Manufacturers have some crazy idea that such arms should be mounted from a wall bracket. Bull!
What you need is a keyboard monitor that can be hung from a ceiling joist. Make a bracket that could hang off of a 2x4 (not just bolt into it), put some decorative facade to hide the hole in the wall, and hold the damned thing from on high! You eliminate most of the torque problem, since the monitor can be directly below the arm.
Anybody ever see anything like this, or know where to get an industrial-strength Erector set for same?
It still does, to a degree. Even when the droids aren't talking to you, hearing them talk amongst themselves gives you (as a soldier working with the droids) vital clues as to what they were doing. The idea is that you, as their superior, could hear them quickly discuss a bad plan, and interrupt them. Besides, if I was one of the Federation types, I'd want my droids talkative so I could make sure they weren't going nonlinear behind my back.
The LAN makes a lot of sense, considering the droids were networked to an orbital craft anyhow. I can't imagine it being to prevent ECM; if you can forge a LAN order, you can also jam the LAN and shut the force down.
However, there is a good reason for them to speak verbally. To get back on topic, the use of verbal communications allows bioforms to interact better with battle droids. The Federation was at a tremendous disadvantage with an all-droid army, as those droids were especially bad at dealing with odd situations (such as Qui-Gon's request to board the ship--it had to think for a few seconds before deciding to arrest them).
I'm assuming that the Federation simply didn't have the manpower and were stuck with an all-droid army. If you had the money and the manpower, you could have a small bioform officer core supplemented by droids. In that case, the bioforms have to know what their droids are doing, so the verbal communication is key.
2) If it is real, then Slashdot is doing a serious disservice and actually undermining these peoples' belief system. Have some respect.
If it is real, then it should be taken seriously. However, if it is real, there is something seriously wrong with their Christianity.
I forget which one, but they said they were dropping a program because it was written by a homosexual. Okay, let's rephrase that: a disbelieving sinner. That doesn't stop a Christian. If you're using Linux anyhow, you're probably buying your memory from Japan--very likely built by disbelieving sinners. We use Arabic numerals, for the love of sanity!
Something I see a lot of in Christianity are people seeing who can out-Bible-thump the other. Not only is this the height of arrogance ("I am so much humbler than you!"), but it causes you to stop thinking and start reacting in a counterproductive McCarthyism mode. God gave us brains, he expects us to use them.
I don't think that the entire NSA should be exposed, but I have a gut feeling that a lot of the stuff is misclassified.
I don't know if misclassification is a problem unique to the States or if it happens everywhere. But when you have a department of spooks, they often feel the need to classify information that has no need to be classified. Often, this information is embarrasing rather than strategic. Especially in the States, any government information that does not have to be classified has to be released.
The NSA itself is a secret organization. For a while, its mere existence was classified. Why? The US could have simply gone public and said "We are forming a National Security Agency, which will specialize in cryptography and counter-cryptography". How would that have caused harm to the States? Everybody assumed that this was happening anyhow, since we were code-cracking in WWII.
OTOH, there are a lot of secrets that we should keep. Look at the F-117 Stealth Fighter. The ability to keep that under wraps for so long until it was used in a war kept other forces from getting a head-start on developing countermeasures. Once it made a wartime appearance, we could publicly reveal the weapon, as our enemies had seen it already.
Currently, the NSA is so secretive that its entire budget is classified. I cannot imagine any need for an agency's entire budget to be classified. I can imagine a need for large parts, perhaps the majority, of the budget to be classified. But for crying out loud, how much are these guys spending on #2 pencils?. All that gives away is a clue into the NSA's headcount. Maybe. (Unless, of course, they are working on the dreaded pencil-gatling).
America needs to keep secrets. It needs to keep a lot of secrets. But it is keeping a lot more secrets than it has to, and thus a lot more secrets than it should.
Your argument against crypto is as spurious as it would be if you were trying to ban Rider trucks with Timothy McVeigh as your case.
Almost amusingly, the government started thinking about regulating the distribution of manure fertilizer, because it was (supposedly?) a fertilizer bomb in that truck. The talk went nowhere.
My guess is that Congress started thinking about it, but realized that once they banned the slinging of bull???? that they'd be out of a job.
Antitrust law makes illegal "combinations in restraint of trade," and "anticompetitive practices." Taken literally, that makes all businesses criminal, since by definition, they work to beat their competition and drive them out of business.
All businesses compete with anticompetitive practices?
In point of fact, all corporations do not work to drive their competition out of business. Corporations work to maximize profit. If a company can eat so much of a market that it drives others out of business, that is collateral damage. This is entirely different from specifically driving competition out of business in order to reap more profits.
For example, Coca-Cola presumably wants to increase the demand for Coca-Cola soft drinks. They may do this at the expense of Pepsi-Cola soft drinks (because they currently have no chance of destroying Pepsi-Cola), or the soft drinks of smaller soda vendors, or even at the expense of beer vendors. If they could sell Coca-Cola as a machine lubricant, they would do that. All of this maximizes sales, none of this restrains trade.
If they have destroyed some smaller soft drink firms, they still have not attempted to do so. It is collateral damage. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been shown to take specific actions to destroy other companies.
Most of the things that Microsoft has done were not considered crimes when they were doing them. That's why the government emphasizes "patterns of behavior." Very few of MS's specific actions are illegal, but only "when taken as a whole" they are illegal. That seems to me overly broad.
The pattern of behavior is still a valid legal concept. If I were a seven-time widower whose wives had all died of "freak accidents", then this pattern itself is evidence for a charge of homicide against me. It is likely not enough to convict me, but it strengthens other evidence. The specifics of the IE/Netscape case are that other evidence in this case.
BTW, if you are attacking the law itself, are you not attacking from a position higher than Federal law? The only position I know of higher than Federal law is morality. Do you suggest that we not apply the law to Microsoft because the law is immoral, though Microsoft's immoral actions are to be accepted because there is no law against them?
Now you can say that the courts can figure this stuff out, but my point is that it shouldn't have to. There's no ambiguity abouyt what constitutes murder. There might be some uncertainty at the edges about which kind of murder a given act is, but if you kill someone and you were not being attacked at the time, you are guilty of some form of murder.
Funny that you should choose that example. Kevorkian is currently in jail for an ambiguous murder. Pro-life and Pro-choice advocates are trying to change or defend the current definition of murder.
The courts exist for ambiguity, because a law that is too specific can be worked around. You are correct in that a law can be too vague to be useful as anything but a bludgeon. As in many things, one must avoid both extremes. We merely disagree as to whether or not antitrust law is extremely vague.
The DoJ is prosecuting Microsoft on antitrust charges because their other crimes are committed against specific entities that can and should prosecute them seperately. Note that Sun Microsystems is currently suing Microsoft over their Java implementation. Caldera is or was suing Microsoft over their efforts to sabotage DR/DOS. The DoJ trial is not the only thing landing Microsoft in court these days.
Fine, and if those prosecutions are for real, specific crimes, I support their right to do so. But let's keep them seperate from this trial, which is not about specific crimes.
My comment is in boldface, and was a response to a comment saying that the DoJ can't find anything more specific than antitrust to prosecute on.
Capitalism means the free market. A free market in which the Federal government is allowed to step in and stop companies who act "unfairly" is a contradiction in terms. Over the long term, monopolies are impossible in a free market, even without antitrust law. Antitrust law is not a safeguard of a free market. It undermines it and makes it less free.
I disagree with the lot of that. First off, a free market is not a capitalism. AFAIK, a free market is one where there are no legal restrictions on economic activity. In such an environment, one can legally engage in blackmail, extortion, unregulated gambling, pyramid schemes, and flat-out theft.
A capitalism, OTOH, is a system where the regulations are set up to make it easiest to earn money by serving others. McDonald's makes tons of money turning hungry people into non-hungry people. It is a light, not heavy, grip on economic control. In a properly working capitalism, one can make more money selling good products than by, say, a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are cheap, and make more money in a free market, but provide the public with nada.
Monopolies destroy themselves? Where? How?
But if you still want the free market, I'll work with that. Microsoft only has its monopoly because of government regulation. Their chief asset is a set of copyrights. In a free market, copyright law simply does not exist. Microsoft is a government protected monopoly.
As for Microsoft being a "wrench" in the gears, I think you might be suffering from myopia. From a technical standpoint, Windows is a mediocre product. But for most users, it is *still* the best choice for many tasks. The Mac OS doesn't have the software base and the commodity hardware, and the Unices are intimidating for the average user. I hope something better comes along to replace Windows, but for now I think the existence of Windows is a good thing. I'd hate to see that obstructed by government interference.
MS Windows is the best platform out there for a lot of things. I own a Windows machine. The fact that it is the best doesn't imply that it is any good. A car with square wheels is the best car out there if Squarewheel Motors sabotages anyone who tries to sell cars with round wheels.
The point is that Microsoft makes sure that Windows is the "best" by making sure that anything better dies young. Again, this is by design, rather than collateral damage.
Here are some recent platform threats, and how MS sabotaged them.
OS/2: Microsoft ran "astroturf" campaigns--defrauding the public by making complaints about the platform that were supposed to be from random users, but were in fact from MS itself.
Also, they made deals with hardware vendors where the vendors would pay for every machine they sold, regardless of OS. This kept hardware vendors from shipping other OSs because they would pay double the licensing fee, and was the cause oforiginal antitrust lawsuit.
WebTV (a way to get on the Web W/O Windows): Bought by MS. If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em.
Macintosh: Really didn't have to do anything to knock them out; Apple did that well enough. Apple now has partnered with MS for a huge cash infusion: perhaps to make it look like there is competition for Windows?
Netscape: Microsoft realized that Netscape allowed you to run apps on the Web, thus making the desktop irrelevant. They knocked Netscape off the map by giving IE away for free, and by giving vendors perks for not shipping Netscape. This not only is a direct attack against Netscape, but it paves the way for IE extensions, only served by MS Web servers, to give MS a chance to monopolize the Web server market by leveraging their desktop monopoly.
Linux: Read the paper. Better yet, read Slashdot. Also, did you notice that the Big Guys started backing Linux only after MS landed in court? The timing wasn't coincidental: before the trial, vendors were afraid to do that and be denied licences, which would effectively cut them out of the PC market entirely.
The last thing we need is a precedent for government harrassment of the software industry.
You don't need to harass the software industry to remedy the Microsoft situation. Microsoft has already shown that they have contempt for legal restrictions, so all the legal restrictions in the world would not affect them. A pure break-up would remedy the Microsoft problem without putting the government on the backs of the software industry.
The idea that Microsoft should be punished for out-competing its competition is ludicrous.
I fully agree. I also believe that the idea that Microsoft is out-competing its competition is equally ludicrous.
Microsoft has lied (in court and "astroturf" campaigns), stolen (remember Stac vs. Microsoft?), and generally cheated their way to market dominance, and are currently using the same tactics to stay there. I personally cannot recall Microsoft ever gaining or retaining market dominance by creating a superior product.
Given the number of alternatives there are to Windows, and given that both sides give their browsers for free anyway, I fail to see how Microsoft has done anything illegal in this matter.
Let's start with perjury. Microsoft executives, up to Bill Gates himself, have been caught flat-out lying to the court. This doesn't require a fine on the part of Microsoft, but in fact is a series of criminal charges against members of their high command.
From there, we go to violating an agreement that they signed to get out of legal trouble earlier. The Microsoft position on the "bundling" issue is that the definition of "bundling" is indefensible, and that they thus signed a bogus document.
Elsewhere, they are on trial for their implementation of Java.
Finally, there is the antitrust violation itself. They are using a monopoly position in one area (desktops) to produce a monopoly position in other areas (servers, Internet) by literally sabotaging the efforts of other corporations (rather than by making a superior product).
Even if they have broken the law, we're talking about antitrust. Antitrust law is the most vague, overreaching, intrusive law that can be imagined.
That is the most vague, overreaching statement I have heard in a long time. What do you mean by that?
I can find very vague laws in the Bill of Rights, and some people would call them overreaching (look at the right to bear arms). I defend vague laws below. The Sherman Antitrust act is relatively precise.
It literally gives the Feds the power to harrass any company that manages to get a large market share.
The Feds have the power to harass any company, regardless of market share. It's called the IRS. But that's another story...
And it gets reinterpreted every few years, so there's no way Microsoft can possibly predict which things are and are not illegal.
Most laws get reinterpreted every few years, depending on new opportunities to commit crimes. A bunch of laws are getting reinterpreted to handle crimes committed on the Internet, for example.
As far as predicting which things are and are not illegal, forget the reinterpretations. Using a monopoly position, as such, to either keep that monopoly or gain a new monopoly, is illegal. Having a monopoly position by virtue of superior products, and keeping that position by improving one's product, is not illegal.
I don't deny that Microsoft is sleazy, but sleaziness is not a crime.
Certain forms of sleaziness are crimes, and those are the forms that people prosecute Microsoft for.
Laws should be specific and to-the-point.
I disagree. A law that is too specific can be worked around; the best way to avoid pseudocrime (acts which should be crimes but really aren't due to a technicality) is to write a general law.
Remember that the highest law in the land, the Constitution, is written up with a lot of vague laws. the vagueness of these laws is precisely what makes them useful two hundred years later.
If the best charges they can dream up are antitrust charges, that tells me that either they are innocent of any real crime, or there needs to be new laws to address the specific types of crimes they have committed.
The DoJ is prosecuting Microsoft on antitrust charges because their other crimes are committed against specific entities that can and should prosecute them seperately. Note that Sun Microsystems is currently suing Microsoft over their Java implementation. Caldera is or was suing Microsoft over their efforts to sabotage DR/DOS. The DoJ trial is not the only thing landing Microsoft in court these days.
But to twist antitrust law to cover whatever activity the current dominant player in a given industry is without warning is a very bad thing.
I agree. Fortunately, this is not being done here.
Antitrust law is used here to cover activities used by the current dominant player in a given industry to sabotage efforts of other players, including the former dominant player in another industry.
As for the "without warning", Microsoft has had plenty of warning. You cannot call a second antitrust trial a use of antitrust law without warning.
There was no way Micrsoft could have predicted what would be considered a crime, since the things they are accused of doing have been done by many other companies with no legal repercussions.
Other companies are not monopolies. Antitrust law prevents a monopoly from performing certain activities that are legal for other companies. These are specifically the activities that do not work unless one is a monopoly. Antitrust law is an attempt to reduce the tremendous power that a monopoly would otherwise have compared to its nonmonopolistic brethren.
I just hope Microsoft gets off the hook. Even if they broke antitrust laws, they don't deserve to be punished.
I don't care about punishment, and I don't want to punish anybody. I do care about keeping capitalism working. Monopolies break the assumptions of capitalism, and thus break the capitalism.
Why do I care about capitalism? While I think that it's a good thing in and of itself, I also think that capitalism provides good products. And I, for one, am sick and tired of slogging through stupid broken software (or jumping through hoops to avoid same) to get my work done. In a properly working capitalism, the software would work better, period. And Microsoft is a monkey wrench thrown into the gears of that capitalism.
I don't want to punish the wrench. I want to get it out of the gears, or turn it to dust, and get the gears working. Any "punishment" done to the wrench is simply collateral damage.
On top of other problems people have noted with geostationary satellites, they must remain over the equator. This means that you cannot have a geostationary satellite directly over any U.S. city. You can have one directly south of a major U.S. city, but you will always get your views from an angle.
If I want to hide from a geostationary satellite, I just need to stay a few feet north of a building, even single-story. In a big city, you shouldn't be able to see the streets beneath the skyscrapers.
Microsoft has the right to freedom of speech. Says who?
The Constitution give the people the right to free speech. Microsoft is not a "people", it is a corporation. It is financially considered a person, but not so in the strictest legal sense. Microsoft cannot vote, nor can it be arrested or imprisoned. It is not a person.
None of this stops Bill Gates from saying whatever he wants and using his personal fortune to get the message out, but neither Microsoft nor any other corporation has inherant rights as outlined by the Bill of Rights.
Congress has the right to legislate this and other marketing activities (like current regs on tobacco and drug advertising) because it has the right to regulate interstate commerce. You could argue that such restrictions do not apply to sole proprietorships (where the company is the owner), but not for a corporation.
The concept of a corporation is really a legal divorce between the owner(s) and the company, where the owner(s) declare that they are not the company. This gives them certain protections, the most important being that the owners are no longer personally responsible for financial obligations of the company. In response, the company no longer is an extension of the person but becomes its own legal entity (though not a person).
Obviously, if there are no laws that prohibit Microsoft's actions, they can do them by default. However, if there are such prohibitions (possibly contempt of court, obstruction of justice, or something similar), they cannot hide behind the right to free speech.
Frankly, that's what scares me. Currently, M$ is in antitrust legislation, which will drag on for the better part of a decade in appeals and whatever M$ can do to slow the gears down. And frankly, there is a huge debate as to whether M$ is a monopoly or not
My fear is, by that time it becomes bloody well obvious to everybody that M$ is a monopoly, it will be protected because we will also realize that this country needs M$ more that M$ needs this country.
There comes a point in addiction where you simply cannot detox; the addiction is killing you and detox would simply kill you faster. I've seen people go that way, and it isn't pretty. I don't want to see hexidecimal America do the same.
Why bother with learning about networking protocols, OS scheduling, or even OS design? That's Microsoft's job. When they want you to know, they'll send you to M$U (Sort of like "Hamburger U").
College types don't need to know that sort of stuff anyhow. It just leads to cracking.
(This post is smiley-impaired for the humor impaired).
On the one hand, anybody with a domain can set up bogus email accounts: "microsoft@foo.com", "bill_clinton@foo.com". If we worry about people using our personal and organizational names for email addresses, we have a lot to worry about. Too much, in fact.
OTOH, this is a problem because "dotcomnow" is NSI, and NSI has a reputation for trust. Thus, there's a world of difference between "microsoft@foo.com" and "microsoft@dotcomnow.com".
Just some thoughts for figuring out how nasty this security breach is.
Re:What are you so damn afraid of?
on
CALEA update
·
· Score: 2
No, the Feds probably won't monitor random Joes--there just aren't enough Feds. But there are still some serious honkin' dangers.
1: Supposed Enemy of the State This allows the Feds to keep track of people who, while not criminal, still piss off the Fed. If the government is going environmental, it can track loggers this way. If the government is leaning in the loggers' favor, it can track down troublesome environmentalists. Think how much the Fed would love to put surveillance on somebody like Ross Perot? Big Brother is watching you, even if you are above board.
2: Bad Cop, No Donut If you allow a federal law enforcement agency to see something, you are allowing multitudes of individual federal officers to see it. And since some people are corrupt, it stands to reason that some federal agents with access are corrupt.
3: Point of Attack This follows from the above, and is frankly what scares me the most. A Federal back door into security systems becomes an incredible prize for a cracker, and you simply cannot protect it like Fort Knox. With a good cracker (or a bad cop; see above), that back door gets posted to the cracker BBSs. And if everybody is required by law to have this back door in their systems, this means that the entire nation becomes instantly vulnerable. This is not like a security bug that you can patch a fix to.
BTW, this issue is close to my heart. Part of my job is making sure that financial data gets from hither to yon without getting intercepted by criminals. If the Fed required me to install a back door to the software I use, I would be literally unable to do my job.
Re:There's stuff you can do
on
CALEA update
·
· Score: 5
The FCC is appointed by the President -- tell him (or, better yet, the party he's from) that they won't get your vote as long as shenanigans like these persist. And do it, too. Don't buy that "you'll throw your vote away" crap -- if 89% of this country didn't vote for the Democrats or Republicans, how much of a waste is that? IMO, you're probably wasting your vote if you do vote for the two major parties, since both of them probably represent many, many views you find repellant, no matter who you are.
Before the last election, I was talking politics with some acquaintences, and I mentioned I was voting for Harry Brown (Libertarian). The response I got was along the lines of "Why the hell are you voting for someone who doesn't have a chance of winning?"
This isn't a horserace. In a horserace, you only win if you pick the right horse. In an election, you only win if the majority picks the right horse; if an idiot (or worse) is elected, it doesn't mean a damn that you voted for or against the candidate.
Republicans and Democrats want you to think that there are two candidates for any office: the one the Republicans back and the ones the Democrats back. Bull! They may have the best chances of winning, but that is no excuse for voting for them. For any office, vote for somebody you think will do the job well. Write them in, if you have to!
Is this a dangerous "waste" of a vote? No. Many people vote against one candidate by voting for the candidate of the other major party. But (at least for Presidential elections), splitting the opposition vote is still a vote against. That is, if you want to vote against the Democrat, a vote for the Republican, the Reformist, Jesse Ventura, or Rob Malda will still have the same effect in keeping the Democrat out of office. The Democrat doesn't need the most votes; the Democrat needs over fifty percent of the vote (or you dust off the Constitution and play strip poker; the last candidate wearing clothing gets the Oval Office).
If you are going to vote, vote for somebody. Just voting against somebody is the trap the Republicans and Democrats want you to fall into.
So what if you vote for somebody who has no chance of winning, if you don't think that the candidates that do have a chance are all idiots? There are two possibilities: either you are wrong or you are right. If you are wrong, your candidate may win. If you are right, and only the idiots have a chance of winning, you are no worse off by voting for a useful candidate that loses than by voting for a useless candidate that wins. You still get the same guy in office in the worst case.
Re:Searching Serendipity
on
CALEA update
·
· Score: 2
And isn't there some law about not being able to use information against you that was discovered while looking for something else? IIRC, and IANAL, there is a law that does about half of what you say. Cops can search any public area for anything. For them to search a private area for something, they either need permission from the owner or a search warrant granted by a judge.
The warrant is supposed to state what property can be searched, and for what. Now, what if the cops find something else? IIRC, they can use it, so long as they were conducting a legitimate search as per the search warrant.
For an example, imagine a felon has a bag of drugs in his sock drawer. If the cops come in with a search warrant for a handgun, they are justified in going through the man's sock drawer (you can hide handguns in sock drawers), and can then bust the guy on drug charges and use the evidence legally in court. If the warrant is for, say, stolen washing machines, cops have no right to go through his sock drawer: he cannot possibly hide a washing machine in a sock drawer. If they do, and find the drugs, they cannot use that as court evidence, arrest the guy for it, or bring that to a judge to get a warrant for searching for drugs.
Of course, in the latter case, they may use legal surveillance methods to see if they can get some legal evidence for an arrest...
This may not happen, because the Internet has the bandwidth for all perspectives.
Given current broadcast media (TV, radio, etc.), only so much can be said on a given topic. Thus, we get sound bites--whether we want them or not. There is a real demand for in-depth reporting, but the media chooses instead to meet the demand for shallow and broad reporting.
The Internet is big enough for deep and broad reporting. You can browse the sound bytes, or click deeper and get the stories behind the story. AFAIK, this makes larger newspapers obsolete; portals provide national news better than papers or TV/Radio can. Of course, I still keep my local paper, since portals don't cover my area specifically.
You may have a point there. I know nothing about German trademark law, but I bet it would be impossible to trademark "Deutsch" because it is a regular word with a well-defined meaning.
Arguably, Linux is the same.
It seems to me that the best way to protect the Linux name may be to go around trademark law entirely and go to where the real power is--lobby Merriam-Webster to put it in their next unabridged dictionary.
Joe Haldeman came up with this one, in a book called The Forever War. Basically, if you can produce and detect neutrinos, then you can use neutrinos as we currently use radio-spectrum photons. Specifically, you have something like a radio where everything is line of sight.
I apologize. I should have paid more attention to your disclaimer. A moment's worth of frustration is not a mind full of hate--it's natural.
And you're right on the labeling. Of course, it doesn't help that we geeks keep using the label on ourselves. Ever notice that "geek" is a word that sounds fine until someone who isn't one uses it?
Geeks are not normal. If we were normal, we'd be like the majority; that's pretty much the definition of "normal". We are abnormal, and for the most part we enjoy that. That's called "geek pride".
That's a far cry from geek supremacy, the idea that geeks are the only people that matter. I have a lot of geek pride, and no use whatsoever for geek supremacy.
The average person is not "useless". If you want to keep a society running, you need a lot of different types of people. Imagine a world without your "useless" people, populated only by geeks. Where would we be?
I'll give you a hint: pretty hungry, pretty fast.
Cops. Farmers. Soldiers. Factory workers. Managers. Sales clerks. All positions that need to be filled, all positions that geeks aren't particularly good at (mostly because we aren't particularly drawn to them, as a group--obviously, there are exceptions). All positions filled by your "useless" people.
Not so useless, are they?
Even where I work, I thank God for these "normal" people. My company has sales and marketing divisions. Sure, there's some friction there, but they're damned useful people. They sell the stuff, bring the money in, pretty much make sure that I only have to worry about making the systems work, rather than that and selling them. If I don't have a sales force watching my back, I don't eat. If the sales force doesn't have geeks watching their backs, they don't eat.
The same goes for violence. I have never in my life had the urge to smash someone's skull after watching a particulary violent movie.
Ooh, that's a good one. Assuming the point of censoring violence is to keep violence from occuring in the real world, we should (if we're looking to censor at all) look at what causes people to do that.
Me, I get the urge to shove someone's face into concrete repeatedly every time my Windows machine crashes.
Might I suggest an alliance with (egad, who'd have thunk it) churches? I'm partial to Christianity myself, and a lot of us know just how persuasive they can be.
Now, before you write me off as a crackpot and figure that they will side with the censors, think about this. Universal censorship like what is being described here has never been done before. Usually, censorship is relegated to certain types of media (television, radio, periodicals) that the church doesn't have to worry about. Universal censorship will attack them as well, and churches live or die on free speech. From the perspective of a preacher, free speech is not a God-given right. It is a God-given mandate to speak the truth no matter who wants to lock you up for it.
Well, then, what does this have to do with universal censorship of pornography and violence? Read a bible. There's some nasty stuff in there. You have hosts of sexual perversions, bloody wars, dashing babies against rocks--and a book of soft-core porn right in the middle (Song of Songs/Solomon). There is real danger of the bible itself becoming censored.
Beyond that, imagine all the restrictions on internet preaching. Face it, Christians rail against such things as homosexuality and abortion (gambling, line dancing, shock-rockers...) early and often. To a Christian, doing this is guiding people towards the light; to a censor, this could well be hate speech!
The last thing most religions want is a homogenized Internet, because few religions consider themselves mainstream.
Slashdot Mirror
What you need is a keyboard monitor that can be hung from a ceiling joist. Make a bracket that could hang off of a 2x4 (not just bolt into it), put some decorative facade to hide the hole in the wall, and hold the damned thing from on high! You eliminate most of the torque problem, since the monitor can be directly below the arm.
Anybody ever see anything like this, or know where to get an industrial-strength Erector set for same?
It still does, to a degree. Even when the droids aren't talking to you, hearing them talk amongst themselves gives you (as a soldier working with the droids) vital clues as to what they were doing. The idea is that you, as their superior, could hear them quickly discuss a bad plan, and interrupt them. Besides, if I was one of the Federation types, I'd want my droids talkative so I could make sure they weren't going nonlinear behind my back.
However, there is a good reason for them to speak verbally. To get back on topic, the use of verbal communications allows bioforms to interact better with battle droids. The Federation was at a tremendous disadvantage with an all-droid army, as those droids were especially bad at dealing with odd situations (such as Qui-Gon's request to board the ship--it had to think for a few seconds before deciding to arrest them).
I'm assuming that the Federation simply didn't have the manpower and were stuck with an all-droid army. If you had the money and the manpower, you could have a small bioform officer core supplemented by droids. In that case, the bioforms have to know what their droids are doing, so the verbal communication is key.
If it is real, then it should be taken seriously. However, if it is real, there is something seriously wrong with their Christianity.
I forget which one, but they said they were dropping a program because it was written by a homosexual. Okay, let's rephrase that: a disbelieving sinner. That doesn't stop a Christian. If you're using Linux anyhow, you're probably buying your memory from Japan--very likely built by disbelieving sinners. We use Arabic numerals, for the love of sanity!
Something I see a lot of in Christianity are people seeing who can out-Bible-thump the other. Not only is this the height of arrogance ("I am so much humbler than you!"), but it causes you to stop thinking and start reacting in a counterproductive McCarthyism mode. God gave us brains, he expects us to use them.
By the START button.
I don't know if misclassification is a problem unique to the States or if it happens everywhere. But when you have a department of spooks, they often feel the need to classify information that has no need to be classified. Often, this information is embarrasing rather than strategic. Especially in the States, any government information that does not have to be classified has to be released.
The NSA itself is a secret organization. For a while, its mere existence was classified. Why? The US could have simply gone public and said "We are forming a National Security Agency, which will specialize in cryptography and counter-cryptography". How would that have caused harm to the States? Everybody assumed that this was happening anyhow, since we were code-cracking in WWII.
OTOH, there are a lot of secrets that we should keep. Look at the F-117 Stealth Fighter. The ability to keep that under wraps for so long until it was used in a war kept other forces from getting a head-start on developing countermeasures. Once it made a wartime appearance, we could publicly reveal the weapon, as our enemies had seen it already.
Currently, the NSA is so secretive that its entire budget is classified. I cannot imagine any need for an agency's entire budget to be classified. I can imagine a need for large parts, perhaps the majority, of the budget to be classified. But for crying out loud, how much are these guys spending on #2 pencils?. All that gives away is a clue into the NSA's headcount. Maybe. (Unless, of course, they are working on the dreaded pencil-gatling).
America needs to keep secrets. It needs to keep a lot of secrets. But it is keeping a lot more secrets than it has to, and thus a lot more secrets than it should.
Almost amusingly, the government started thinking about regulating the distribution of manure fertilizer, because it was (supposedly?) a fertilizer bomb in that truck. The talk went nowhere.
My guess is that Congress started thinking about it, but realized that once they banned the slinging of bull???? that they'd be out of a job.
When God needs a toilet for His people, He knows how to buy it wholesale.
All businesses compete with anticompetitive practices?
In point of fact, all corporations do not work to drive their competition out of business. Corporations work to maximize profit. If a company can eat so much of a market that it drives others out of business, that is collateral damage. This is entirely different from specifically driving competition out of business in order to reap more profits.
For example, Coca-Cola presumably wants to increase the demand for Coca-Cola soft drinks. They may do this at the expense of Pepsi-Cola soft drinks (because they currently have no chance of destroying Pepsi-Cola), or the soft drinks of smaller soda vendors, or even at the expense of beer vendors. If they could sell Coca-Cola as a machine lubricant, they would do that. All of this maximizes sales, none of this restrains trade.
If they have destroyed some smaller soft drink firms, they still have not attempted to do so. It is collateral damage. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been shown to take specific actions to destroy other companies.
Most of the things that Microsoft has done were not considered crimes when they were doing them. That's why the government emphasizes "patterns of behavior." Very few of MS's specific actions are illegal, but only "when taken as a whole" they are illegal. That seems to me overly broad.
The pattern of behavior is still a valid legal concept. If I were a seven-time widower whose wives had all died of "freak accidents", then this pattern itself is evidence for a charge of homicide against me. It is likely not enough to convict me, but it strengthens other evidence. The specifics of the IE/Netscape case are that other evidence in this case.
BTW, if you are attacking the law itself, are you not attacking from a position higher than Federal law? The only position I know of higher than Federal law is morality. Do you suggest that we not apply the law to Microsoft because the law is immoral, though Microsoft's immoral actions are to be accepted because there is no law against them?
Now you can say that the courts can figure this stuff out, but my point is that it shouldn't have to. There's no ambiguity abouyt what constitutes murder. There might be some uncertainty at the edges about which kind of murder a given act is, but if you kill someone and you were not being attacked at the time, you are guilty of some form of murder.
Funny that you should choose that example. Kevorkian is currently in jail for an ambiguous murder. Pro-life and Pro-choice advocates are trying to change or defend the current definition of murder.
The courts exist for ambiguity, because a law that is too specific can be worked around. You are correct in that a law can be too vague to be useful as anything but a bludgeon. As in many things, one must avoid both extremes. We merely disagree as to whether or not antitrust law is extremely vague.
The DoJ is prosecuting Microsoft on antitrust charges because their other crimes are committed against specific entities that can and should prosecute them seperately. Note that Sun Microsystems is currently suing Microsoft over their Java implementation. Caldera is or was suing Microsoft over their efforts to sabotage DR/DOS. The DoJ trial is not the only thing landing Microsoft in court these days.
Fine, and if those prosecutions are for real, specific crimes, I support their right to do so. But let's keep them seperate from this trial, which is not about specific crimes.
My comment is in boldface, and was a response to a comment saying that the DoJ can't find anything more specific than antitrust to prosecute on.
Capitalism means the free market. A free market in which the Federal government is allowed to step in and stop companies who act "unfairly" is a contradiction in terms. Over the long term, monopolies are impossible in a free market, even without antitrust law. Antitrust law is not a safeguard of a free market. It undermines it and makes it less free.
I disagree with the lot of that. First off, a free market is not a capitalism. AFAIK, a free market is one where there are no legal restrictions on economic activity. In such an environment, one can legally engage in blackmail, extortion, unregulated gambling, pyramid schemes, and flat-out theft.
A capitalism, OTOH, is a system where the regulations are set up to make it easiest to earn money by serving others. McDonald's makes tons of money turning hungry people into non-hungry people. It is a light, not heavy, grip on economic control. In a properly working capitalism, one can make more money selling good products than by, say, a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are cheap, and make more money in a free market, but provide the public with nada.
Monopolies destroy themselves? Where? How?
But if you still want the free market, I'll work with that. Microsoft only has its monopoly because of government regulation. Their chief asset is a set of copyrights. In a free market, copyright law simply does not exist. Microsoft is a government protected monopoly.
As for Microsoft being a "wrench" in the gears, I think you might be suffering from myopia. From a technical standpoint, Windows is a mediocre product. But for most users, it is *still* the best choice for many tasks. The Mac OS doesn't have the software base and the commodity hardware, and the Unices are intimidating for the average user. I hope something better comes along to replace Windows, but for now I think the existence of Windows is a good thing. I'd hate to see that obstructed by government interference.
MS Windows is the best platform out there for a lot of things. I own a Windows machine. The fact that it is the best doesn't imply that it is any good. A car with square wheels is the best car out there if Squarewheel Motors sabotages anyone who tries to sell cars with round wheels.
The point is that Microsoft makes sure that Windows is the "best" by making sure that anything better dies young. Again, this is by design, rather than collateral damage.
Here are some recent platform threats, and how MS sabotaged them.
OS/2: Microsoft ran "astroturf" campaigns--defrauding the public by making complaints about the platform that were supposed to be from random users, but were in fact from MS itself.
Also, they made deals with hardware vendors where the vendors would pay for every machine they sold, regardless of OS. This kept hardware vendors from shipping other OSs because they would pay double the licensing fee, and was the cause oforiginal antitrust lawsuit.
WebTV (a way to get on the Web W/O Windows): Bought by MS. If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em.
Macintosh: Really didn't have to do anything to knock them out; Apple did that well enough. Apple now has partnered with MS for a huge cash infusion: perhaps to make it look like there is competition for Windows?
Netscape: Microsoft realized that Netscape allowed you to run apps on the Web, thus making the desktop irrelevant. They knocked Netscape off the map by giving IE away for free, and by giving vendors perks for not shipping Netscape. This not only is a direct attack against Netscape, but it paves the way for IE extensions, only served by MS Web servers, to give MS a chance to monopolize the Web server market by leveraging their desktop monopoly.
Linux: Read the paper. Better yet, read Slashdot. Also, did you notice that the Big Guys started backing Linux only after MS landed in court? The timing wasn't coincidental: before the trial, vendors were afraid to do that and be denied licences, which would effectively cut them out of the PC market entirely.
You don't need to harass the software industry to remedy the Microsoft situation. Microsoft has already shown that they have contempt for legal restrictions, so all the legal restrictions in the world would not affect them. A pure break-up would remedy the Microsoft problem without putting the government on the backs of the software industry.
The idea that Microsoft should be punished for out-competing its competition is ludicrous.
I fully agree. I also believe that the idea that Microsoft is out-competing its competition is equally ludicrous.
Microsoft has lied (in court and "astroturf" campaigns), stolen (remember Stac vs. Microsoft?), and generally cheated their way to market dominance, and are currently using the same tactics to stay there. I personally cannot recall Microsoft ever gaining or retaining market dominance by creating a superior product.
Given the number of alternatives there are to Windows, and given that both sides give their browsers for free anyway, I fail to see how Microsoft has done anything illegal in this matter.
Let's start with perjury. Microsoft executives, up to Bill Gates himself, have been caught flat-out lying to the court. This doesn't require a fine on the part of Microsoft, but in fact is a series of criminal charges against members of their high command.
From there, we go to violating an agreement that they signed to get out of legal trouble earlier. The Microsoft position on the "bundling" issue is that the definition of "bundling" is indefensible, and that they thus signed a bogus document.
Elsewhere, they are on trial for their implementation of Java.
Finally, there is the antitrust violation itself. They are using a monopoly position in one area (desktops) to produce a monopoly position in other areas (servers, Internet) by literally sabotaging the efforts of other corporations (rather than by making a superior product).
Even if they have broken the law, we're talking about antitrust. Antitrust law is the most vague, overreaching, intrusive law that can be imagined.
That is the most vague, overreaching statement I have heard in a long time. What do you mean by that?
I can find very vague laws in the Bill of Rights, and some people would call them overreaching (look at the right to bear arms). I defend vague laws below. The Sherman Antitrust act is relatively precise.
It literally gives the Feds the power to harrass any company that manages to get a large market share.
The Feds have the power to harass any company, regardless of market share. It's called the IRS. But that's another story...
And it gets reinterpreted every few years, so there's no way Microsoft can possibly predict which things are and are not illegal.
Most laws get reinterpreted every few years, depending on new opportunities to commit crimes. A bunch of laws are getting reinterpreted to handle crimes committed on the Internet, for example.
As far as predicting which things are and are not illegal, forget the reinterpretations. Using a monopoly position, as such, to either keep that monopoly or gain a new monopoly, is illegal. Having a monopoly position by virtue of superior products, and keeping that position by improving one's product, is not illegal.
I don't deny that Microsoft is sleazy, but sleaziness is not a crime.
Certain forms of sleaziness are crimes, and those are the forms that people prosecute Microsoft for.
Laws should be specific and to-the-point.
I disagree. A law that is too specific can be worked around; the best way to avoid pseudocrime (acts which should be crimes but really aren't due to a technicality) is to write a general law.
Remember that the highest law in the land, the Constitution, is written up with a lot of vague laws. the vagueness of these laws is precisely what makes them useful two hundred years later.
If the best charges they can dream up are antitrust charges, that tells me that either they are innocent of any real crime, or there needs to be new laws to address the specific types of crimes they have committed.
The DoJ is prosecuting Microsoft on antitrust charges because their other crimes are committed against specific entities that can and should prosecute them seperately. Note that Sun Microsystems is currently suing Microsoft over their Java implementation. Caldera is or was suing Microsoft over their efforts to sabotage DR/DOS. The DoJ trial is not the only thing landing Microsoft in court these days.
But to twist antitrust law to cover whatever activity the current dominant player in a given industry is without warning is a very bad thing.
I agree. Fortunately, this is not being done here.
Antitrust law is used here to cover activities used by the current dominant player in a given industry to sabotage efforts of other players, including the former dominant player in another industry.
As for the "without warning", Microsoft has had plenty of warning. You cannot call a second antitrust trial a use of antitrust law without warning.
There was no way Micrsoft could have predicted what would be considered a crime, since the things they are accused of doing have been done by many other companies with no legal repercussions.
Other companies are not monopolies. Antitrust law prevents a monopoly from performing certain activities that are legal for other companies. These are specifically the activities that do not work unless one is a monopoly. Antitrust law is an attempt to reduce the tremendous power that a monopoly would otherwise have compared to its nonmonopolistic brethren.
I just hope Microsoft gets off the hook. Even if they broke antitrust laws, they don't deserve to be punished.
I don't care about punishment, and I don't want to punish anybody. I do care about keeping capitalism working. Monopolies break the assumptions of capitalism, and thus break the capitalism.
Why do I care about capitalism? While I think that it's a good thing in and of itself, I also think that capitalism provides good products. And I, for one, am sick and tired of slogging through stupid broken software (or jumping through hoops to avoid same) to get my work done. In a properly working capitalism, the software would work better, period. And Microsoft is a monkey wrench thrown into the gears of that capitalism.
I don't want to punish the wrench. I want to get it out of the gears, or turn it to dust, and get the gears working. Any "punishment" done to the wrench is simply collateral damage.
If I want to hide from a geostationary satellite, I just need to stay a few feet north of a building, even single-story. In a big city, you shouldn't be able to see the streets beneath the skyscrapers.
The Constitution give the people the right to free speech. Microsoft is not a "people", it is a corporation. It is financially considered a person, but not so in the strictest legal sense. Microsoft cannot vote, nor can it be arrested or imprisoned. It is not a person.
None of this stops Bill Gates from saying whatever he wants and using his personal fortune to get the message out, but neither Microsoft nor any other corporation has inherant rights as outlined by the Bill of Rights.
Congress has the right to legislate this and other marketing activities (like current regs on tobacco and drug advertising) because it has the right to regulate interstate commerce. You could argue that such restrictions do not apply to sole proprietorships (where the company is the owner), but not for a corporation.
The concept of a corporation is really a legal divorce between the owner(s) and the company, where the owner(s) declare that they are not the company. This gives them certain protections, the most important being that the owners are no longer personally responsible for financial obligations of the company. In response, the company no longer is an extension of the person but becomes its own legal entity (though not a person).
Obviously, if there are no laws that prohibit Microsoft's actions, they can do them by default. However, if there are such prohibitions (possibly contempt of court, obstruction of justice, or something similar), they cannot hide behind the right to free speech.
My fear is, by that time it becomes bloody well obvious to everybody that M$ is a monopoly, it will be protected because we will also realize that this country needs M$ more that M$ needs this country.
There comes a point in addiction where you simply cannot detox; the addiction is killing you and detox would simply kill you faster. I've seen people go that way, and it isn't pretty. I don't want to see hexidecimal America do the same.
College types don't need to know that sort of stuff anyhow. It just leads to cracking.
(This post is smiley-impaired for the humor impaired).
OTOH, this is a problem because "dotcomnow" is NSI, and NSI has a reputation for trust. Thus, there's a world of difference between "microsoft@foo.com" and "microsoft@dotcomnow.com".
Just some thoughts for figuring out how nasty this security breach is.
1: Supposed Enemy of the State This allows the Feds to keep track of people who, while not criminal, still piss off the Fed. If the government is going environmental, it can track loggers this way. If the government is leaning in the loggers' favor, it can track down troublesome environmentalists. Think how much the Fed would love to put surveillance on somebody like Ross Perot? Big Brother is watching you, even if you are above board.
2: Bad Cop, No Donut If you allow a federal law enforcement agency to see something, you are allowing multitudes of individual federal officers to see it. And since some people are corrupt, it stands to reason that some federal agents with access are corrupt.
3: Point of Attack This follows from the above, and is frankly what scares me the most. A Federal back door into security systems becomes an incredible prize for a cracker, and you simply cannot protect it like Fort Knox. With a good cracker (or a bad cop; see above), that back door gets posted to the cracker BBSs. And if everybody is required by law to have this back door in their systems, this means that the entire nation becomes instantly vulnerable. This is not like a security bug that you can patch a fix to.
BTW, this issue is close to my heart. Part of my job is making sure that financial data gets from hither to yon without getting intercepted by criminals. If the Fed required me to install a back door to the software I use, I would be literally unable to do my job.
Before the last election, I was talking politics with some acquaintences, and I mentioned I was voting for Harry Brown (Libertarian). The response I got was along the lines of "Why the hell are you voting for someone who doesn't have a chance of winning?"
This isn't a horserace. In a horserace, you only win if you pick the right horse. In an election, you only win if the majority picks the right horse; if an idiot (or worse) is elected, it doesn't mean a damn that you voted for or against the candidate.
Republicans and Democrats want you to think that there are two candidates for any office: the one the Republicans back and the ones the Democrats back. Bull! They may have the best chances of winning, but that is no excuse for voting for them. For any office, vote for somebody you think will do the job well. Write them in, if you have to!
Is this a dangerous "waste" of a vote? No. Many people vote against one candidate by voting for the candidate of the other major party. But (at least for Presidential elections), splitting the opposition vote is still a vote against. That is, if you want to vote against the Democrat, a vote for the Republican, the Reformist, Jesse Ventura, or Rob Malda will still have the same effect in keeping the Democrat out of office. The Democrat doesn't need the most votes; the Democrat needs over fifty percent of the vote (or you dust off the Constitution and play strip poker; the last candidate wearing clothing gets the Oval Office).
If you are going to vote, vote for somebody. Just voting against somebody is the trap the Republicans and Democrats want you to fall into.
So what if you vote for somebody who has no chance of winning, if you don't think that the candidates that do have a chance are all idiots? There are two possibilities: either you are wrong or you are right. If you are wrong, your candidate may win. If you are right, and only the idiots have a chance of winning, you are no worse off by voting for a useful candidate that loses than by voting for a useless candidate that wins. You still get the same guy in office in the worst case.
The warrant is supposed to state what property can be searched, and for what. Now, what if the cops find something else? IIRC, they can use it, so long as they were conducting a legitimate search as per the search warrant.
For an example, imagine a felon has a bag of drugs in his sock drawer. If the cops come in with a search warrant for a handgun, they are justified in going through the man's sock drawer (you can hide handguns in sock drawers), and can then bust the guy on drug charges and use the evidence legally in court. If the warrant is for, say, stolen washing machines, cops have no right to go through his sock drawer: he cannot possibly hide a washing machine in a sock drawer. If they do, and find the drugs, they cannot use that as court evidence, arrest the guy for it, or bring that to a judge to get a warrant for searching for drugs.
Of course, in the latter case, they may use legal surveillance methods to see if they can get some legal evidence for an arrest...
Given current broadcast media (TV, radio, etc.), only so much can be said on a given topic. Thus, we get sound bites--whether we want them or not. There is a real demand for in-depth reporting, but the media chooses instead to meet the demand for shallow and broad reporting.
The Internet is big enough for deep and broad reporting. You can browse the sound bytes, or click deeper and get the stories behind the story. AFAIK, this makes larger newspapers obsolete; portals provide national news better than papers or TV/Radio can. Of course, I still keep my local paper, since portals don't cover my area specifically.
Arguably, Linux is the same.
It seems to me that the best way to protect the Linux name may be to go around trademark law entirely and go to where the real power is--lobby Merriam-Webster to put it in their next unabridged dictionary.
So much for the comm satellite market...
And you're right on the labeling. Of course, it doesn't help that we geeks keep using the label on ourselves. Ever notice that "geek" is a word that sounds fine until someone who isn't one uses it?
Geeks are not normal. If we were normal, we'd be like the majority; that's pretty much the definition of "normal". We are abnormal, and for the most part we enjoy that. That's called "geek pride".
That's a far cry from geek supremacy, the idea that geeks are the only people that matter. I have a lot of geek pride, and no use whatsoever for geek supremacy.
The average person is not "useless". If you want to keep a society running, you need a lot of different types of people. Imagine a world without your "useless" people, populated only by geeks. Where would we be?
I'll give you a hint: pretty hungry, pretty fast.
Cops. Farmers. Soldiers. Factory workers. Managers. Sales clerks. All positions that need to be filled, all positions that geeks aren't particularly good at (mostly because we aren't particularly drawn to them, as a group--obviously, there are exceptions). All positions filled by your "useless" people.
Not so useless, are they?
Even where I work, I thank God for these "normal" people. My company has sales and marketing divisions. Sure, there's some friction there, but they're damned useful people. They sell the stuff, bring the money in, pretty much make sure that I only have to worry about making the systems work, rather than that and selling them. If I don't have a sales force watching my back, I don't eat. If the sales force doesn't have geeks watching their backs, they don't eat.
Vive la difference!
Ooh, that's a good one. Assuming the point of censoring violence is to keep violence from occuring in the real world, we should (if we're looking to censor at all) look at what causes people to do that.
Me, I get the urge to shove someone's face into concrete repeatedly every time my Windows machine crashes.
Solution: Censor the BSOD!
Now, before you write me off as a crackpot and figure that they will side with the censors, think about this. Universal censorship like what is being described here has never been done before. Usually, censorship is relegated to certain types of media (television, radio, periodicals) that the church doesn't have to worry about. Universal censorship will attack them as well, and churches live or die on free speech. From the perspective of a preacher, free speech is not a God-given right. It is a God-given mandate to speak the truth no matter who wants to lock you up for it.
Well, then, what does this have to do with universal censorship of pornography and violence? Read a bible. There's some nasty stuff in there. You have hosts of sexual perversions, bloody wars, dashing babies against rocks--and a book of soft-core porn right in the middle (Song of Songs/Solomon). There is real danger of the bible itself becoming censored.
Beyond that, imagine all the restrictions on internet preaching. Face it, Christians rail against such things as homosexuality and abortion (gambling, line dancing, shock-rockers...) early and often. To a Christian, doing this is guiding people towards the light; to a censor, this could well be hate speech!
The last thing most religions want is a homogenized Internet, because few religions consider themselves mainstream.