Seriously. Look at the attack and what they are finding out from the investigation. None of their stupid laws would have prevented 9-11.
Those terrorists commited the biggest social hack the world has ever seen. They got themselves into the country, blended in extremely well and got all of their training and information from our institutions. They then counted on complete cooperation of the crew and passengers because for the past 30 years we've been running under the asumption that this was the SOP for dealing with highjackings.
There doesn't appear to be any high-tech, superspy secret communications between the terrorists. More than likely they hooked up at the nudie bar and transmitted info between lap dances.
What parts of the ATA/USA/PATRIOT bills are going to protect us from that? None. But I see a lot of parts of those bills that will allow law enforcement to harrass innocent people because they are kinda "Arabic looking" or because somebody is a "hacker."
We need more human intelligence. Not more laws. Not more toys like Carnivore. Information is useless without interpretation.
That's why we're a Republic so majority rules doesn't fuck over the minority. The majority is quite simply unclued on this issue and Congress should be listening to the experts (aka the Minority) instead of bullshitting the people of this country.
From everything I've read the failure to see this attack not coming wasn't due to having some daft ATA in place but rather was due to our elected officials gutting our intelligence infrastructure after the Cold War.
All these crap jingoistic (USA and PATRIOT Acts puhleaze!) bills are is one of the biggest CYA scams the public has ever seen.
Today, I was listening to the radio while driving to work and hearing about how this one guy had a nail clipper confiscated by two armed soldiers while trying to board a flight. What crap! Boy I can see it now. "Fly that plane into the Sears Tower right now or I'm going to give one heck of a nip with these!" or "Get your ass back into your seat before I decide to manicure you to death. You wanna die with clean cuticles?! Huh? Do you!"
The fact is it is easier, quicker and cheaper to come up with crap laws than it is to implement real security in this country. Real security would require actual thought and admission that we did some things wrong. It would come down to facing facts instead of listening to our fears. Which is exactly what the government is doing now.
I'm just damn glad I live in WI and can toss my vote Russ' way in the next election. I know he's going to need it.
Re:You were expecting Miss Piggy?
on
Bert Is Evil
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
Ummm, no. People lost faith in the tech stocks because investors and dotcoms made rock stupid decisions. Hell, even Steve Ballmer stated that MS' stock price was overvalued during its height. Sorry, but MS ain't the world and your analysis of the situation is so vacuous and simplistic that it is completely without merit.
And why don't you ask laid off tech workers why management thought everybody in the company, including the janitor, required a cell phone and Palm? Or how about companies with no business model? Or how about "Oh yeah, we're a computer manufacturer but we're special because we install linux on our machines." Yeah, that's going to save them from the razor-thin profit margins that plague all the other well established big names out there. But it certainly didn't stop investors from pushing the IPO price up so high that it would take 20 years of growth before shareholders saw a return.
But, of course, because investors created a new vocabulary and started using buzzwords like "eyeballs" to explain the vaulted "New Economy" every insane investment they threw money at was going to make people rich. 150 years of economic history and lessons (tulips anyone?) could be thrown out the window because this new industry is digital.
But of course you are right, MS is just so big (bigger than IBM even! Not.) that picking on them is just going to throw the market into chaos.
Please. Get a refund on your next version of Office and go buy a clue.
However, if you deface a website and it kills someone,...
So we might have a chance of getting that damned goatse.cx (don't go there. you've been warned) site taken down? Shoot, now I have to reconsider the FACIST^H^H^H^H^H^HPATRIOT Act.
While it hasn't killed anybody I know a couple of co-workers who nearly got sick and one who actually liked it and probably needs therapy now. Think we can get Ashcroft on it?
Knowing that there is virtually no way to guarantee direct correspondance to our represenatives my question is how many of our elected officials keep tech-savy staff onboard to advise them? What has been your experience with these people? Is there a way to communicate our concerns to them and get a more direct line to our elected official?
But the point of terrorism laws are to go beyond the simple act of murder to cover the societal damage that terrorism produces. In other words, it's one thing to kill someone by robbing them, and it's another thing to leave a bag containing a bomb that randomly kills someone.
Bullshit. Dead is dead. What society is really asking for is a rider to make sure that some jury or judge or parole board can't "mess up" the sentencing for the crime. We can't trust the laws we have on hand to be wielded properly by society at large so we have to tweak the system. It's the rationale behind hate crime laws.
But of course, this isn't the only thing that the PATRIOT Act does. It also gives law enforcement leeway to hold a suspect for up to a week without charging them if suspected of terrorism. If this goes into law I wonder how many decades it will be before someone not named Achmed or not "slightly Arabic looking" will be held that long. Oh sure, detain the "raghead" but ignore the White Anglo-Saxon Christian "Mick" who is part of the IRA.
And I don't care what you say, defacing a web site with "F*ck America!" isn't even close to being a crime worthy of life in prision. It shouldn't even be a sentencing option. Again, we have a rider because politicians don't think we can do the right thing. They might as well scrap the current judicial system if they think it's so badly broken.
Nothing in the law as it currently stands prevent us from properly prosecuting and sentencing terrorists. We put McVey to death, we sentenced the people who first bombed the WTC. Tell me where the laws back then failed and where they will fail now because of what we endured on Sept. 11th 2001.
Why not? It's the difference between getting done to and doing. I want the government to sink its teeth into a spammer who forwards all their complaint mail to my account. I don't want them to be able to mass mail me and clog my bandwidth or eat my HD. I want real competition to force MS to lower prices on their software instead of having them feel free to jack me up just becasue I won't upgrade to the next version of Office as quickly as they would like.
On the other hand, I have every right to say my government and my representative are clueless and they should rename the PATRIOT Act to the FACIST Act. I have every right to wish that Mickey, now a national icon and dare I say treasure, should be in the public domain. Copyright lasting 3+ generations is not limited.
And in the "digital world", encryption is akin to sealing your letter in an envelope. Or do I take it you send your steamy love letters via skywriting for the world to see. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people here at work misaddress their e-mail and suddenly I'm hip deep into their personal lives. Simple encryption would have kept me out of their business.
So if you ask me, which I know you didn't:), I think the stance is entirely consistent.
What rights are you losing? We're talking distribution of a copyrighted work here and those rights belong to the copyright owner - not the consumer.
Go back and reread the Copyright Office's latest report on the DMCA. Forget about being offended and closely examine their reasoning for why many fair-use arguements aren't applicable when dealing with a digital medium. All of this stuff is fair because bits and electronic signals down a wire constitute distribution. The contract between publishers and society is that publishers have the right to distribute their works as they see fit and then the consumer can do whatever they want with the physical copy of the work they have purchased.
Yeah, but I'd bet you'd be all over some rpm posted to a GeoCities webpage by someone only known as d34Thm4tCH because that's what the OSS revolution is all about.
The exchange of money for goods or services is limited to that exchange and gets you no other entitlements.
Having gone to a community college and a private institution I have to say that this viewpoint is by far too narrow. Whether you want to believe it or not, there are enormous differences between the experience you have at a community college and a university but none of those differences support your simplistic capitalistic arguement. Still, I'll argue it from your standpoint.
You are not paying tuition for just classes. You are paying tuition for an investment in your future. I'm paying for good study areas, a safe campus, good equipment, quality classrooms.
I'm paying for the chance to make good contacts, join organizations and for the chance to be an active participant in the community if I so desire. In return, the college gets the opprotunity to receive donations from me once I'm an alumnus. The more personal the experience is for the student the better the chance that the college will continue to receive funding from them.
That need to instill a sense of community within the individual requires giving the student a voice in how their money is spent. And if that voice is loud enough, it behooves the university to take it into account when they make their budget.
Whether one takes complete advantage of what is being offered is up to the student. To take a spin off of your McDonalds analogy, just because I buy a happy meal does not mean I have to eat all of my fries or finish my coke. But by the same token, you have no right to limit another's experience just because you think the only entitlement you are paying for is some books and a few hours in a classroom.
Should the school be allowed to own over 300 domain names Why not? Why does the school need to follow any different rules than any other entity? If CmdrTaco had 300 domains, would we care?
I partly agree. If they want to buy a bunch of drexel*.* domains they can do it. But if they were doing it to silence people's opinions on the university I would really have to question whether it would be a fit educational facility for my son.
how many schools out there purchase domains with no intent to use them Why does it matter how many others do it? What bearing does it have on your school?
See above.
And finally, should student tuition be used in this manner? How presumptuous to think you have any say in how your tuition is spent. You don't wonder aloud what McDonald's does with your cash after you buy a Happy Meal, do you? And if you don't like it, you don't give them the money.
I am not part of the McDonald's community for 4+ years. McDonald's will not solicit me for funds to build a new facility on campus. I do not go to Micky D's and get several thousand of dollars in debt to better myself and work towards a future.
I have the right, as a parent paying my child's tuition or as a student, to question where every cent goes. If the University is blowing $1000s to horde a bunch of frivolous domain names and that money could be spent on something even remotely useful I have a right to call foul on that decision. Being part of that experience is a good thing and will help a student when they leave for the "real world." You are seriously underselling a college education if all you think it means is paying some money and attending some classes.
I guess the real question is "Why do people post tempest-in-a-teapot stories to Slashdot?"
No. The real question is why do people who don't give a rip about the article waste their supposedly precious time and whine about the content.
I don't believe so. Look at the latest YRO article here. They are proposing copy protecting CDs and adding Windows Media files to the medium so you can play it on your computer and have some limited copying.
So everybody that wants to listen to their CD and transfer the songs to a MP3 player will be able to do so. Those people using Windows and Windows compatable products won't see a need to switch. No big deal. They'll keep using Windows.
A co-worker just had his first encounter with a region coded DVD. Couldn't find it in the US so he bought it from the UK. He wasn't happy that his DVD player wouldn't play the disc but out of the 10 people at the lunch table not a one cared. It was an "oh well" to all of them and nobody was interested when I tried to explain why it happened.
I think the same thing is going to happen with Windows. A bunch of annoyances that just aren't big enough for the average user to give a rip about. (No pun intended.)
I don't see security updates on the kernel every week. Unless I have had the urge I have never had to recompile the kernel on my linux box. Even to get things like XFS onto the box.
I have had to reapply service packs numerous times because some program was reinstalled on the box which wiped out the updated dlls. Your gripe is outright false.
As for making linux easy to use, that is happening. Just don't expect it tomorrow and don't expect people to suddenly jump off the MS train when it does. There is some serious inertia when it comes to migrating to a totally new platform. Macs are easy to use too, BeOS is easy to use. I didn't see either really competing against Windows.
Widespread use of linux will be an evelutionary process. There will be no revolution.
Although you may have trouble convincing your friends and family not to buy it.
dingdingdingdingding!!!! We have a winner!
It's of no use to switch to an alternative that can't interoperate with the De Facto standard everybody and your mother is using. There is no and cannot be a positive feedback loop like the one MS currently holds with its offerings of products and OS for the likes of linux, BeOS, *BSD, MacOS, etc., etc..
There will be no killer app for linux, no developer focus on the Mac and no interest in niche OSes simply because MS is too entrenched and ubiquitous to make an alternative attractive. For an alternative to become viable MS would have to practically fall on its own sword and even with its current licensing trend it is obvious that is not happening. I mean honestly how much money is MS losing because Habitat for Humanity may ditch for linux?
So no, all those "whiners" don't have a choice unless they want to live in a vacuum. This is why monopolies are bad. This is why we have anti-trust laws.
Just to be anal about the entire thing.:) Tasha didn't die when she went back in time with the Enterprise C. She was captured by the Romulans and that's how the daughter thing came about. IIRC, Tasha dies trying to escape from Romulous.
I can't remember if the daughter buys it or not. I don't think she does.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. Look at the attack and what they are finding out from the investigation. None of their stupid laws would have prevented 9-11.
Those terrorists commited the biggest social hack the world has ever seen. They got themselves into the country, blended in extremely well and got all of their training and information from our institutions. They then counted on complete cooperation of the crew and passengers because for the past 30 years we've been running under the asumption that this was the SOP for dealing with highjackings.
There doesn't appear to be any high-tech, superspy secret communications between the terrorists. More than likely they hooked up at the nudie bar and transmitted info between lap dances.
What parts of the ATA/USA/PATRIOT bills are going to protect us from that? None. But I see a lot of parts of those bills that will allow law enforcement to harrass innocent people because they are kinda "Arabic looking" or because somebody is a "hacker."
We need more human intelligence. Not more laws. Not more toys like Carnivore. Information is useless without interpretation.
And that is what bit us on 9-11.
From everything I've read the failure to see this attack not coming wasn't due to having some daft ATA in place but rather was due to our elected officials gutting our intelligence infrastructure after the Cold War.
All these crap jingoistic (USA and PATRIOT Acts puhleaze!) bills are is one of the biggest CYA scams the public has ever seen.
Today, I was listening to the radio while driving to work and hearing about how this one guy had a nail clipper confiscated by two armed soldiers while trying to board a flight. What crap! Boy I can see it now. "Fly that plane into the Sears Tower right now or I'm going to give one heck of a nip with these!" or "Get your ass back into your seat before I decide to manicure you to death. You wanna die with clean cuticles?! Huh? Do you!"
The fact is it is easier, quicker and cheaper to come up with crap laws than it is to implement real security in this country. Real security would require actual thought and admission that we did some things wrong. It would come down to facing facts instead of listening to our fears. Which is exactly what the government is doing now.
I'm just damn glad I live in WI and can toss my vote Russ' way in the next election. I know he's going to need it.
Yeah but you know bin Laden is porking her too.
Somebody hide me. Quick!
How do I disarm the nuke?
Teach it philosophy.
And God said "Let there be light."
And I thought that worked only for the Bible, Koran and other religious texts.
And why don't you ask laid off tech workers why management thought everybody in the company, including the janitor, required a cell phone and Palm? Or how about companies with no business model? Or how about "Oh yeah, we're a computer manufacturer but we're special because we install linux on our machines." Yeah, that's going to save them from the razor-thin profit margins that plague all the other well established big names out there. But it certainly didn't stop investors from pushing the IPO price up so high that it would take 20 years of growth before shareholders saw a return.
But, of course, because investors created a new vocabulary and started using buzzwords like "eyeballs" to explain the vaulted "New Economy" every insane investment they threw money at was going to make people rich. 150 years of economic history and lessons (tulips anyone?) could be thrown out the window because this new industry is digital.
But of course you are right, MS is just so big (bigger than IBM even! Not.) that picking on them is just going to throw the market into chaos.
Please. Get a refund on your next version of Office and go buy a clue.
So we might have a chance of getting that damned goatse.cx (don't go there. you've been warned) site taken down? Shoot, now I have to reconsider the FACIST^H^H^H^H^H^HPATRIOT Act.
While it hasn't killed anybody I know a couple of co-workers who nearly got sick and one who actually liked it and probably needs therapy now. Think we can get Ashcroft on it?
Yes. But only if you live on the moon.
In twenty-seven parts.
Knowing that there is virtually no way to guarantee direct correspondance to our represenatives my question is how many of our elected officials keep tech-savy staff onboard to advise them? What has been your experience with these people? Is there a way to communicate our concerns to them and get a more direct line to our elected official?
Bullshit. Dead is dead. What society is really asking for is a rider to make sure that some jury or judge or parole board can't "mess up" the sentencing for the crime. We can't trust the laws we have on hand to be wielded properly by society at large so we have to tweak the system. It's the rationale behind hate crime laws.
But of course, this isn't the only thing that the PATRIOT Act does. It also gives law enforcement leeway to hold a suspect for up to a week without charging them if suspected of terrorism. If this goes into law I wonder how many decades it will be before someone not named Achmed or not "slightly Arabic looking" will be held that long. Oh sure, detain the "raghead" but ignore the White Anglo-Saxon Christian "Mick" who is part of the IRA.
And I don't care what you say, defacing a web site with "F*ck America!" isn't even close to being a crime worthy of life in prision. It shouldn't even be a sentencing option. Again, we have a rider because politicians don't think we can do the right thing. They might as well scrap the current judicial system if they think it's so badly broken.
Nothing in the law as it currently stands prevent us from properly prosecuting and sentencing terrorists. We put McVey to death, we sentenced the people who first bombed the WTC. Tell me where the laws back then failed and where they will fail now because of what we endured on Sept. 11th 2001.
On the other hand, I have every right to say my government and my representative are clueless and they should rename the PATRIOT Act to the FACIST Act. I have every right to wish that Mickey, now a national icon and dare I say treasure, should be in the public domain. Copyright lasting 3+ generations is not limited.
And in the "digital world", encryption is akin to sealing your letter in an envelope. Or do I take it you send your steamy love letters via skywriting for the world to see. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people here at work misaddress their e-mail and suddenly I'm hip deep into their personal lives. Simple encryption would have kept me out of their business.
So if you ask me, which I know you didn't :), I think the stance is entirely consistent.
What does "reissued" mean on their patent? Does this patent bite the dust in 2009 or 2017?
Looks like I'll have to see who capitualtes and who doesn't when I shop for a PVR. Seems I won't be buying a Motorola model.
What rights are you losing? We're talking distribution of a copyrighted work here and those rights belong to the copyright owner - not the consumer.
Go back and reread the Copyright Office's latest report on the DMCA. Forget about being offended and closely examine their reasoning for why many fair-use arguements aren't applicable when dealing with a digital medium. All of this stuff is fair because bits and electronic signals down a wire constitute distribution. The contract between publishers and society is that publishers have the right to distribute their works as they see fit and then the consumer can do whatever they want with the physical copy of the work they have purchased.
Are you beginning to see the picture?
Yeah, but I'd bet you'd be all over some rpm posted to a GeoCities webpage by someone only known as d34Thm4tCH because that's what the OSS revolution is all about.
True enough. We can always ask why they put in the constant b4ckd00r and set it to binlLadenhasnoSkI11z.
Having gone to a community college and a private institution I have to say that this viewpoint is by far too narrow. Whether you want to believe it or not, there are enormous differences between the experience you have at a community college and a university but none of those differences support your simplistic capitalistic arguement. Still, I'll argue it from your standpoint.
You are not paying tuition for just classes. You are paying tuition for an investment in your future. I'm paying for good study areas, a safe campus, good equipment, quality classrooms.
I'm paying for the chance to make good contacts, join organizations and for the chance to be an active participant in the community if I so desire. In return, the college gets the opprotunity to receive donations from me once I'm an alumnus. The more personal the experience is for the student the better the chance that the college will continue to receive funding from them.
That need to instill a sense of community within the individual requires giving the student a voice in how their money is spent. And if that voice is loud enough, it behooves the university to take it into account when they make their budget.
Whether one takes complete advantage of what is being offered is up to the student. To take a spin off of your McDonalds analogy, just because I buy a happy meal does not mean I have to eat all of my fries or finish my coke. But by the same token, you have no right to limit another's experience just because you think the only entitlement you are paying for is some books and a few hours in a classroom.
I partly agree. If they want to buy a bunch of drexel*.* domains they can do it. But if they were doing it to silence people's opinions on the university I would really have to question whether it would be a fit educational facility for my son.
how many schools out there purchase domains with no intent to use them Why does it matter how many others do it? What bearing does it have on your school?
See above.
And finally, should student tuition be used in this manner? How presumptuous to think you have any say in how your tuition is spent. You don't wonder aloud what McDonald's does with your cash after you buy a Happy Meal, do you? And if you don't like it, you don't give them the money.
I am not part of the McDonald's community for 4+ years. McDonald's will not solicit me for funds to build a new facility on campus. I do not go to Micky D's and get several thousand of dollars in debt to better myself and work towards a future.
I have the right, as a parent paying my child's tuition or as a student, to question where every cent goes. If the University is blowing $1000s to horde a bunch of frivolous domain names and that money could be spent on something even remotely useful I have a right to call foul on that decision. Being part of that experience is a good thing and will help a student when they leave for the "real world." You are seriously underselling a college education if all you think it means is paying some money and attending some classes.
I guess the real question is "Why do people post tempest-in-a-teapot stories to Slashdot?"
No. The real question is why do people who don't give a rip about the article waste their supposedly precious time and whine about the content.
So everybody that wants to listen to their CD and transfer the songs to a MP3 player will be able to do so. Those people using Windows and Windows compatable products won't see a need to switch. No big deal. They'll keep using Windows.
A co-worker just had his first encounter with a region coded DVD. Couldn't find it in the US so he bought it from the UK. He wasn't happy that his DVD player wouldn't play the disc but out of the 10 people at the lunch table not a one cared. It was an "oh well" to all of them and nobody was interested when I tried to explain why it happened.
I think the same thing is going to happen with Windows. A bunch of annoyances that just aren't big enough for the average user to give a rip about. (No pun intended.)
I have had to reapply service packs numerous times because some program was reinstalled on the box which wiped out the updated dlls. Your gripe is outright false.
As for making linux easy to use, that is happening. Just don't expect it tomorrow and don't expect people to suddenly jump off the MS train when it does. There is some serious inertia when it comes to migrating to a totally new platform. Macs are easy to use too, BeOS is easy to use. I didn't see either really competing against Windows.
Widespread use of linux will be an evelutionary process. There will be no revolution.
dingdingdingdingding!!!! We have a winner!
It's of no use to switch to an alternative that can't interoperate with the De Facto standard everybody and your mother is using. There is no and cannot be a positive feedback loop like the one MS currently holds with its offerings of products and OS for the likes of linux, BeOS, *BSD, MacOS, etc., etc..
There will be no killer app for linux, no developer focus on the Mac and no interest in niche OSes simply because MS is too entrenched and ubiquitous to make an alternative attractive. For an alternative to become viable MS would have to practically fall on its own sword and even with its current licensing trend it is obvious that is not happening. I mean honestly how much money is MS losing because Habitat for Humanity may ditch for linux?
So no, all those "whiners" don't have a choice unless they want to live in a vacuum. This is why monopolies are bad. This is why we have anti-trust laws.
But you probably would be able to exchange it for something else.
I can't remember if the daughter buys it or not. I don't think she does.
So you were asphyxiating on your own vomit also? Hate when thay happens.