My proposal was limited as specified because it addresses a specific problem: that of an increasingly small number of people controlling a concentration of wealth so great that it threatens to destabilize society. Create enough unhappy people without solutions and there will be a revolution. Not that I'm entirely opposed to revolution, but it's worthwhile to discuss how to avoid it if possible.
It isn't my intent to advocate regulation in every walk of life. But I'd disagree with the assertion that regulation is per se a bad thing.
I think there should be a ceiling on the amount of wealth an individual can amass... enough to give people incentives to be creative and useful, but far far less than billions of dollars. I'm thinking something like 10 million.
there are some politicians listening to us, a little. And a republican!
I agree with (what I take to be) your implication, it does seem intuitively surprising that a republican would come down on the side of individual/privacy. I think it's noteworthy that - as far as I can tell - democrats have acted outrageously with regard to privacy, drm, copyright, etc. Fritz Hollings being a prominent example, having authored the SSSCA. And guess who co-authored it: Dianne Feinstein. I've been paying attention to similar legislative moves, and the demos have been consistent *ssholes on these kinds of issues. It is in fact this behavior which freed me from seeing much of a diff (if any) between the parties. Not that the repubs are blocking the demos' actions for any more noble reasons, they simply represent different special interests. I now realize that both parties are simply up for sale and will do anything to gain power including sacrificing our country, and that our legislative process is broken on a more fundamental leval than can be fixed by electing people from one party or the other.
To those for whom this seemed obvious: at least I got here eventually.;)
Copyright laws exist for a reason... to ensure that the owner makes money.
Not quite. The fact that copyright empowers creators to make money is incidental. The fundamental reason copyright was created was to increase the access of the public to creative works.
If granting limited time monopolies were to run counter to this goal then it'd be time to abolish copyright. Given how the RIAA has squashed originality and how networks have made distribution a zero cost proposition, that time may have come.
Sit down, turn off your cellphone, and prepare to be fascinated. Clear your schedule, because once you've started reading this interview, you won't be able to put it down until you've finished it.
Actually I got about halfway through and decided to skip the rest of it.
Perhaps I should re-phrase my point by saying that if there is a basis for concluding that portable electronics interfere with aircraft operation, then this article and the one it refers to fail miserably in their attempt to make that case.
As for the information you link to, this may be a good first step towards promoting an informed discussion of the topic. I won't be able to opine on it because the information is quite dense and raw, and needs a few phases of refinement before it can be digested on a large scale by people (like myself) who have limited time to read. The next steps would include:
authenticate: get the data certified as being from an independent part, and corroborate the data in one or two independent studies, then
digest: create objective summaries of the data that can be absorbed by large numbers of people, scrutinized for its accuracy by those who care to, and debated on a wide scale
Bittorrent is currently the most viable legal method for large scale P2P
I'm not clear on the role played by the word "legal" in the above sentence... all p2p technologies are used to distribute data. Bittorrent is no more and no less legal than kazaa, morpheus, gnutella, etc. And judging by the content I've seen being distributed, Bittorrent content is not particularly any more or less legal either. I acknowledge that Bram Cohen looks like a nice guy, but we shouldn't let his attractiveness skew our judgements.
Over the past decade there have been more than 100 incidents in Australia of navigation system failures, autopilot malfunctions, interference with radio transmissions, incorrect readings from flight management computers and false alerts from engine warning systems - all due to portable devices.
Ten incidents per year (I wonder what percentage of Aussie flights that comprises) "all due to portable devices"... the article does NOT go on to detail that claim. It cites an anecdote in which one plane's systems are alleged to have come back online after a passenger turned off a device, then goes on to say that "on more than one occasion, laptop computers have been blamed for changing an aircraft's internal cabin pressure."
The incidents, logged in an Australian Transport Safety Bureau database, have been collated for the first time and detailed in the latest edition of Flight Safety Australia, published by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority."
Because the article authors didn't bother to include a link to the article, I'll assume that this is the one they're referring to. If so, this article does not in any way "collate" (collect) or "detail" them. It's a single-page article which is pretty much as insubstantive as its referer. It mentions a few anecdotes, then states:
The CAA study focused on mobiles.
Researchers hooked up a VHF communica-tion
transceiver, a VOR/ILS (VHF omnidi-rectional
radio/instrument landing system)
navigation receiver and a gyro-stabilised
remote reading compass system in a
screened test chamber, according to the
report, Effects of interference from cellular
telephones on aircraft avionic equipment.
They hit the avionic equipment with
microwaves of mobile phone frequencies. Even in standby mode when an actual
call is not in progress, a cellphone transmits
periodically to register and re-register with
the cellular network and to maintain contact
with a base station, the report said.
As the aircraft increased its distance from
the base station, the output power setting of
the cellphone was increased, eventually to its
maximum rating, the report added. The
risk of interference is then at its greatest.
So they hit the equipment with waves, but what was the result? They forgot to mention specifics, such as "the equipment behaved unexpectedly". The paragraph trails off with the statement that "the risk of interference is then at its greatest".
Next time you're on a flight and the plane suddenly begins to climb or pitch to the left, it's probably just the kid next to you conquering level 16 on his computer game.
Or it might be the wind and/or the captain trying to navigate the plane to its destination.
Laurie Cox, a spokesman for the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, said more research was needed into the effect of electronic devices.
Bingo.
"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"
No, I don't have to ask that. I've been "getting there" for years, while surrounded by people who use electronics.
I'm not saying electronics don't cause interference. What I'm saying is that as yet there is no basis for concluding that they do cause interference, and because such evidence would not be difficult to produce I think passengers are owed more by the airline industry and FAA than having to rely on these panic puff-piece articles that come along to garner readership by stirring the shit with unsubstantiated claims. If the airline industry or any regulatory body cared about passenger safety, they'd do a real study. Failing that, the next best thing would be for the airlines to err on the side of caution and say "we don't know if electronics do or don't cause interference, so we're banning them to be safe"; at least that would be a
Whitney Dione, Celine Houston, who can tell them apart? And the Backstreet Boys vs NSync... is NSync the band where the tough one wears the bandana, or is it that sensitive angsty one? Personally I spend my money on cds from the pop amalgem sensation Boy George Michael Jackson Browne Vs Board Of Education, he rocks!
Six months?!?!?? I think the drug laws are kinda whacked, but do you blame a prosecutor from trying to get a stronger sentence any way he can? The guy was manufacturing meth, fer gawd's sake. Not like he was smoking a doob or doing an occasional line.
I'd only be comforted by this thought if (a) I believed that the illegality of drugs was just, and (b) that the prosecutor could be trusted to confine his use of "patriot" powers to precisely those things that I believe should be illegal. Neither is the case.
To me the interesting question isn't whether this individual prosecutor was properly motivated in this case. It was whether the system is rigged to allow gross abuses of power. An extreme scenario to illustrate: if traffic cops were granted the power to kill motorists, what should people feel about
a cop that kills a murderer?
a cop that kills a speeder?
a cop that kills a replublican?
a cop that kills a democrat?
a cop that kills a non-anglo?
a cop that kills an anglo?
that fact that these powers are being granted to cops without oversight?
Q: You talked about the beauty of the Darwinian marketplace and right now the market is beating you up. So we're trying to figure out the disconnect between how great you're saying your company is and the negative view of the market. (Editor's note: Like many technology companies, Sun's stock has been hammered in the past three years. Its shares closed down a penny at $3.92 on Friday, compared with a high of $63.47 in August 2000).
A: Nine years ago, I got married and the stock was a buck and my wife was very happy. It's at 4 bucks. She's happy. (So it) depends on when you get in.
Q: What about the people who bought (Sun stock) in 2000?
A: At 10 times revenues? Do the math. Do the math at 10 times revenues. There is no way to justify anything. Two times revenues implies 15 percent compound annual growth rate forever. Jack Welch did that for 20 years and went down in the hall of fame as the greatest CEO ever. So what does 10 times require? Do the math.
We can compare to where stocks were at the peak of the bubble but we have generated cash. I think we've got a really solid business.
as first described by Arthur C Clarke in his 1979 novel 'Fountains of Paradise'
Well, all I know is I first heard of the concept of a space elevator in Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator. Hope they design in some protection against those vermicious knids.
CDs have solomon-reed error checking codes on them. When bits are changed, these errors are detected. For small enough errors like just a few missing bits, the player responds by interpolating the waveform; for bigger swatches of errors such as those caused by groove-aligned scratches, the result is an outright dropout/skip... NOT a change of pitch, tone, etc as alleged by the article in describing the effects of beer/yogurt/whatever. I don't even feel motivated to try the described procedure... as a character on the Simpsons once said, "I make it a point not to turn my head if I don't expect to see anything."
I already do most of the advised precautions: shred everything, always send mail from post office, different passwords on every account, etc. But I'm still an easy target; someone can start a new account with my ssn, or forward my mail. I believe that existing financial institutions are the problem; they have the power to stop this nonsense and they don't. Case in point: twice in one day one of my credit agencies uttered my codeword to me on the phone before I'd proven who I was... I was deeply disappointed but not surprised.
What I want out of a financial institution is the following:
never send superchecks in the mail
every time I call them, require me to provide my password before talking about ANYTHING
every time they call me, authenticate who they are with a password from their side; or have me call them back at a number which is established at account signup time
issue me a smartcard with an embedded chip that allows me to digitally sign all transactions I undertake offline
for online transactions, allow me to use the web with strong encryption to issue a single-use disposable credit card number with a specified cap and time limit
The technology for all of these things has existed for years. If someone would step up to the plate and deliver, I'd feel much more secure.
Assuming a ruling holds up which prohibits seamless plugin usage, how long before freenet and other p2p networks are flooded with tweaked versions of mozilla (as well as instructions on how to mod the source if people want to do it themselves) that do plugins seamlessly anyhow?
This would be like throwing an Enron middle-level mananger in prison simply because he/she worked for Enron.
It would be like refusing to hire an Enron manager because he/she continued to work for Enron for a year after it became obvious that Enron was doing patently evil things.
There's no way to justify that stealing something is OK just because it's from a big bad company, sorry.
Debateable, as most absolutes are. The company being big and bad doesn't exactly make the point that infringing copyright from said company would be wrong. There are long discussions that can be had about the rampaging of corporations all over our democracy by buying legislators.
To stay in the proffered theme of soundbytes from little red riding hood, the big bad wolf got his comeuppance.
Just because something is widespread doesn't make it morally right.
But given that government is supposed to be by the people for the people, it's a very good heuristic to raise the question.
As far as I know, *no one* with any legal sense (including the EFF, Lessig, etc.) thinks that distributing copyrighted files is legal. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it. The people the RIAA are going after are making hundreds of files available - they're not just downloaders. So I have no sympathy... It's like hearing the cops say "we're going to set up a speed trap here" and then complaining when you get pulled over for going 90mph.
But what about when the laws are unjust? There was a time when black people couldn't vote, and a time when women couldn't vote. There were times and places where it was legal to come into your house and kill you because you weren't Christian. Being legal doesn't make it right.
I'm pretty sure that SCO is going to be a great stock to hold onto. I'm hoping very much to get a job there. I keep checking their jobs page eagerly every day, but so far only the disappointing phrase "There are currently no job openings at SCO". Because so many top quality engineers are champing at the bit to work there, I will just have to be patient. I feel like a kid waiting outside a candy store that's about to open...
Wow, check out the accompanying graphic... it protects against both pornography AND adult content. They must have some kind of multiprocessing code in there.
Rob Owen, a retired clown, and two other riders surged up Mount Washington at 12.5 mph, the AP reports. It took the Segway riders two and half hours to complete the 7.6 mile endurance test.
7.6 miles in 2.5 hours. Average speed: 3 mph. Speed of a human walking: 4 mph.
It remains unclear as to why Owen dressed up like a butler for the epic ride up Mount Washington.
Slashdot Mirror
I take it you don't like the idea. ;)
My proposal was limited as specified because it addresses a specific problem: that of an increasingly small number of people controlling a concentration of wealth so great that it threatens to destabilize society. Create enough unhappy people without solutions and there will be a revolution. Not that I'm entirely opposed to revolution, but it's worthwhile to discuss how to avoid it if possible.
It isn't my intent to advocate regulation in every walk of life. But I'd disagree with the assertion that regulation is per se a bad thing.
I think there should be a ceiling on the amount of wealth an individual can amass... enough to give people incentives to be creative and useful, but far far less than billions of dollars. I'm thinking something like 10 million.
Definitely vote. But don't stop whining, because voting will not be enough. Keep making noise and reaching out to people.
I agree with (what I take to be) your implication, it does seem intuitively surprising that a republican would come down on the side of individual/privacy. I think it's noteworthy that - as far as I can tell - democrats have acted outrageously with regard to privacy, drm, copyright, etc. Fritz Hollings being a prominent example, having authored the SSSCA. And guess who co-authored it: Dianne Feinstein. I've been paying attention to similar legislative moves, and the demos have been consistent *ssholes on these kinds of issues. It is in fact this behavior which freed me from seeing much of a diff (if any) between the parties. Not that the repubs are blocking the demos' actions for any more noble reasons, they simply represent different special interests. I now realize that both parties are simply up for sale and will do anything to gain power including sacrificing our country, and that our legislative process is broken on a more fundamental leval than can be fixed by electing people from one party or the other.
To those for whom this seemed obvious: at least I got here eventually. ;)
Not quite. The fact that copyright empowers creators to make money is incidental. The fundamental reason copyright was created was to increase the access of the public to creative works.
If granting limited time monopolies were to run counter to this goal then it'd be time to abolish copyright. Given how the RIAA has squashed originality and how networks have made distribution a zero cost proposition, that time may have come.
Most definitely. One legal and legitimate use of broadband, for example, is file sharing. Don't let anyone imply otherwise.
Actually I got about halfway through and decided to skip the rest of it.
As for the information you link to, this may be a good first step towards promoting an informed discussion of the topic. I won't be able to opine on it because the information is quite dense and raw, and needs a few phases of refinement before it can be digested on a large scale by people (like myself) who have limited time to read. The next steps would include:
I'm not clear on the role played by the word "legal" in the above sentence... all p2p technologies are used to distribute data. Bittorrent is no more and no less legal than kazaa, morpheus, gnutella, etc. And judging by the content I've seen being distributed, Bittorrent content is not particularly any more or less legal either. I acknowledge that Bram Cohen looks like a nice guy, but we shouldn't let his attractiveness skew our judgements.
Ten incidents per year (I wonder what percentage of Aussie flights that comprises) "all due to portable devices"... the article does NOT go on to detail that claim. It cites an anecdote in which one plane's systems are alleged to have come back online after a passenger turned off a device, then goes on to say that "on more than one occasion, laptop computers have been blamed for changing an aircraft's internal cabin pressure."
The incidents, logged in an Australian Transport Safety Bureau database, have been collated for the first time and detailed in the latest edition of Flight Safety Australia, published by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority."
Because the article authors didn't bother to include a link to the article, I'll assume that this is the one they're referring to. If so, this article does not in any way "collate" (collect) or "detail" them. It's a single-page article which is pretty much as insubstantive as its referer. It mentions a few anecdotes, then states:
So they hit the equipment with waves, but what was the result? They forgot to mention specifics, such as "the equipment behaved unexpectedly". The paragraph trails off with the statement that "the risk of interference is then at its greatest".
Next time you're on a flight and the plane suddenly begins to climb or pitch to the left, it's probably just the kid next to you conquering level 16 on his computer game.
Or it might be the wind and/or the captain trying to navigate the plane to its destination.
Laurie Cox, a spokesman for the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, said more research was needed into the effect of electronic devices.
Bingo.
"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"
No, I don't have to ask that. I've been "getting there" for years, while surrounded by people who use electronics.
I'm not saying electronics don't cause interference. What I'm saying is that as yet there is no basis for concluding that they do cause interference, and because such evidence would not be difficult to produce I think passengers are owed more by the airline industry and FAA than having to rely on these panic puff-piece articles that come along to garner readership by stirring the shit with unsubstantiated claims. If the airline industry or any regulatory body cared about passenger safety, they'd do a real study. Failing that, the next best thing would be for the airlines to err on the side of caution and say "we don't know if electronics do or don't cause interference, so we're banning them to be safe"; at least that would be a
Whitney Dione, Celine Houston, who can tell them apart? And the Backstreet Boys vs NSync... is NSync the band where the tough one wears the bandana, or is it that sensitive angsty one? Personally I spend my money on cds from the pop amalgem sensation Boy George Michael Jackson Browne Vs Board Of Education, he rocks!
I'd only be comforted by this thought if (a) I believed that the illegality of drugs was just, and (b) that the prosecutor could be trusted to confine his use of "patriot" powers to precisely those things that I believe should be illegal. Neither is the case.
To me the interesting question isn't whether this individual prosecutor was properly motivated in this case. It was whether the system is rigged to allow gross abuses of power. An extreme scenario to illustrate: if traffic cops were granted the power to kill motorists, what should people feel about
Well, all I know is I first heard of the concept of a space elevator in Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator. Hope they design in some protection against those vermicious knids.
I'm guessing the Japanese distribution centers were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
CDs have solomon-reed error checking codes on them. When bits are changed, these errors are detected. For small enough errors like just a few missing bits, the player responds by interpolating the waveform; for bigger swatches of errors such as those caused by groove-aligned scratches, the result is an outright dropout/skip... NOT a change of pitch, tone, etc as alleged by the article in describing the effects of beer/yogurt/whatever. I don't even feel motivated to try the described procedure... as a character on the Simpsons once said, "I make it a point not to turn my head if I don't expect to see anything."
What I want out of a financial institution is the following:
- never send superchecks in the mail
- every time I call them, require me to provide my password before talking about ANYTHING
- every time they call me, authenticate who they are with a password from their side; or have me call them back at a number which is established at account signup time
- issue me a smartcard with an embedded chip that allows me to digitally sign all transactions I undertake offline
- for online transactions, allow me to use the web with strong encryption to issue a single-use disposable credit card number with a specified cap and time limit
The technology for all of these things has existed for years. If someone would step up to the plate and deliver, I'd feel much more secure.Assuming a ruling holds up which prohibits seamless plugin usage, how long before freenet and other p2p networks are flooded with tweaked versions of mozilla (as well as instructions on how to mod the source if people want to do it themselves) that do plugins seamlessly anyhow?
It would be like refusing to hire an Enron manager because he/she continued to work for Enron for a year after it became obvious that Enron was doing patently evil things.
Debateable, as most absolutes are. The company being big and bad doesn't exactly make the point that infringing copyright from said company would be wrong. There are long discussions that can be had about the rampaging of corporations all over our democracy by buying legislators.
To stay in the proffered theme of soundbytes from little red riding hood, the big bad wolf got his comeuppance.
Just because something is widespread doesn't make it morally right.
But given that government is supposed to be by the people for the people, it's a very good heuristic to raise the question.
Her being Wynona Rider would be way funny. Martha Stewart a tad less so, but still amusing.
But what about when the laws are unjust? There was a time when black people couldn't vote, and a time when women couldn't vote. There were times and places where it was legal to come into your house and kill you because you weren't Christian. Being legal doesn't make it right.
I'm pretty sure that SCO is going to be a great stock to hold onto. I'm hoping very much to get a job there. I keep checking their jobs page eagerly every day, but so far only the disappointing phrase "There are currently no job openings at SCO". Because so many top quality engineers are champing at the bit to work there, I will just have to be patient. I feel like a kid waiting outside a candy store that's about to open...
Wow, check out the accompanying graphic... it protects against both pornography AND adult content. They must have some kind of multiprocessing code in there.
7.6 miles in 2.5 hours. Average speed: 3 mph. Speed of a human walking: 4 mph.
It remains unclear as to why Owen dressed up like a butler for the epic ride up Mount Washington.
Why do clowns do anything?