question is, is this ID going to be viewed as a basic right of citizenship, or are there going to be (similar) cases where it could be withheld, revoked or suspended?
It seems that any research by Felten & Co. would be covered under (3), (4), (6), and (7). Thus, isn't the DoJ's motion for dimissial justified?
There's a lot of fine-print beneath that section you quoted. Particularly with regards to encryption research, you need to jump through flaming hoops (ie, get permission from the company, etc.) before you can utilize the exemption. Since it could be argued (hell, has been argued by the RIAA) that they believe these requirements were not fully met, I don't think Felten can feel comfortable that he's protected.
If this suit clarifies even that single matter, then it's probably a worthwhile enterprise.
Well, it sounds like it'll be a big intranet. We could eventually be talking about thousands of sites, all over the country. Presumably all of these links will operate over isolated (and hopefully secure) communications lines, which aren't cheap-- there shouldn't be any tunneling over other networks, otherwise it you might as well just use a big VPN setup across the public Internet.
I hope that they understand that a large-scale network like this isn't going to solve all of their problems. They'll still have to maintain heavy security on all of their sites, regardless of how much more secure this network is.
I think it's not a bad idea, if you're looking to avoid a William Gibson type scenario (where all sorts of critical resources can be accessed from the public networks, if you've got enough tools and skill.)
The main issue here seems to be cost. It's not going to be pretty. And it's entirely possible that this network will be more trouble than it's worth.
Say, while we are at it, why don't we suspend our civil liberties to help fight the "war" on drugs too.
Don't worry, we already have. Take a look at some of the asset forfeiture laws commonly used to get drug dealers. If the law can't pin a case on you, it'll pin one on your property. Forget about the Constitution, forget about the right to a Jury trial.
Doesn't seem to me that there was ever much justification to mess with our civil liberties in those "wars" (except for the draft, which was already in law.) None of them had any actions take place on American soil.
Yes. And as is typical with these matters, it'll probably be someone like ICANN. Forget about legal recourse if a big corp. says you violated their copyright.
Think about it: Curtailment to free speech happens when a government threatens to do something (fine, jailtime, gestapo knocking at your door) if you say something they don't approve of.
So does that mean that copyright restrictions no longer exist in Cyberspace? If this is the case, I have a feeling it will be quickly remedied.
Re:The Palm is already dying
on
Pocket PC 2002
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· Score: 1
Thanks for the info about the automatic backup. I guess I didn't look very hard. I searched through the obvious dialogs for a couple of minutes. Obviously I didn't look under Incremental Backup (I suppose I thought something as important as auto-backups would be at a higher, more general level.)
I personally love to read AvantGo channels and eBooks on my iPaq
AvantGo is not the web. I can read AvantGo on my Palm just fine. The advantage of the iPaq over the Palm is (theoretically) its superior ability to display real web pages. Unfortunately, this isn't very satisfactory. It's not really MS or Compaq's fault-- the screen just isn't big enough, the chip just isn't fast enough to scroll complicated pages around. I found (and its my personal opinion) that browsing most raw web pages was tiresome.
eBooks are a great application, but again, one that a Palm does well. ClearType (is that what it's called) is nice. I'm not sure it makes a huge difference to me-- and Microsoft Reader's library or content control features (while nifty) aren't a selling point for me.
Pocket PC 2002 includes this feature, and the iPaq is upgradable.
That's great news. And I look forward to 2002. However, the fact that MS is going to release a cooler version next year doesn't make my points any less valid. Nor does it make it any more acceptable that the current version of PocketPC doesn't include this extremely obvious feature. Generally, most opinions are formed based on the version you use now, not based on promises for the next version (even if the upgrade is free.)
Dude, I don't know what kind of wacky software you're running on the iPaq, but I've been using mine for more than a year, and I've never had it lock up so hard that I had to hard reset.
Yeah, I don't know about that. I had a couple of network card drivers installed (WaveLAN and Sierra Wireless Aircard 400, and obviously the PC-card sleeve.) This could have been a large part of the problem. I experienced problems when using both cards... Without the network connection, the iPaq is a lot less useful (to me), so I have to report my experiences the way I used it. I also installed Microsoft Transcriber, which had problems.
But don't spread FUD about it, either.
For all your talk of FUD (as though I'm deliberately trying to mislead people), I did have lots of crashes-- some of them as I was trying to show people how cool the thing was.
Please understand that I thought the thing was incredibly cool when I got it. I still think it's nifty. It just doesn't live up to my expectations as a useful machine; I wasn't hoping for a supercharged Palm, I was looking for a (very) scaled-down laptop. Taking notes, storing phone numbers, reading books and browsing AvantGo pages I could already do.
You're right. I didn't see the option because it wasn't immediately obvious.
Still doesn't solve the crashing problem. Perhaps if I don't use network cards (I was using Ricochet), or the Microsoft Transcriber...
But then what's the point?
Re:Not a replacement for a desktop...
on
Pocket PC 2002
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· Score: 1
fud fud fud. I don't think I'd EVER go back to Palm.
Neither did I. I moved up to a laptop. After lugging around a delicate 16 oz. of iPaq + PC-card sleeve that didn't suit my needs, I realized I might as well have a machine I could use and do development work on.
I've got to agree with the Palm people on this point. I have an Ipaq and a PC Card Sleeve, (which helps the battery a lot, unless you're actually using a PC-card...) I would never take the thing out for more than a day (ie, morning to evening) without taking the charger. A Palm does last longer, and that's just fact. It's a consequence of the Palm having a slower chip and a duller screen.
I also had a lot of problems with the iPaq crashing. Maybe it was the network drivers, maybe I was running too many complex WinCE applications. Either way, I got sick of losing all of my files and configurations every time this happened. The "non-volatile" section of memory needs to be better isolated from the rest of the system, so it doesn't go down whenever you do a hard reset. And ActiveSync needs to do automatic file-system backups (at least as an option) every time you put the PDA in its cradle. This is something I always liked about the Palm-- even if it lost its memory, a quick Hotsync always solved the problem.
Re:The Palm is already dying
on
Pocket PC 2002
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· Score: 3, Informative
I'm sitting here next to my Palm and Ipaq. The Ipaq is dusty, I haven't even bothered to charge the thing in a couple of weeks. Reason? It's useless for serious work. I can't tell you how many times it's crashed on me (taking out all of my configurations, files, and network card drivers), when I'm somewhere very far from my backup computer. Did I mention that the ActiveSync software doesn't automatically back up your file system whenever you sync? Maybe it could, but I can't find a way to make it so.
It's a neat toy. I had a great time playing with it, setting it up, etc. Then I got down to actually using it, and it's not worth the trouble. Very few of the applications are worth using, web browsing is a hassle with a tiny screen (even a nice color one.) The only apps left that I was interested in were mail and typical filofax-type-stuff. All of which were handled by my Palm (which rarely loses information and has a longer battery life.)
And for all the gadgetry, I still can't mount an external drive via the network connection. What a useful feature that'd be... Too bad.
I hate that this is so. Maybe someday they'll get it right, but they haven't yet. Go ahead and spend your money if you want a cool gadget, but gadgets get boring after a while unless they're useful.
Not a replacement for a desktop...
on
Pocket PC 2002
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· Score: 3, Insightful
They're getting so sophisticated that soon I'll be able to chuck my desktop....
I was hoping my (borrowed) Ipaq would at least partially replace my laptop. Unfortunately, the PowerPC OS is still so buggy that the damn things are almost unusable for anything serious. After the third time it crashed (in the process wiping its entire filesystem, network card drivers, preferences, etc.), I gave up the idea of using it for serious work.
It's a neat toy, but if you rely on it, you can't have silly software flaws like that. The worst part is the synchronization software. At least when the Palm crashes, a quick Hotsync gets you more or less right back to where you were (assuming you're not too far away from your computer.) With the PocketPC, full backups aren't performed automatically every time you synchronize-- should the thing crash, you're stuck with the most recent explicit backup you made.
And I never could find a way to mount Windows network drives over the network-- a feature that would be extraordinarily useful on such a tiny system. It's a snap with Linux, just use NFS.
PocketLinux may well be the answer... But most users will probably be stuck with Windows, as I was (it didn't belong to me, and I wasn't sure I could restore back to WinCE.)
And when roaming wireless (802.11-style) networks arrives, they'll be working on something even more exciting. Will you wait for that too, then?
Honestly, I can't afford GPRS now. And I never will be able to. It's nice to have it out there for specialized applications, I suppose, but it's got no future as a real broadband solution.
Same with 3G, much of which is going to be based off of current GSM standards. That's not available today, and by the time it begins to roll out (at enormous expense), I'm convinced that better solutions will be available. It'd be a shame if our wireless companies jumped into a massive investment that precluded the rollout of more advanced tech.
Essentially, my problem with GPRS and 3G is that I think the standards are starting to slow down development of new technologies. They're very expensive. While we bitch about the US's failure to adopt GSM and GSM-based 3G systems, I'm convinced that the next advance will move us well beyond the capabilities of those systems. It's just a hunch. A good analogy would be the early deployment of analog HDTV in Japan, a standard which was eventually abandoned in favor of the digital standards being developed in the US.
GPRS is a silly, hacked together solution. If this is the sort of thing we can expect from worldwide standards, then I'll stick around and see what the US can come up with. I've already heard that some very interesting work is being done in the area of roaming wireless (802.11-style) networks.
Ricochet (God rest its soul, and may it come back someday) was far superior to this solution, and a lot cheaper. Yes, GPRS does cover more area, but it does it in such an inefficient way that it could never be offered cheaply (or to a broad base of simultaneous users.)
Competition and deregulation are great things. In certain cases. On the other hand, in any situation in which you have a small number of potential "competitors", with huge capital outlays to get into the business, deregulation is just silly.
Some cases in point: long-distance competition has been a great thing. Local telephone competition is (and always will be) a mess-- even when (if) most customers have two or three choices, there will be limited incentive for a price war between the competitors.
Re:The good and the bad of it
on
GPS Meets PCS
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· Score: 1
However, unless there is a cop or similar at or near the payphone, the effect is the same - you know where someone was 10 minutes ago by the time you get there.
Exactly, although there's talk of using DNA testing to find some crank callers nowadays.
Honestly, this makes me uncomfortable. Anonymous tips are one of the police's most useful sources of information. Make it clear that the cops possess the means to track down callers, and you'll see that resource all but evaporate. Hell, it makes me nervous, in case I ever feel like I need an anonymous way to make a call.
Re:The good and the bad of it
on
GPS Meets PCS
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· Score: 2
The wide adoption of personal phones has resulted in a huge number of untraceable calls coming in on the emergency lines.
I'm not sure I understand this. Are the untraceable calls a problem because emergency personnel can't locate the caller to help him/her... Or are they a problem because lots of untraceable prank calls are coming in?
Presuming it's the former, there's a very simple solution that does not involve letting Big Brother in on all of my movements. When I make a 911 call, the phone transmits my GPS location. When I call someone else, it doesn't. Perhaps I could even opt-in on the "always transmit my location" option. Everybody's happy, right? The fact that this solution doesn't seem to be what's going to be implemented is what makes me nervous-- I can't see any good reason why any other solution would be adopted.
On the other hand, if the problem is nasty people phoning in bomb threats (which I doubt is what you're talking about), there are still payphones for such people to use. The two zillion bomb threats that have been phoned in in the NYC area should be proof enough of that...
You don't have to carry a cellphone, and you could always disconnect the battery. Just a thought.
Of course you don't need a cellphone. You don't need a home phone, a credit card, or a bank account. You don't need a car, electricity or mail-order shopping. There are lots of things you don't have to have...
On the other hand, why can't we have those things along with the guarantee that they won't be used in ways that aren't in our best interests? I dislike the "you don't have to have..." argument, because it seems like over time it pushes you closer and closer to a broken-down cabin in Montana.
What sort of things will we have to give up ten years from now in order to guarantee anonymity and privacy? Will they all be optional, or will life without that set of things become increasingly unpleasant?
The real problem here is the new attitude of the state: it wants to replace parents.
I agree, although I'm not sure that this is a new attitude at all. Various local, state, and even federal laws have sought to restrict the sale of pornography for years.
What's changed is the scale of the restrictions. Previously, if Podunkville wanted to keep porn out of town, it could pass some local restrictions (or just boycott the stores that sold the stuff.) People rarely bothered to challenge these laws up through the chain of courts toward the SC. With the Internet, it's becoming increasingy difficult for blue laws to function. So new laws are being passed and enforced that effect us all.
As for the virtual child-porn, I think the main issue at stake is whether or not the virtual porn leads to real children being harmed.
Apparently, after the 9th circuit blew the government out of the water on this point, they changed their tack somewhat. Now they're arguing that it's just too much darn work to figure out whether an image involves actual children. In other words, convict first, verify later (if at all.)
I think the desired outcome is for the gov't to be able to arrest and convict someone (or at least, prevent them from publishing) without actually proving that the image actually involves a child. I assume this means that anybody caught with a pornographic image containing a youngish-looking 18-year old could theoretically be tossed in jail. Honestly, I'm not sure why the gov't is pursuing this piece of crap.
and that prosecutors would find it difficult to prove that any image was of an actual child, as opposed to a computer-generated one.
Pretty wacky, that argument. It's a little like charging somebody with murder without the body.
It would seem to me that the attack on child pornography should be focused on the producers of the stuff: that is, the people who are actually abusing kids. If the government is unable to find those people, it shouldn't be wasting funds running around and trying to put the cat back into the bag.
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The vaccine is currently reserved for US Military personnel. The company that produces it isn't even capable of meeting the military's needs. Plus, there are a lot of fears about the side effects; some people think it's at least partially responsible for Gulf War Syndrome.
Pulmonary Anthrax can be treated with antibiotics up to a point. After serious symptoms develop, antibiotics aren't particularly effective. Treating the disease requires knowing that you've been exposed (or may have been exposed), then getting medicated ASAP. In a serious attack, there's no guarantee that these things could happen quickly enough to avoid a good number of deaths.
My theory is that the anthrax infections we've been reading about are not the responsibility of terrorists, but just some nutcase somewhere in the country who is trying to scare the hell out of everyone
It's a good theory. But it's still scary to think that there's somebody in the country who's a) got Anthrax, and b) is willing to use it on innocent people. It's not a huge step from there to releasing it in a public place. At this point, our best hope is that they don't have a good mix of the stuff.
It is a common practice to revoke the passports of US Citizens who are believed to be engaged in unsavory activity outside of US borders. For instance, if you have dual nationality and are discovered running around the Cayman islands doing a lot of banking, you might find your ability to return to the US hampered. As far as I know, this can be done with no notification or trial.
So the question is, is this ID going to be viewed as a basic right of citizenship, or are there going to be (similar) cases where it could be withheld, revoked or suspended?
There's a lot of fine-print beneath that section you quoted. Particularly with regards to encryption research, you need to jump through flaming hoops (ie, get permission from the company, etc.) before you can utilize the exemption. Since it could be argued (hell, has been argued by the RIAA) that they believe these requirements were not fully met, I don't think Felten can feel comfortable that he's protected.
If this suit clarifies even that single matter, then it's probably a worthwhile enterprise.
I hope that they understand that a large-scale network like this isn't going to solve all of their problems. They'll still have to maintain heavy security on all of their sites, regardless of how much more secure this network is.
I think it's not a bad idea, if you're looking to avoid a William Gibson type scenario (where all sorts of critical resources can be accessed from the public networks, if you've got enough tools and skill.)
The main issue here seems to be cost. It's not going to be pretty. And it's entirely possible that this network will be more trouble than it's worth.
Don't worry, we already have. Take a look at some of the asset forfeiture laws commonly used to get drug dealers. If the law can't pin a case on you, it'll pin one on your property. Forget about the Constitution, forget about the right to a Jury trial.
Doesn't seem to me that there was ever much justification to mess with our civil liberties in those "wars" (except for the draft, which was already in law.) None of them had any actions take place on American soil.
Does DC make a serious attempt to keep handguns purchased in other states from entering the city?
Yes. And as is typical with these matters, it'll probably be someone like ICANN. Forget about legal recourse if a big corp. says you violated their copyright.
So does that mean that copyright restrictions no longer exist in Cyberspace? If this is the case, I have a feeling it will be quickly remedied.
I personally love to read AvantGo channels and eBooks on my iPaq
AvantGo is not the web. I can read AvantGo on my Palm just fine. The advantage of the iPaq over the Palm is (theoretically) its superior ability to display real web pages. Unfortunately, this isn't very satisfactory. It's not really MS or Compaq's fault-- the screen just isn't big enough, the chip just isn't fast enough to scroll complicated pages around. I found (and its my personal opinion) that browsing most raw web pages was tiresome.
eBooks are a great application, but again, one that a Palm does well. ClearType (is that what it's called) is nice. I'm not sure it makes a huge difference to me-- and Microsoft Reader's library or content control features (while nifty) aren't a selling point for me.
Pocket PC 2002 includes this feature, and the iPaq is upgradable.
That's great news. And I look forward to 2002. However, the fact that MS is going to release a cooler version next year doesn't make my points any less valid. Nor does it make it any more acceptable that the current version of PocketPC doesn't include this extremely obvious feature. Generally, most opinions are formed based on the version you use now, not based on promises for the next version (even if the upgrade is free.)
Dude, I don't know what kind of wacky software you're running on the iPaq, but I've been using mine for more than a year, and I've never had it lock up so hard that I had to hard reset.
Yeah, I don't know about that. I had a couple of network card drivers installed (WaveLAN and Sierra Wireless Aircard 400, and obviously the PC-card sleeve.) This could have been a large part of the problem. I experienced problems when using both cards... Without the network connection, the iPaq is a lot less useful (to me), so I have to report my experiences the way I used it. I also installed Microsoft Transcriber, which had problems.
But don't spread FUD about it, either.
For all your talk of FUD (as though I'm deliberately trying to mislead people), I did have lots of crashes-- some of them as I was trying to show people how cool the thing was.
Please understand that I thought the thing was incredibly cool when I got it. I still think it's nifty. It just doesn't live up to my expectations as a useful machine; I wasn't hoping for a supercharged Palm, I was looking for a (very) scaled-down laptop. Taking notes, storing phone numbers, reading books and browsing AvantGo pages I could already do.
PS Well I'm at it, have you found a way to mount Windows network drives?
Still doesn't solve the crashing problem. Perhaps if I don't use network cards (I was using Ricochet), or the Microsoft Transcriber...
But then what's the point?
Neither did I. I moved up to a laptop. After lugging around a delicate 16 oz. of iPaq + PC-card sleeve that didn't suit my needs, I realized I might as well have a machine I could use and do development work on.
I also had a lot of problems with the iPaq crashing. Maybe it was the network drivers, maybe I was running too many complex WinCE applications. Either way, I got sick of losing all of my files and configurations every time this happened. The "non-volatile" section of memory needs to be better isolated from the rest of the system, so it doesn't go down whenever you do a hard reset. And ActiveSync needs to do automatic file-system backups (at least as an option) every time you put the PDA in its cradle. This is something I always liked about the Palm-- even if it lost its memory, a quick Hotsync always solved the problem.
It's a neat toy. I had a great time playing with it, setting it up, etc. Then I got down to actually using it, and it's not worth the trouble. Very few of the applications are worth using, web browsing is a hassle with a tiny screen (even a nice color one.) The only apps left that I was interested in were mail and typical filofax-type-stuff. All of which were handled by my Palm (which rarely loses information and has a longer battery life.)
And for all the gadgetry, I still can't mount an external drive via the network connection. What a useful feature that'd be... Too bad.
I hate that this is so. Maybe someday they'll get it right, but they haven't yet. Go ahead and spend your money if you want a cool gadget, but gadgets get boring after a while unless they're useful.
I was hoping my (borrowed) Ipaq would at least partially replace my laptop. Unfortunately, the PowerPC OS is still so buggy that the damn things are almost unusable for anything serious. After the third time it crashed (in the process wiping its entire filesystem, network card drivers, preferences, etc.), I gave up the idea of using it for serious work.
It's a neat toy, but if you rely on it, you can't have silly software flaws like that. The worst part is the synchronization software. At least when the Palm crashes, a quick Hotsync gets you more or less right back to where you were (assuming you're not too far away from your computer.) With the PocketPC, full backups aren't performed automatically every time you synchronize-- should the thing crash, you're stuck with the most recent explicit backup you made.
And I never could find a way to mount Windows network drives over the network-- a feature that would be extraordinarily useful on such a tiny system. It's a snap with Linux, just use NFS.
PocketLinux may well be the answer... But most users will probably be stuck with Windows, as I was (it didn't belong to me, and I wasn't sure I could restore back to WinCE.)
Honestly, I can't afford GPRS now. And I never will be able to. It's nice to have it out there for specialized applications, I suppose, but it's got no future as a real broadband solution.
Same with 3G, much of which is going to be based off of current GSM standards. That's not available today, and by the time it begins to roll out (at enormous expense), I'm convinced that better solutions will be available. It'd be a shame if our wireless companies jumped into a massive investment that precluded the rollout of more advanced tech.
Essentially, my problem with GPRS and 3G is that I think the standards are starting to slow down development of new technologies. They're very expensive. While we bitch about the US's failure to adopt GSM and GSM-based 3G systems, I'm convinced that the next advance will move us well beyond the capabilities of those systems. It's just a hunch. A good analogy would be the early deployment of analog HDTV in Japan, a standard which was eventually abandoned in favor of the digital standards being developed in the US.
Ricochet (God rest its soul, and may it come back someday) was far superior to this solution, and a lot cheaper. Yes, GPRS does cover more area, but it does it in such an inefficient way that it could never be offered cheaply (or to a broad base of simultaneous users.)
Some cases in point: long-distance competition has been a great thing. Local telephone competition is (and always will be) a mess-- even when (if) most customers have two or three choices, there will be limited incentive for a price war between the competitors.
Exactly, although there's talk of using DNA testing to find some crank callers nowadays.
Honestly, this makes me uncomfortable. Anonymous tips are one of the police's most useful sources of information. Make it clear that the cops possess the means to track down callers, and you'll see that resource all but evaporate. Hell, it makes me nervous, in case I ever feel like I need an anonymous way to make a call.
I'm not sure I understand this. Are the untraceable calls a problem because emergency personnel can't locate the caller to help him/her... Or are they a problem because lots of untraceable prank calls are coming in?
Presuming it's the former, there's a very simple solution that does not involve letting Big Brother in on all of my movements. When I make a 911 call, the phone transmits my GPS location. When I call someone else, it doesn't. Perhaps I could even opt-in on the "always transmit my location" option. Everybody's happy, right? The fact that this solution doesn't seem to be what's going to be implemented is what makes me nervous-- I can't see any good reason why any other solution would be adopted.
On the other hand, if the problem is nasty people phoning in bomb threats (which I doubt is what you're talking about), there are still payphones for such people to use. The two zillion bomb threats that have been phoned in in the NYC area should be proof enough of that...
Of course you don't need a cellphone. You don't need a home phone, a credit card, or a bank account. You don't need a car, electricity or mail-order shopping. There are lots of things you don't have to have...
On the other hand, why can't we have those things along with the guarantee that they won't be used in ways that aren't in our best interests? I dislike the "you don't have to have..." argument, because it seems like over time it pushes you closer and closer to a broken-down cabin in Montana.
What sort of things will we have to give up ten years from now in order to guarantee anonymity and privacy? Will they all be optional, or will life without that set of things become increasingly unpleasant?
I agree, although I'm not sure that this is a new attitude at all. Various local, state, and even federal laws have sought to restrict the sale of pornography for years.
What's changed is the scale of the restrictions. Previously, if Podunkville wanted to keep porn out of town, it could pass some local restrictions (or just boycott the stores that sold the stuff.) People rarely bothered to challenge these laws up through the chain of courts toward the SC. With the Internet, it's becoming increasingy difficult for blue laws to function. So new laws are being passed and enforced that effect us all.
Apparently, after the 9th circuit blew the government out of the water on this point, they changed their tack somewhat. Now they're arguing that it's just too much darn work to figure out whether an image involves actual children. In other words, convict first, verify later (if at all.)
I think the desired outcome is for the gov't to be able to arrest and convict someone (or at least, prevent them from publishing) without actually proving that the image actually involves a child. I assume this means that anybody caught with a pornographic image containing a youngish-looking 18-year old could theoretically be tossed in jail. Honestly, I'm not sure why the gov't is pursuing this piece of crap.
Pretty wacky, that argument. It's a little like charging somebody with murder without the body.
It would seem to me that the attack on child pornography should be focused on the producers of the stuff: that is, the people who are actually abusing kids. If the government is unable to find those people, it shouldn't be wasting funds running around and trying to put the cat back into the bag.