I definitely feel lucky...I guess I get DSL because I happen to live within an area where there's a locally owned telco (WCVT) that owns all their own stuff and happened to want to do it. I wonder how many places in the country have that?
Another argument for smaller, local companies over huge ones...
I live in a small town in Vermont (pop 971) and have both Cable and DSL access available (I got DSL because it was available first). The reason? We have a small independent telco that has been very aggressive in rolling out broadband. They own all their own equipment, so there's no CLEC/Bell crap.
Also our state public service board takes its job seriously...
I'm curious. Of the lucky ones who have ridden a Segway, how many think they're too dangerous to be on sidewalks? I've ridden one and my feeling is that they are *so* intuitive that they aren't any more dangerous than, say, a jogger. Certainly much safer than bicycles.
"Total Information Awareness"
on
HomeSec In the News
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Did anyone read Saffire's column? Unbelievable.
Here's the letter I just sent out to my representatives:
I am writing to ask you to make every effort to prevent the so-called "Total Information Awareness" system that John Poindexter and the Defense Dept's Information Awareness Office want to create. This system would systematically snoop on most every public and private action that you take. My understanding is that a provision of the Homeland Security Act contains this odious measure. As William Saffire says in the New York Times (or is quoting him a DMCA violation?):
"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen"
This sort of surveillance should be absolutely repellent in an open and free society, and I am discusted that it is being considered at all. Personal privacy and government openness should be the hallmark of the United States. It seems that the Republican government wants to turn that on its head. This is an invitation to abuse - if we visit the ACLU web site are we going to be on some Defense Dept list? What about this letter? This measure would be an incredible chilling of free and open debate.
Actually all the information I've seen is that developers should not do *all* the code testing. You should do unit testing and you should write tests, but you should *not* depend on that - you need external testers also
I haven't had cable or a dish in my house (we get one broadcast channel - CBS) up till now. I could get either, but I haven't.
This summer we're renovating our house and the place we're staying during that has cable. There are some cool things (monster garage, for instance), but when we move back, I'm not going to get it.
King Crimson retains copyright to their works. The way they did it is to found their own record company. I don't see anything specific on the site, but the back of their CDs has a blurb on how it's wrong to take copyright from artists...
My company is delivering a 300mm device prober down there soon - the interface to the production tools themselves is SECS-II/GEM. This has been around for ages, but there's a pile of 300mm specific stuff.
If you're interested in being acquitted, check out FIJA, an organization dedicated to informing us of our rights as jurors to vote innocent if we feel the law is wrong or being misapplied. What if no jury voted guilty in DMCA cases?
On the other hand, I bought a house that was constructed this way. It's a nice house, but when we did some work on it, we discovered, for instance, that the wiring was all messed up and had to get it redone to get it up to code. The previous owner's brother-in-law did the wiring.
There was also the issue of the shower stall being a load bearing member...
Robert Fripp, of King Crimson fame, has started a record label, Discipline Global that lets artists keep their copyrights. Check out this pagefor some general philosophy of their business. Unfortunately it doesn't say there explicitly that they do this, but it does say it on the back of one my Crimson CDs.
However the page discusses 'ethical' businesses and makes some interesting points.
Oh yes, if you're not familiar with King Crimson, go out and buy some right now!
Yeah, but Joel's article isn't about why *you're* writing free software, it's why IBM is paying people to write it. They're two completely different things.
In search of a quick fix, I went to the local evil super store (i.e Best Buy). They're not putting it out until tomorrow because "we always put out new software on Thursday"
Slashdot Mirror
Here you go, but they're PDFs...I got the links from Larry Lessig's blog
/.ed...
Majority opinion
Justice Steven's dissent
Justice Breyer's dissent
I wonder how Larry's going to like being
*Zeros*!?! You had zeros????
All we had was the letter 'O'...
I definitely feel lucky...I guess I get DSL because I happen to live within an area where there's a locally owned telco (WCVT) that owns all their own stuff and happened to want to do it. I wonder how many places in the country have that?
Another argument for smaller, local companies over huge ones...
I live in a small town in Vermont (pop 971) and have both Cable and DSL access available (I got DSL because it was available first). The reason? We have a small independent telco that has been very aggressive in rolling out broadband. They own all their own equipment, so there's no CLEC/Bell crap.
Also our state public service board takes its job seriously...
I'm curious. Of the lucky ones who have ridden a Segway, how many think they're too dangerous to be on sidewalks? I've ridden one and my feeling is that they are *so* intuitive that they aren't any more dangerous than, say, a jogger. Certainly much safer than bicycles.
So lets hear from those that have...
Does it record HDTV?
Still...
Did anyone read Saffire's column? Unbelievable.
Here's the letter I just sent out to my representatives:
I am writing to ask you to make every effort to prevent the so-called "Total Information Awareness" system that John Poindexter and the Defense Dept's Information Awareness Office want to create. This system would systematically snoop on most every public and private action that you take. My understanding is that a provision of the Homeland Security Act contains this odious measure. As William Saffire says in the New York Times (or is quoting him a DMCA violation?):
"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen"
This sort of surveillance should be absolutely repellent in an open and free society, and I am discusted that it is being considered at all. Personal privacy and government openness should be the hallmark of the United States. It seems that the Republican government wants to turn that on its head. This is an invitation to abuse - if we visit the ACLU web site are we going to be on some Defense Dept list? What about this letter? This measure would be an incredible chilling of free and open debate.
This measure must be defeated.
Thank you
Tom Haviland
Uh this is from Porsche Designs GmbH which, like most design houses, needs to make money so they (gasp) design things for whomever pays them.
It is *not* the same as Porsche cars, although they do design very nice high end stuff.
Hey, I've still got one! Time to check Ebay...
The RIAA accusses a shadowy hacker's organization, known only as "slashdot", of a massive distributed Denial of Service attack on its web site...
Actually all the information I've seen is that developers should not do *all* the code testing. You should do unit testing and you should write tests, but you should *not* depend on that - you need external testers also
at Freedom to Tinker. Lots of interesting stuff...
I haven't had cable or a dish in my house (we get one broadcast channel - CBS) up till now. I could get either, but I haven't.
This summer we're renovating our house and the place we're staying during that has cable. There are some cool things (monster garage, for instance), but when we move back, I'm not going to get it.
Rentals work fine for movies.
King Crimson retains copyright to their works. The way they did it is to found their own record company. I don't see anything specific on the site, but the back of their CDs has a blurb on how it's wrong to take copyright from artists...
My company is delivering a 300mm device prober down there soon - the interface to the production tools themselves is SECS-II/GEM. This has been around for ages, but there's a pile of 300mm specific stuff.
Check out this for an overview...
Of course you'd have to clean up the puke in the theater afterwards...
Money Money Money. Read this article; the government expects to get 18 Billion dollars by 2010 out of spectrum auctions after digital TV is going.
umm.. there are, for practical matters, only a few car companies:
For example, Ford owns or has a large stake in:
Mazda
Jaguar
Volvo
Rover
Mercedes owns Chrysler and Mitsubishi
GM may soon own Fiat (and thus Ferrari and Maserati)
Volkswagen owns Audi, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, Seat, and Bugatti
etc etc etc
If you're interested in being acquitted, check out FIJA, an organization dedicated to informing us of our rights as jurors to vote innocent if we feel the law is wrong or being misapplied. What if no jury voted guilty in DMCA cases?
How is this different from Microsoft donating software to schools? *Everyone* was up in arms about that...
On the other hand, I bought a house that was constructed this way. It's a nice house, but when we did some work on it, we discovered, for instance, that the wiring was all messed up and had to get it redone to get it up to code. The previous owner's brother-in-law did the wiring.
There was also the issue of the shower stall being a load bearing member...
Robert Fripp, of King Crimson fame, has started a record label, Discipline Global that lets artists keep their copyrights. Check out this pagefor some general philosophy of their business. Unfortunately it doesn't say there explicitly that they do this, but it does say it on the back of one my Crimson CDs.
However the page discusses 'ethical' businesses and makes some interesting points.
Oh yes, if you're not familiar with King Crimson, go out and buy some right now!
Yeah, but Joel's article isn't about why *you're* writing free software, it's why IBM is paying people to write it. They're two completely different things.
In search of a quick fix, I went to the local evil super store (i.e Best Buy). They're not putting it out until tomorrow because "we always put out new software on Thursday"
I *hate* those places...