This whole "think of the children", "I can't watch out for my kids, so the government should do it for me" garbage was around long before 9/11. It around during the seventies, and was in full swing during the Clinton administration.
You can't blame this on terrorists, or the neocons, or the Bush administration. This is something that the people of this country ask, and beg for, and the government is only all to happy to comply.
Not enough trollish articles around to stir up page views? Don't worry our sister company can supply them for us, and we get double the page hits.
This isn't an unreasonable request - if you can go through the effort of compiling and testing all these packages, then including the sources on the CD/FTP site isn't that much more work - it is just part of the process. The only headache here is that they haven't been doing it and they need to catch up, and the FSF is lenient about that.
Honestly, I have never found the web of trust to be usefull. For people I have real-life contact with, we can just exchage keys in person. For people that I converse with online, we can exchange public keys via email, and we will know that all email signed with those keys are from the same person, even though we don't know who that person is apart from their online presence. For companies that I do business with (like my bank), they could provide me with thier public keys either via a secure link (like ssl website), in person at one of the branches, or better yet included each time I renew my card.
From my perspective, the fact that someone else signed your key, even someone I know, really doesn't make it any more trustworthy to me, and is just as meaningless as a CA. CAs do have another advantage in that they provide better infrastucture for revoking compromised keys than web of trust. In what situations do you find the web of trust to be usefull?
I can see this fitting in well with their AdWords/AdSense system
Exactly. Now we know how google can trust advertizer reports of sales when paying per sale rather than per click - they have to use google's shopping cart system.
That is the exception, not the rule. The truth is that the salary for CEO's in America has risen incredibly in recent times. From the linked article:
In 1980, the average pay for the CEOs of America's biggest companies was about 40 times that of the average production worker. In 1990, it was about 85 times. Now this ratio is thought to be about 400. Profits of big firms fell last year and shares are still well down on their record high, but the average remuneration of the heads of America's companies rose by over 6%.
Furthermore, I have seen statistics showing that salary now represents the majority of income for those in the top 10%, compared to the seventies, where investment returns greatly overshadowed salary. Unfortunately, can't find a reference at the moment, nor can I remember if the top 10% was based on income or wealth.
Still can't find the link, but here is another article from the economist complaining that american shareholders are too generous with their CEOs.
There is a long tradition of this (supporting charities through monopolistic profits), such as the Carnegie Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc.
An even bigger example, is the Medici family of Florence. They used thier money from banking, which had monopolistic ties to the church, to fund the Italian Renaissance.
The way they are able to offer this is by licensing the music from the record labels and pressing CDs themselves.
No, they sell the same CD pressings as anyone else. Your source may have been confused by the fact that in addition to having a mail-order CD club, they are also a record label - the second largest in the world. So, of course they press their own CD's - every label does.
There are a couple reasons that they are able to offer lower prices. First, by dealing directly with the customer they cut out the middleman (retail store). Second, they don't mind the lower profit because the people who buy through these clubs usually would not buy as much at retail prices - ie the same reasons that companies offer coupons. Third, they used to trick people into buying CD's and made it difficult to return, although they don't do this as much anymore. And lastly, the record contracts that they have with their artists state that the artists don't get any royalties off of music club sales, much smaller royalties than they would get off a normal CD sales. The main reason that their selection was low, was because other labels weren't eager to sign a deal with them (sometimes preferring their own mail-order services), and when artists renegotiated that part of the deal, BMG decided to not sell their music at all over than to pay normal royalties.
Anyway the reason you don't see back-catalog items as much is the same reason you see HP canceling their profitable calculator division. Executives of large companies don't care if something is profitable - if they can focus their company's energies on things that are more profitable then they will do so at the expense of otherwise good opportunities. And in this case the music companies don't want to sell off that part of their catalog to others, as that would create competition. Better to just let it rot.
It's hard to compare the two directly, since they have different kinds of artifacts that vary for different types of music. In addition, the encoder you use makes a big difference, especially if you are comparing against fixed-rate (ie not variable bitrate or VBR) MP3s. MP3s encoded with the latest version of LAME sounds are as good as WMA IMHO. But as a quick rule of thumb 128kbps AAC is about as good as 256kbps MP3. Ogg Vorbis is more or less the same. However, in my experience 128kbps WMA is only as good as about 192kbps MP3, ie a factor of 1.5 better rather than 2.
You might try looking up the default solaris console font, and seeing if there is a True Type version. I don't know the name, but I do recall that it was serif, and that many people preferred it over the linux console fonts.
I was up in northern California a few years ago, visiting my grandma. We had often made family trips up there when I was a kid growing up in New Mexico, but due to the shortness of vacation time, never saw much of the surrounding country, instead spending our limited time socializing with relatives. Because of this, my grandma decided to take me around to do some sight seeing. Among the places that we stopped was the Chico Dam. It was nice solid dam, with lush vegetation on the banks, and behold, fish trying to jump over the dam. After a closer look I noticed a fish ladder coming from the base of the river.
I had seen these on the discovery channel before - they were designed create a detour so the fish could swim up and around the dam to mate upstream. I followed the ladder from the base of the dam as it wound up the hill. Along the way were signs describing the different fish in the river, and I spotted several of the varieties among the travelers. I was struck with a sense of awe watching these fish. With such determination and perseverance they swam, often doing everything they could to keep in place against the current, but slowly and steadily jumping up one step of the ladder at a time.
I followed the fish ladder to the top of a hill, where it went into small building. Ah I thought, this must be where they tag the fish for studies. I bent over to one of the large windows to block the glare from the sun. A metal rod rammed through the fishes head, and it was thrown limply into one of two piles. Workers grabbed the fish from one pile and and sliced open their gullet with a smooth swipe, causing orange gunk to fall into a bucket. At the other pile, workers were squeezing a white liquid from them. I stood there dazed for a moment, and then looked down and saw a little plaque that stated that the orange stuff was called roe, and the white stuff was called milt.
That, my friend, is the day I learned the term Milt:)
I later learned that all the fish swimming up the river would have died naturally after mating anyway, that only a small percentage make it this far up the river, and that the number of fish born at this hatchery far exceeded the number that would have been born naturally. So it was a good thing, if a bit shocking for the uninitiated. I also learned that fishing is for suckers - why hassle with nets and lines, when you can have your dinner swim to you.
I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)
So you are running Opera on top of Ubuntu and Ubuntu on top of Emacs? That's my kind of Emacs user!
New versions of Firefox 1.x will run on windows 9x. New versions of Firefox 2.x will run on windows 9x. (2007?) Not until firefox 3.x will support for windows 9x be dropped. (2008?)
Microsoft's last browser that supported windows 9x was released 5 years ago, while firefox is still planning on supporting it in new releases for at least another year.
Yeah, the handheld Lights Out game came out at about the same time I started playing with GUIs, and I got into the habit of using it as a "Hello World" project when I am learning a new Windowing Toolkit. I think I have versions for GTK, WxWindows, Borland C++ Builder, LabWindows, Swing, SWT, and Winforms (C#) all laying around somewhere.
One potential aspect of this joint venture that I haven't been able to find any information about is whether it includes transfer of stakes in Symbian OS? I don't imagine it would considering it is the network divisions, not the phone divisions. However, if it does it might push Nokia over 50% ownership.
PS: When visiting symbian.com at work, don't leave out the m! Looks like I'm going to be getting visit from the network overlords. Grumble, grumble.
Obviously though it is necessary to write new functions on occassion; for example when the new function is worse than the old function is under some circumstances.
That is exactly why it was done. More information about can be found at kerneltrap: here, and here. It was also previously on slashdot, although you would be best to skip that - it has more misinformation than the other kind.
In short, all the known ways of implementing zero-copy within the existing API's cause the most common usage cases of those API to be slower than they are now. Therefore, it made more sense to export this new API for the applications where speed is critical.
In the the first kernaltrap article, Linus also explains why splice is different from sendfile, contrary to the posts here claiming they are essentially the same.
So worst case scenario $2.68 per year to leave the console in standby?... I just don't see what the point of this article is.
Let's see, you read the article, took the information from it, and determined that a video game system in standby is not a significant waste of energy compared to other factors. Seems like the article served it's purpose well - to determine what the costs are and pass that information on to others. News doesn't have to be life-shattering and hard-hitting to be useful - just informative.
While there will always be gullible people, I am not suprised that PayPal has a larger problem than other places. When I was still using them, they had horrible email practices. They sent out emails advertising new serivices. They even included links in their emails. There was more than once when I recieved a legitimate email from PayPal which I though was a phish. Yeah they sent out warning about phishing, but when legitimate email looks like a phish, people are going to have a harder time telling the difference.
Financial institutions should never include links in their emails. They should be very hesitant about sending any emails except in response to a user action. They should never send out emails the response of which is to enter personal information (such as signing up for a new service), even if they inform the user to go directly to their site rather than providing a link. Sending out crap like this just conditions the users to expect and trust emails and links from PayPal.
Maybe they are better now - I haven't used them in a while, because I don't trust them with access to my bank account. They have abused that power on too many people, too many times, so I don't do business with them anymore.
Private industry is making significant steps. After winning the X-prize in fall of 2004, Rutan estimated that it would take about 4-5 years until SpaceshipTwo was ready for regular flights. That schedule still looks reasonable, with the first flight around 2008, and passenger flights around 2009. Furthermore, several other groups are continuing to work on suborbital vehicles to compete with Virgin Galactic, including XCOR and Blue Orgin. Bigalow is progressing far better than people expected and will be launching a proof-of-concept space station shortly (russian launcher). SpaceX had their first launch recently, and while it failed, this is normal for new rockets. They are making good progress, and still have enthusiastic customers. Not to mention all the established private industry like Orbital Sciences, who are great guys and consistently do good work.
This stuff takes time - it took Nasa time, and while these entrepreneurs have Nasa's mistakes to learn from, they also have a much smaller budget. What they are achieving with that budget is impressive. I am really looking forward to seeing these people start making money off the suborbital rides, so they have a solid revenue stream for more development. Of all the plans Bigalow's is the most risking, and most interesting. If he can create a profitable space hotel - if he can do for LEO space stations what Orbital Sciences did for satellite lauches, then the government can just rent whatever space they need from him, and get it's manned space program back to what it should be doing - pushing the boundries on human colonization, not draining money on the ISS.
By the time 3.0 is absolutely necessary, the pre-2K computers could have already upgraded to Ubuntu.
No, the main reasons that people stick with windows 9x is because they don't have any reason to upgrade, their computer is too slow for XP, or because they have the odd application that doesn't run well on XP. These people would have no more reason to upgrade to Ubuntu as to upgrade to XP.
But they also probably won't care much about the fact that new releases of Firefox will stop being supported in two years - they will just use the older versions, just like they use the older versions of everything else.
As we know worker moral is important, and considering the traditional living arrangements of your standard computer geek, it stands to reason that they should build their data center in the most awesome basement ever built!
Hey, one can dream can't he?
To the batcave!
While I am not opposed to compulsary licensing on principle, this law has several problems.
First off is the matter of incidental copies. As you mentioned, incidental copies created during the delivery of digital files are considered by some to be in a legal grey area. This law clarifies the position by stating that these copies are covered by the compulsary license. However, this is very dangerous wording as it legitimizes the concept that a license is needed for the copies. Furthermore, as the compulsary license only applies to "nondramatic musical works", this opens the door for others (MPAA, BSA, etc) to insist that licenses are required incidental copies of thier works. Most likely this would come in the form of worsening C&D actions which are too costly to defend against regardless of the eventual legality. The area becomes even shadier in the case of p2p distribution methods (when used legally - distributing copyrighted work without permission is undoubtedly illegal).
This "grey area" does need to be clarified, and the intention of the section is good, however is needs to be worded in a way that debunks rather than supports the idea that incidental copies may need licenses. Something along the line of this:
Incidental copies, such as caching and buffering that are made in the process of legally distributing a work acrossed a network or any other distibution channel, are to be considered fair use, and do not need explicit licenses. Such incidental copies are valid only for the purpose of legal redistribution, and any use beyond that require a license. Any copies of legally obtained works made for personal use (no distribution takes place) including format shifting and backups are also fair use, and do not need explicit license.
IANAL, so I am sure that this could be worded better.
Furthermore, as the copyright office is quoted in your post, streaming is not the same as distribution and the current poor wording of the bill that would strengthen those trying to treat streaming as distribution (like cd) rather than performance (like radio).
All in all, the intent - to clarify the law and close legal traps for online music stores - is a good one, but the way it is written creates many more traps in the process.
Monarchy ensure freedom for the crown. Anarchy ensure freedom for the strong. Capitalism ensures freedom for the rich. Democracy ensures freedom for the majority. Republics ensure freedom for their constituents. All forms of government ensure freedom for those who are in power.
No mechanism or form of government ensures freedom for all - the only way this is ever possible is if those in power choose to cede their capability to exploit those that are not. The great philosophers of democracy as well as the founding fathers of the US had no delusions about this. It was always understood by them that freedom for all is only obtained only by the enlightened self-interest of the law-makers, and preserved only by the eternal vigilance of the people. However, far too many members of our populace no longer understand this.
Slashdot Mirror
This whole "think of the children", "I can't watch out for my kids, so the government should do it for me" garbage was around long before 9/11. It around during the seventies, and was in full swing during the Clinton administration.
You can't blame this on terrorists, or the neocons, or the Bush administration. This is something that the people of this country ask, and beg for, and the government is only all to happy to comply.
Not enough trollish articles around to stir up page views? Don't worry our sister company can supply them for us, and we get double the page hits. This isn't an unreasonable request - if you can go through the effort of compiling and testing all these packages, then including the sources on the CD/FTP site isn't that much more work - it is just part of the process. The only headache here is that they haven't been doing it and they need to catch up, and the FSF is lenient about that.
Honestly, I have never found the web of trust to be usefull. For people I have real-life contact with, we can just exchage keys in person. For people that I converse with online, we can exchange public keys via email, and we will know that all email signed with those keys are from the same person, even though we don't know who that person is apart from their online presence. For companies that I do business with (like my bank), they could provide me with thier public keys either via a secure link (like ssl website), in person at one of the branches, or better yet included each time I renew my card.
From my perspective, the fact that someone else signed your key, even someone I know, really doesn't make it any more trustworthy to me, and is just as meaningless as a CA. CAs do have another advantage in that they provide better infrastucture for revoking compromised keys than web of trust. In what situations do you find the web of trust to be usefull?
/rubs hands devilishly
Furthermore, I have seen statistics showing that salary now represents the majority of income for those in the top 10%, compared to the seventies, where investment returns greatly overshadowed salary. Unfortunately, can't find a reference at the moment, nor can I remember if the top 10% was based on income or wealth.
Still can't find the link, but here is another article from the economist complaining that american shareholders are too generous with their CEOs.
The way they are able to offer this is by licensing the music from the record labels and pressing CDs themselves.
No, they sell the same CD pressings as anyone else. Your source may have been confused by the fact that in addition to having a mail-order CD club, they are also a record label - the second largest in the world. So, of course they press their own CD's - every label does.
There are a couple reasons that they are able to offer lower prices. First, by dealing directly with the customer they cut out the middleman (retail store). Second, they don't mind the lower profit because the people who buy through these clubs usually would not buy as much at retail prices - ie the same reasons that companies offer coupons. Third, they used to trick people into buying CD's and made it difficult to return, although they don't do this as much anymore. And lastly, the record contracts that they have with their artists state that the artists don't get any royalties off of music club sales, much smaller royalties than they would get off a normal CD sales. The main reason that their selection was low, was because other labels weren't eager to sign a deal with them (sometimes preferring their own mail-order services), and when artists renegotiated that part of the deal, BMG decided to not sell their music at all over than to pay normal royalties.
Anyway the reason you don't see back-catalog items as much is the same reason you see HP canceling their profitable calculator division. Executives of large companies don't care if something is profitable - if they can focus their company's energies on things that are more profitable then they will do so at the expense of otherwise good opportunities. And in this case the music companies don't want to sell off that part of their catalog to others, as that would create competition. Better to just let it rot.
It's hard to compare the two directly, since they have different kinds of artifacts that vary for different types of music. In addition, the encoder you use makes a big difference, especially if you are comparing against fixed-rate (ie not variable bitrate or VBR) MP3s. MP3s encoded with the latest version of LAME sounds are as good as WMA IMHO. But as a quick rule of thumb 128kbps AAC is about as good as 256kbps MP3. Ogg Vorbis is more or less the same. However, in my experience 128kbps WMA is only as good as about 192kbps MP3, ie a factor of 1.5 better rather than 2.
You might try looking up the default solaris console font, and seeing if there is a True Type version. I don't know the name, but I do recall that it was serif, and that many people preferred it over the linux console fonts.
I was up in northern California a few years ago, visiting my grandma. We had often made family trips up there when I was a kid growing up in New Mexico, but due to the shortness of vacation time, never saw much of the surrounding country, instead spending our limited time socializing with relatives. Because of this, my grandma decided to take me around to do some sight seeing. Among the places that we stopped was the Chico Dam. It was nice solid dam, with lush vegetation on the banks, and behold, fish trying to jump over the dam. After a closer look I noticed a fish ladder coming from the base of the river.
:)
I had seen these on the discovery channel before - they were designed create a detour so the fish could swim up and around the dam to mate upstream. I followed the ladder from the base of the dam as it wound up the hill. Along the way were signs describing the different fish in the river, and I spotted several of the varieties among the travelers. I was struck with a sense of awe watching these fish. With such determination and perseverance they swam, often doing everything they could to keep in place against the current, but slowly and steadily jumping up one step of the ladder at a time.
I followed the fish ladder to the top of a hill, where it went into small building. Ah I thought, this must be where they tag the fish for studies. I bent over to one of the large windows to block the glare from the sun. A metal rod rammed through the fishes head, and it was thrown limply into one of two piles. Workers grabbed the fish from one pile and and sliced open their gullet with a smooth swipe, causing orange gunk to fall into a bucket. At the other pile, workers were squeezing a white liquid from them. I stood there dazed for a moment, and then looked down and saw a little plaque that stated that the orange stuff was called roe, and the white stuff was called milt.
That, my friend, is the day I learned the term Milt
I later learned that all the fish swimming up the river would have died naturally after mating anyway, that only a small percentage make it this far up the river, and that the number of fish born at this hatchery far exceeded the number that would have been born naturally. So it was a good thing, if a bit shocking for the uninitiated. I also learned that fishing is for suckers - why hassle with nets and lines, when you can have your dinner swim to you.
So you are running Opera on top of Ubuntu and Ubuntu on top of Emacs? That's my kind of Emacs user!
New versions of Firefox 1.x will run on windows 9x.
New versions of Firefox 2.x will run on windows 9x. (2007?)
Not until firefox 3.x will support for windows 9x be dropped. (2008?)
Microsoft's last browser that supported windows 9x was released 5 years ago, while firefox is still planning on supporting it in new releases for at least another year.
It is the perfect tool for Origami Software Developers :)
Yeah, the handheld Lights Out game came out at about the same time I started playing with GUIs, and I got into the habit of using it as a "Hello World" project when I am learning a new Windowing Toolkit. I think I have versions for GTK, WxWindows, Borland C++ Builder, LabWindows, Swing, SWT, and Winforms (C#) all laying around somewhere.
One potential aspect of this joint venture that I haven't been able to find any information about is whether it includes transfer of stakes in Symbian OS? I don't imagine it would considering it is the network divisions, not the phone divisions. However, if it does it might push Nokia over 50% ownership.
PS: When visiting symbian.com at work, don't leave out the m! Looks like I'm going to be getting visit from the network overlords. Grumble, grumble.
That is exactly why it was done. More information about can be found at kerneltrap: here, and here. It was also previously on slashdot, although you would be best to skip that - it has more misinformation than the other kind.
In short, all the known ways of implementing zero-copy within the existing API's cause the most common usage cases of those API to be slower than they are now. Therefore, it made more sense to export this new API for the applications where speed is critical.
In the the first kernaltrap article, Linus also explains why splice is different from sendfile, contrary to the posts here claiming they are essentially the same.
So worst case scenario $2.68 per year to leave the console in standby? ...
I just don't see what the point of this article is.
Let's see, you read the article, took the information from it, and determined that a video game system in standby is not a significant waste of energy compared to other factors. Seems like the article served it's purpose well - to determine what the costs are and pass that information on to others. News doesn't have to be life-shattering and hard-hitting to be useful - just informative.
While there will always be gullible people, I am not suprised that PayPal has a larger problem than other places. When I was still using them, they had horrible email practices. They sent out emails advertising new serivices. They even included links in their emails. There was more than once when I recieved a legitimate email from PayPal which I though was a phish. Yeah they sent out warning about phishing, but when legitimate email looks like a phish, people are going to have a harder time telling the difference.
Financial institutions should never include links in their emails. They should be very hesitant about sending any emails except in response to a user action. They should never send out emails the response of which is to enter personal information (such as signing up for a new service), even if they inform the user to go directly to their site rather than providing a link. Sending out crap like this just conditions the users to expect and trust emails and links from PayPal.
Maybe they are better now - I haven't used them in a while, because I don't trust them with access to my bank account. They have abused that power on too many people, too many times, so I don't do business with them anymore.
Private industry is making significant steps. After winning the X-prize in fall of 2004, Rutan estimated that it would take about 4-5 years until SpaceshipTwo was ready for regular flights. That schedule still looks reasonable, with the first flight around 2008, and passenger flights around 2009. Furthermore, several other groups are continuing to work on suborbital vehicles to compete with Virgin Galactic, including XCOR and Blue Orgin. Bigalow is progressing far better than people expected and will be launching a proof-of-concept space station shortly (russian launcher). SpaceX had their first launch recently, and while it failed, this is normal for new rockets. They are making good progress, and still have enthusiastic customers. Not to mention all the established private industry like Orbital Sciences, who are great guys and consistently do good work.
This stuff takes time - it took Nasa time, and while these entrepreneurs have Nasa's mistakes to learn from, they also have a much smaller budget. What they are achieving with that budget is impressive. I am really looking forward to seeing these people start making money off the suborbital rides, so they have a solid revenue stream for more development. Of all the plans Bigalow's is the most risking, and most interesting. If he can create a profitable space hotel - if he can do for LEO space stations what Orbital Sciences did for satellite lauches, then the government can just rent whatever space they need from him, and get it's manned space program back to what it should be doing - pushing the boundries on human colonization, not draining money on the ISS.
By the time 3.0 is absolutely necessary, the pre-2K computers could have already upgraded to Ubuntu.
No, the main reasons that people stick with windows 9x is because they don't have any reason to upgrade, their computer is too slow for XP, or because they have the odd application that doesn't run well on XP. These people would have no more reason to upgrade to Ubuntu as to upgrade to XP.
But they also probably won't care much about the fact that new releases of Firefox will stop being supported in two years - they will just use the older versions, just like they use the older versions of everything else.
and totally redeem itself!!!
As we know worker moral is important, and considering the traditional living arrangements of your standard computer geek, it stands to reason that they should build their data center in the most awesome basement ever built! Hey, one can dream can't he? To the batcave!
First off is the matter of incidental copies. As you mentioned, incidental copies created during the delivery of digital files are considered by some to be in a legal grey area. This law clarifies the position by stating that these copies are covered by the compulsary license. However, this is very dangerous wording as it legitimizes the concept that a license is needed for the copies. Furthermore, as the compulsary license only applies to "nondramatic musical works", this opens the door for others (MPAA, BSA, etc) to insist that licenses are required incidental copies of thier works. Most likely this would come in the form of worsening C&D actions which are too costly to defend against regardless of the eventual legality. The area becomes even shadier in the case of p2p distribution methods (when used legally - distributing copyrighted work without permission is undoubtedly illegal).
This "grey area" does need to be clarified, and the intention of the section is good, however is needs to be worded in a way that debunks rather than supports the idea that incidental copies may need licenses. Something along the line of this:
IANAL, so I am sure that this could be worded better.
Furthermore, as the copyright office is quoted in your post, streaming is not the same as distribution and the current poor wording of the bill that would strengthen those trying to treat streaming as distribution (like cd) rather than performance (like radio).
All in all, the intent - to clarify the law and close legal traps for online music stores - is a good one, but the way it is written creates many more traps in the process.
Monarchy ensure freedom for the crown.
Anarchy ensure freedom for the strong.
Capitalism ensures freedom for the rich.
Democracy ensures freedom for the majority.
Republics ensure freedom for their constituents.
All forms of government ensure freedom for those who are in power.
No mechanism or form of government ensures freedom for all - the only way this is ever possible is if those in power choose to cede their capability to exploit those that are not. The great philosophers of democracy as well as the founding fathers of the US had no delusions about this. It was always understood by them that freedom for all is only obtained only by the enlightened self-interest of the law-makers, and preserved only by the eternal vigilance of the people. However, far too many members of our populace no longer understand this.