If the US court system was working properly they would know the game was up, and not waste their time.
Originally, the FEC extempted the Internet entirely from regulation, but a court said they weren't allowed to do so. Quoting CNet:
In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
I'm annoyed that this was not mentioned anywhere in the Slashdot writeup, and people aren't raising this point in the comments (as far as I have read so far). People are talking about how this is a power-grab by the FEC, without realizing that it was not the FEC's decision to regulate the Internet--the courts are requiring them to do so.
There is a solution that would stop the Internet from being regulated at all by the FEC. The judge's decision is based on the premise that campaign finance law applies to the Internet. So, Sen. Harry Reid has a solution: a bill that would add one single sentence to campaign finance law exempting "communications over the Internet."
Re:Yes, Jeff, you do get police services
on
Book 'Em, Dano
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· Score: 1
Not to mention, sales tax also goes to fund the educational systems which teach many people how to read. (There wouldn't be much a market for books without widespread literacy.)
Re:Yes, Jeff, you do get police services
on
Book 'Em, Dano
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· Score: 1
When you order off of Amazon, do you have to pay Washington sales tax? (I don't think so, but I honestly don't know for sure, since I've never actually bought anything from there.) If not, then it is only fair that Amazon purchases be taxed by the buyer's jurisdiction.
As a side note, some stores in Washington will cover the sales tax of their Oregonian customers, if we show identification, since Oregon does not have a sales tax.
An Oregon library worker was arrested after selling at least $10,000 worth of stolen library books, CDs and videotapes online in the past six months. [. ..] Bezos also once told angry booksellers there's no reason why Amazon should have to collect sales taxes, arguing that Amazon gets no police services from other states.
Of course, Oregon does not have a sales tax. (We're weird that way.)
Personally, I find the campaigns that use lactose intolerance as a reason to discourage drinking milk kind of silly. I am lactose intolerant, and hence avoid milk, but I don't think that means others shouldn't either. After all, just because milk is bad for ME doesn't mean it's bad for EVERYONE, right?
Really? Name the other people who came up with E=MC^2, and explain why they didn't get a Nobel prize.
Let's read that comment again: "Ideas don;t come from only one place necessarily. That's a complete infofascist myth - it's completely possible for multiple people to independently have essentially the same idea."
How is this power moving from the state and local level to the national level? This is a bill in the Oregon legislature that says Oregon's state goverment has to consider Open Source software.
Opps, sorry. I didn't realize you were talking about outside the US. (Now I feel dumb.)
You are exactly right, the system is pretty much screaming "abuse the hell out of me".
Here, you can pretty much get credit card applications with no effort. When I buy a book from my campus bookstore, it comes with a damn credit card application stuffed in it. The credit card companies decided, I guess, that it is profitable enough to make credit incredibly easy to obtain that they don't mind eating the cost of occasional fraud. Unfortunately, this hurts those whose identities have been stolen, as they have to take the time and effort to clear their credit rating.
I don't think that demanding that the products I buy in the store WORK is tantamount to demanding a nanny. When I buy CDs, I want to be able to play them ON MY COMPUTER and whatever other device was designed to play CDs. These copy-protected CDs have been known not to work in some computers, DVD players, and car CD players. Translation: buying them is like playing a crapshoot since you don't know if (a) it will have the anti-copying technology implemented or (b) what devices the CD will play in if it does. Maybe nobody expects a Yugo to hit seventy when climbing a hill, but if my brand-new car randomly didn't start on Sundays and Tuesdays, and it was a manufacturer-imposed limitation, I think I would be entitled to complain.
(Besides, when you buy a car, they do tell you the horsepower of the engine. People buying Yugos do have access to that information.)
I don't demand a nanny. I demand to be warned when someone is trying to rip me off, by selling me products that don't work as advertised.
Re:2D analogy in a 3D world...
on
You Can't Link Here
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's not even what's going on. It's more like if a company welcomed people into its store, then threatened people with legal action if they told others the address of the store or the locations of specific items in the store.
As far as I am concerned, a link is like a card in a card catalog or a reference in a paper. It's just information about how to get someplace on the web, and nobody should be able to restrict another's dissemination of that information.
I doubt this would be constitutional. The only reason the government can require a license for broadcast is because broadcasting takes up a piece of the publicly-owned radio spectrum, and that spectrum is considered a scarce resource. It is precicely because that spectrum is limit (only a finite number of frequencies on the FM dial, and only a finite number of broadcast TV channels) that they get away with licensing.
Certified mail provides proof of mailing and delivery of mail. The sender receives a mailing receipt at the time of mailing, and a record of delivery is maintained by the Postal Service. A return receipt to provide the sender with proof of delivery can also be purchased for an additional fee. Certified mail service is available only for First-Class Mail or Priority Mail. Certified mail is not available for international mail, nor does it offer insurance protection. For valuables and irreplaceable items, use Express Mail or insured or registered mail.
I think it's a little deeper than that. If you are lied to by someone trying to take your money, then even under the most libertarian ideology (to which I don't subscribe), the government would be justified in prosecuting the fraud. I view this as a preventive measure--spend some money now to educate investors, and maybe in the long run, you won't have to prosecute as many scammers.
Just one prosecution probably costs more than this five-page web site.
How is that sentence flawed? They are saying one of Red Hat's clients was IBM, and what they did for IBM was provide software and support for their servers that use Linux. It would be like saying "Joe's Lemonade Stand had claimed such big clients as Ms. Smith, filling Ms. Smith's glass with lemonade."
If free software exists to address my needs (my government agency's needs, rather), but I choose to use a closed-source product instead, what are the penalties?
If the Ford Focus meets your needs as your government vehicle, but you would rather have a Jaguar XKR convertable, what are the penalties?
My guess is that your government agency would reject your request (just like this law would require them to do with a request to purchase Microsoft licenses). And if you went ahead and bought the Jaguar anyway, well...
So it's ok to violate peoples privacy as long as they are not American? Ehm... well... that DOES sound American (read: selfcentered)
I totally understand your point, and many Americans, including myself, would still be upset if the NSA violated the privacy of foreign civillians. (I wouldn't be upset if they spied on foreign militaries or governments--which is supposed to be their job--as this is done by most governments.) But considering how little most Americans pay attention to matters overseas (and watching CNN Headline News's "Global Minute" isn't much), most probably wouldn't know or care.
What does this have to do with privacy? Borders is a corporation, and its property is private property.
Just because a corporation is involved, and it involves that corporation's private property, doesn't mean there aren't privacy issues involved. Let's pretend my school installed a secret camera in my dorm's bathroom and videotaped me showering. Of let's say they put in my room and recorded my conversation with my girlfriend. Either of these, would they to occur, would involve a (not-for-profit) corporation doing something on its private property. It's not my right to go to school there (as the admissions department reminds unlucky applicants every year). But if my school did either of these things, I would be quite upset, and would consider them to be an invasion of my privacy.
Let's think of it another way: Do you shop at Safeway (or any of their subsidiary stores)? Do you use their Club Card? Now, what might have you purchased at Safeway that you wouldn't want the world to know? Condoms? Birth control pills from their pharmacy? Anti-depressant medication from their pharmacy? Hemorrhoid treatments? If you have purchased any of these things, and use a Club Card, it's probably in their database. A private corporation chronicling what occurs on their property. But you would be upset if they put that on their web site, wouldn't you?
Why do some many people see the NSA as evil? Yes, the NSA listens to overseas communications. [...] For all you US citizens out there, and citizens of our allies, they are the good guys!
Forgive us for having a healthy skepticism about the government. Most Americans probably wouldn't mind if the NSA only worked to listen to overseas communications. However, through Echelon, the NSA and its friends have the power to listen to our conversations as well, which we reguard is a violation of our privacy.
When an article comes up mentioning the Air Force, people generally don't dwell on thoughts like "yes the Air Force shoots down enemy fighters, no this isn't nice."
Also, just because my government does something (even to foreigners) does not mean I have to like it. Being part of a democracy means evaluating your government's policies, domestic and foreign. That doesn't mean being super-negative and unwilling to admit that the government ever makes good decisions, but it doesn't mean you sheepishly go along with all the government's decisions either. What kind of patriot are you if, when you see the government doing something overseas you feel is unwise, wrong, or possibly both, you don't speak up? The many men and women who have died serving our country--including those in the Air Force--didn't die so you and I could mindlessly go along with whomever happens to be in power at the moment.
Yeah, he was in a group interview/session to commemorate the anniversary along with Bill Gates, among others. David Bradley said that while he chose the keys, Bill is the guy who made them famous.
Then he said "When you used it for NT logon. That's what I meant."
How exactly is this boring? It speaks to the future of our being able to send and recieve messages in private. In the past, when messages were mostly sent on paper and by the mail, the government and others simply did not have the capacity to open every piece of mail, read it, and leave no trace of having read it.
Today, thanks to Carnavore and Echelon, we are facing a future when our primary means of sending text messages, Email, is searchable and readable by the government without our knowledge.
We all have a duty to prevent that Orwellian future. This means adopting encryption and making it widely used. And this report is about how well (or poorly) we are doing that.
I don't know about you, but to me, protecting our privacy is immensely important.
According to the report, only 151,751 unrevoked keys have an outside signature attached. That's an infinitesimal portion of all email-users.
I have to admit being part of this problem, as my key has been signed by only one other person. The reason: most of my friends don't use encryption, and I haven't heard of any key-signing parties in my area.
Slashdot Mirror
Originally, the FEC extempted the Internet entirely from regulation, but a court said they weren't allowed to do so. Quoting CNet:
I'm annoyed that this was not mentioned anywhere in the Slashdot writeup, and people aren't raising this point in the comments (as far as I have read so far). People are talking about how this is a power-grab by the FEC, without realizing that it was not the FEC's decision to regulate the Internet--the courts are requiring them to do so.There is a solution that would stop the Internet from being regulated at all by the FEC. The judge's decision is based on the premise that campaign finance law applies to the Internet. So, Sen. Harry Reid has a solution: a bill that would add one single sentence to campaign finance law exempting "communications over the Internet."
Not to mention, sales tax also goes to fund the educational systems which teach many people how to read. (There wouldn't be much a market for books without widespread literacy.)
When you order off of Amazon, do you have to pay Washington sales tax? (I don't think so, but I honestly don't know for sure, since I've never actually bought anything from there.) If not, then it is only fair that Amazon purchases be taxed by the buyer's jurisdiction.
As a side note, some stores in Washington will cover the sales tax of their Oregonian customers, if we show identification, since Oregon does not have a sales tax.
Of course, Oregon does not have a sales tax. (We're weird that way.)
Some links on lactose intolerence (from people not pushing agendas): http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/lact oseintolerance/
(This one notes that something like 75 percent of African Americans and 90 percent of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerence
(This explains why: the mutation which allows humans to produce the lactaze enzyme occured in Western Europe.)
Personally, I find the campaigns that use lactose intolerance as a reason to discourage drinking milk kind of silly. I am lactose intolerant, and hence avoid milk, but I don't think that means others shouldn't either. After all, just because milk is bad for ME doesn't mean it's bad for EVERYONE, right?
Really? Name the other people who came up with E=MC^2, and explain why they didn't get a Nobel prize.
Let's read that comment again: "Ideas don;t come from only one place necessarily. That's a complete infofascist myth - it's completely possible for multiple people to independently have essentially the same idea."
How is this power moving from the state and local level to the national level? This is a bill in the Oregon legislature that says Oregon's state goverment has to consider Open Source software.
Opps, sorry. I didn't realize you were talking about outside the US. (Now I feel dumb.)
You are exactly right, the system is pretty much screaming "abuse the hell out of me".
Here, you can pretty much get credit card applications with no effort. When I buy a book from my campus bookstore, it comes with a damn credit card application stuffed in it. The credit card companies decided, I guess, that it is profitable enough to make credit incredibly easy to obtain that they don't mind eating the cost of occasional fraud. Unfortunately, this hurts those whose identities have been stolen, as they have to take the time and effort to clear their credit rating.
That's funny. Those ten or so credit card applications I get in the mail each week say nothing about coming to see them IN PERSON.
Apparently YOU need a nanny.
I don't think that demanding that the products I buy in the store WORK is tantamount to demanding a nanny. When I buy CDs, I want to be able to play them ON MY COMPUTER and whatever other device was designed to play CDs. These copy-protected CDs have been known not to work in some computers, DVD players, and car CD players. Translation: buying them is like playing a crapshoot since you don't know if (a) it will have the anti-copying technology implemented or (b) what devices the CD will play in if it does. Maybe nobody expects a Yugo to hit seventy when climbing a hill, but if my brand-new car randomly didn't start on Sundays and Tuesdays, and it was a manufacturer-imposed limitation, I think I would be entitled to complain.
(Besides, when you buy a car, they do tell you the horsepower of the engine. People buying Yugos do have access to that information.)
I don't demand a nanny. I demand to be warned when someone is trying to rip me off, by selling me products that don't work as advertised.
That's not even what's going on. It's more like if a company welcomed people into its store, then threatened people with legal action if they told others the address of the store or the locations of specific items in the store.
As far as I am concerned, a link is like a card in a card catalog or a reference in a paper. It's just information about how to get someplace on the web, and nobody should be able to restrict another's dissemination of that information.
I'm glad MARQUEE is IE-only. It means I don't have to look at it!
I doubt this would be constitutional. The only reason the government can require a license for broadcast is because broadcasting takes up a piece of the publicly-owned radio spectrum, and that spectrum is considered a scarce resource. It is precicely because that spectrum is limit (only a finite number of frequencies on the FM dial, and only a finite number of broadcast TV channels) that they get away with licensing.
I think it's a little deeper than that. If you are lied to by someone trying to take your money, then even under the most libertarian ideology (to which I don't subscribe), the government would be justified in prosecuting the fraud. I view this as a preventive measure--spend some money now to educate investors, and maybe in the long run, you won't have to prosecute as many scammers.
Just one prosecution probably costs more than this five-page web site.
How is that sentence flawed? They are saying one of Red Hat's clients was IBM, and what they did for IBM was provide software and support for their servers that use Linux. It would be like saying "Joe's Lemonade Stand had claimed such big clients as Ms. Smith, filling Ms. Smith's glass with lemonade."
If the Ford Focus meets your needs as your government vehicle, but you would rather have a Jaguar XKR convertable, what are the penalties?
My guess is that your government agency would reject your request (just like this law would require them to do with a request to purchase Microsoft licenses). And if you went ahead and bought the Jaguar anyway, well...
I totally understand your point, and many Americans, including myself, would still be upset if the NSA violated the privacy of foreign civillians. (I wouldn't be upset if they spied on foreign militaries or governments--which is supposed to be their job--as this is done by most governments.) But considering how little most Americans pay attention to matters overseas (and watching CNN Headline News's "Global Minute" isn't much), most probably wouldn't know or care.
Just because a corporation is involved, and it involves that corporation's private property, doesn't mean there aren't privacy issues involved. Let's pretend my school installed a secret camera in my dorm's bathroom and videotaped me showering. Of let's say they put in my room and recorded my conversation with my girlfriend. Either of these, would they to occur, would involve a (not-for-profit) corporation doing something on its private property. It's not my right to go to school there (as the admissions department reminds unlucky applicants every year). But if my school did either of these things, I would be quite upset, and would consider them to be an invasion of my privacy.
Let's think of it another way: Do you shop at Safeway (or any of their subsidiary stores)? Do you use their Club Card? Now, what might have you purchased at Safeway that you wouldn't want the world to know? Condoms? Birth control pills from their pharmacy? Anti-depressant medication from their pharmacy? Hemorrhoid treatments? If you have purchased any of these things, and use a Club Card, it's probably in their database. A private corporation chronicling what occurs on their property. But you would be upset if they put that on their web site, wouldn't you?
Forgive us for having a healthy skepticism about the government. Most Americans probably wouldn't mind if the NSA only worked to listen to overseas communications. However, through Echelon, the NSA and its friends have the power to listen to our conversations as well, which we reguard is a violation of our privacy.
When an article comes up mentioning the Air Force, people generally don't dwell on thoughts like "yes the Air Force shoots down enemy fighters, no this isn't nice."
Also, just because my government does something (even to foreigners) does not mean I have to like it. Being part of a democracy means evaluating your government's policies, domestic and foreign. That doesn't mean being super-negative and unwilling to admit that the government ever makes good decisions, but it doesn't mean you sheepishly go along with all the government's decisions either. What kind of patriot are you if, when you see the government doing something overseas you feel is unwise, wrong, or possibly both, you don't speak up? The many men and women who have died serving our country--including those in the Air Force--didn't die so you and I could mindlessly go along with whomever happens to be in power at the moment.
Then he said "When you used it for NT logon. That's what I meant."
I don't know, but I hear they've been duped by Linus "Pac-Man" Torvalds into spreading cancer.
Can you imagine if cars were sold with the hoods welded shut and if the publication of Haynes repair guides were made a crime?
How exactly is this boring? It speaks to the future of our being able to send and recieve messages in private. In the past, when messages were mostly sent on paper and by the mail, the government and others simply did not have the capacity to open every piece of mail, read it, and leave no trace of having read it.
Today, thanks to Carnavore and Echelon, we are facing a future when our primary means of sending text messages, Email, is searchable and readable by the government without our knowledge.
We all have a duty to prevent that Orwellian future. This means adopting encryption and making it widely used. And this report is about how well (or poorly) we are doing that.
I don't know about you, but to me, protecting our privacy is immensely important.
According to the report, only 151,751 unrevoked keys have an outside signature attached. That's an infinitesimal portion of all email-users.
I have to admit being part of this problem, as my key has been signed by only one other person. The reason: most of my friends don't use encryption, and I haven't heard of any key-signing parties in my area.