GP is right. In a natural state you have all the rights in the world (upto and including murdering other people). This of course is anarchy and not something desirable in a society. So societies have formed around the idea that your freedoms have to be *reasonably limited*. This is done by giving power to a central authority that we call a government. The Constitution gives a broad (and sometimes specific) outline of what powers each branch of the government has and what limits those branches can infringe on our natural rights.
*reasonably limited: what exactly this means is what we have been fighting over since the first government was installed and will be until the end of time.
We do need to push hard against the coming darkness.
It only sounds tin foil hatish from people who are oblivious to what's going on (most of America, but hopefully a lot less so on Slashdot--even though the moderation sometimes says otherwise).
Your great posts are one of the reasons I've friended you.:)
I love what you said but I do have one nit to pick. I'll explain it as an expansion on your thoughts regarding the current state of Washington.
I do believe that most of Washington is full of crooks but the reason that it's this is because of the political apathy in this country. As a whole we just don't care enough about it. The fact that over 90% of incumbents are reelected helps prove this out. If we wanted to send a real message that we are still incharge and expect them to listen to us instead of the lobbyists then we need to switch this around to 10% being reelected and 90% new blood. If we did this every once in a while (say 8-20 years) then you would see a big title wave of change in Congress.
One addendum, I realize that this one move alone won't fix our broken political system (I'm not that naive). There are several other things that need to be done. Here is a short list: 1. Several new amendments for things like explicit privacy, no gerrymandering, new voting process, a President not being part of a political party (for stricter separation between Executive and Legislative branches), no lobbying (or very very strict rules) 2. More processes for voicing your concerns to your representatives (I have yet to flesh this one out) 3. Find a way to reign in the media companies so they are not such big propagandist entities (i.e. remove the profit motive in journalism).
My response to people willing to give up their rights so easily is usually to quote Martin Niemöller: First the Nazis came... First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me-- and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Being part of the IT organization in the DoC means he should have at least been aware of the generic problems that plague almost everyones computers--namely spyware, keyloggers and viruses. These things, especially keyloggers, could lead a hacker to gain access to his sensitive information on the computer and access to any place he logs into.
Even though I don't have a wife and kids yet, when I do you better believe everyone is going to have separate computers (especially if I use one of them for work). The kids will have their own. The wife will her own. And, I'll have several, although at least one that is separate from everyone else's.
If you don't at least understand the basics of security, especially if you are working from home with sensitive information, then you don't deserve a position in the IT organization.
While I'll admit that I'm in the minority, that do not mean that I can't be right about an opinion.
In my daily interactions with people I know in person and online, I see a growing number of people waking up and seeing that things have been getting worse here as a more systemic problem and not something limited to a minor issue here or there. We talk about lots of the negative things going on in our society here on Slashdot on a daily basis. Sure, some of it is overblown or completely false and many people point out when something like this comes up.
But overall we are faltering as a nation. We have the most terrible sock-puppet president I could imagine with several of "his" people behind the scenes trying to take away our liberties in the name of security. I believe we very well could be months away from war with Iran which will almost certainly mean a draft. We've almost doubled our national debt in the last 7 years. Our currency is in a freefall as well as our economy. More people care about American Idol than electing good leaders. Of the less than half of eligible people that do vote, most will just vote along party lines and not care who it is as long as it's "their party".
There is plenty more which I won't get into but suffice to say we are decaying as a nation and something like what happened to Roman or Germany (post WWI) is likely to be in our future unless we can steer this country back on course. Of course it's hard to predict the future and I'm not claiming to be a profit of any kind. But it doesn't take a genius to take what you are seeing and follow it to it's most likely conclusion. A lot of people don't do this in their daily lives and that is why I made a reference to "Bread and Circuses". They just worry about their own little world and as long as nothing comes along to disrupt it then in their view they don't have to worry about it.
Yes, but you can't catch all the crimes that happen all the time. Our Justice system realizes that you can't catch every single law infraction and that sometimes you'll have to let a criminal go free. I'm not sure how you could even come close to catching every time someone breaks the law without 1984-esque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four monitoring like in a Panopticon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon. Obviously, this is not the kind of country I want to live in. A place where you are in constant fear of being taken away for the smallest crime or even for no crime at all.
I'd feel pretty damn good if the biggest upset in my day to day life was a bad ring tone. Unfortunately that is not the reality we live in.
Whether someone chooses to stick their head in the sand about the problems we face in our society is their business. But when enough of them do it then it become my business and everyone else's for that matter. "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" - Unknown, but often attributed to Edmund Burke.
We see this happening in our society today (much like the Romans before their fall) where apathy and "Bread and Circuses" take over society. Several years ago, I used to be blissfully ignorant of the country we live in. Other than what appeared to be some minor problems here and there (nothing endemic), I didn't see anything majorly wrong with this country and the direction it was heading. I saw this country for what it has been idealized in the media rather than what it actually was. Now things are coming into focus.
The road we currently walk as a country is one that's going blindly over the cliff. We are such a strong nation but like strong nations before us, it is ultimately the internal problems that destroy us not the external threats.
There will have to be some event, or series of events, for people to wake up and see the decaying corpse for what it is. But it will have to be something that affects their everyday lives or it won't work. That is what it will take for "Joe Apathetic" to realize that it does matter what the government does.
I realize that most of my post has been very "doom and gloom" but you have to look for the light to keep going. I know there are still plenty of good people in the world and I do what I can to help them get into the right positions to help change things for the better.
Just because there is a problem with some parts of the government doesn't mean that the whole government and everyone in it is corrupt.
However, the longer you let corruption fester without confronting it, the more systemic it gets and eventually it will spread to every corner of the government. I don't think we're there yet in this country but unfortunately we are well on our way.
"Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" - Unknown, but often attributed to Edmund Burke
Yes, but we've replaced these old problems with a bunch of new ones that have been festering for decades and are really much bigger and scarier issues:
Unending war of against the Iraq's Another Permanent War (on small groups of Islamic Fundamentalists) Removal of our basic Civil Rights Fundamental loss of confidence in our political process (picking the best of two awful candidates is often our only choice) Unsafe food from China Unsafe toys from China Nearly doubling of our National Debt in only 7 years (5 trillion to 9 trillion) And much much more...
Oh yeah, and still no Duke Nukem Forever... Sorry.
Hell isn't freezing over, it's shifting into high gear!
I don't think that underage person deserves anytime in jail. But for the purposes of this discussion, I suppose this is just being pedantic.
One of the best things we could do in this country with regards to our jails is to legalize most/all drugs and stop putting people in jail for victimless crimes. By most estimates we could free up 60-85% of our jails and prisons by releasing drug offenders.
I will add one thing to my pro-don't-put-people-in-jail rant. Anyone that DOES actual harm usually deserves jail time. For example, if someone while on drugs kills another person in a car accident (that wouldn't have reasonably happened had they been "sober") then they do deserve jail time because they are responsible for their actions that resulted in the crash and they are a menace that society needs to be protected from.
Sure you can come up with hypothetical situations until the cows come home, but has this feature actually *harmed* anybody? The better question to ask is "Is it LIKELY that this feature will cause harm to relationships? And to how many people".
In this case, the answer to the question is a resounding "YES!". And to how many people is a bit of a gray area but I would be willing to bet that the number of people being harmed by this feature will be at least 10% of Facebook users in the near term (with near 100% being reasonable given enough time and the fact that no one is an angel, despite their claims to the contrary)
I did. But that's more because of it's life sucking ability (as in no life outside of WoW).
I found one thing to be true about reading the WoW forums. The longer you read them the more depressed you get. The best advise is to just never read them.
I remember this from those videos they showed in Driver's Ed. when I was 16.
The correct answer is "Nothing". Let them go around you into oncoming traffic or onto the sidewalk or whatever. If anything bad happens because of you moving out of their way (e.g. going out into oncoming traffic T-boning you) then you will be responsible for it.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I've seen some back-of-the-envelope calculations on charging in a few minutes and as I remember it, it's pretty insane how much power you need. Got a citation with more details?
It sounds like a really good idea and I'd like to see this done across the board. It's a way to make sure people get competent legal advise and reduces the possibility of putting an innocent person in jail.
Yeah, that is very scary that many people don't understand what this country is supposed to stand for and why its so vitally important.
Since you didn't go into details of how you tried to communicate why it was important I'm going to assume that you didn't use any real life scenarios that she could relate to. Try putting it in a context she can understand. Try something like this...
You go to the mall and do some shopping with some friends. On your way out to your car you're stopped by a police officer. He says "I've gotten a report that you stole some stuff from the Gap (or where ever kids go now:D)". She says, "No, I've got a receipt for it officer." For the sake of argument we'll say the officer doesn't believe her and decides to arrest her.
Here is where we diverge from our story depending on which kind of government you live in. I would start by telling her how our system works. You have to be charged within 72 hours of arrest. You may then have to go before a judge and possibly jury. There you can present your argument to a neutral third party. You show them you're receipt, you have your friends testify on your behalf etc. And you get justice (we won't get into the semantics of how much it can cost to do this as that's not important when teaching someone about their rights).
And here is what would happen in a Police State. You get thrown in jail, maybe for a week, maybe for a year while awaiting a trial that may never come. You have no idea. If you're lucky you might go before a judge. You show your evidence, assuming you're even allowed to (its up to the judge). He says he thinks you faked the evidence and adds another charge of presenting false evidence to a court of law. Then he gives you a sentence of 5 years. Request for appeals are denied, no reason given. You're now in jail for 5 years and you did nothing wrong and there are no checks and balances in place to make sure that justice is served.
I'm sure you could go into even more detail than I have but I think this would get the point across. Evil prospers when good men (and women) do nothing!
I agree that is what they should be doing; buildouts to the point of never having to worry about saturating their lines.
We should definitely be pushing hard to have them do this despite the large capital expenditures. The thing is this kind of investment only happens with the correct prodding. The way this happens in a Capitalist-like society (we're not true Capitalists) is by having lots of companies competing in an area for business. There are only a handful of these areas in the country because of local monopolies on wiring and competition. In those areas, like New York, where you have two cable companies, Verizon FiOS and others there is a lot of options. This ensures that the customer should, in theory at least, be getting what's advertised because if they don't they will jump ship. And since companies often times want to be better than their competition they will always be trying to show their service is better (in this case by increasing speeds and delivering on those promises).
What I'm getting at is that if we fix the problem by making sure there is lots of competition then the bandwidth problem is likely to be a lot less of a issue or possibly go away completely . Until we address this on at least a state, if not federal, level then we won't see much serious change.
I agree that they should be held more accountable for actually providing the service that they purport to have. I would be fine with reigning them in just so long as we all don't end up going from being able to get 15 mbps most of the time to 3 mbps all the time.
Vuze is correct in thinking that protocols and the Internet connections as a whole shouldn't be throttled, in theory, however in practice ISPs are limited in how much available bandwidth they have. As much as I don't like it, there is often a requirement that ISPs throttle some of the more bandwidth intensive protocols so that everyone on their network can have an enjoyable Internet experience.
Now, ideally, I think that the ISPs should be actively lighting up lots of new fiber between each other (peering) and lines out of their DSLAMs and Headends but it does take time and as we all know, since they are profit driven, they need to be making lots of money to keep their investors happy.
Lastly, there is a difference between throttling (normal for most ISPs) and what Comcast is doing, actively blocking/sabotage. Comcast deserves to get smacked down hard for what they are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
GP is right. In a natural state you have all the rights in the world (upto and including murdering other people). This of course is anarchy and not something desirable in a society. So societies have formed around the idea that your freedoms have to be *reasonably limited*. This is done by giving power to a central authority that we call a government. The Constitution gives a broad (and sometimes specific) outline of what powers each branch of the government has and what limits those branches can infringe on our natural rights.
*reasonably limited: what exactly this means is what we have been fighting over since the first government was installed and will be until the end of time.
Wow. So many good posts in this thread today (And a lot of the Mods are apparently asleep). Thanks. //Friended
You're not alone.
:)
We do need to push hard against the coming darkness.
It only sounds tin foil hatish from people who are oblivious to what's going on (most of America, but hopefully a lot less so on Slashdot--even though the moderation sometimes says otherwise).
Your great posts are one of the reasons I've friended you.
I love what you said but I do have one nit to pick. I'll explain it as an expansion on your thoughts regarding the current state of Washington.
I do believe that most of Washington is full of crooks but the reason that it's this is because of the political apathy in this country. As a whole we just don't care enough about it. The fact that over 90% of incumbents are reelected helps prove this out. If we wanted to send a real message that we are still incharge and expect them to listen to us instead of the lobbyists then we need to switch this around to 10% being reelected and 90% new blood. If we did this every once in a while (say 8-20 years) then you would see a big title wave of change in Congress.
One addendum, I realize that this one move alone won't fix our broken political system (I'm not that naive). There are several other things that need to be done. Here is a short list:
1. Several new amendments for things like explicit privacy, no gerrymandering, new voting process, a President not being part of a political party (for stricter separation between Executive and Legislative branches), no lobbying (or very very strict rules)
2. More processes for voicing your concerns to your representatives (I have yet to flesh this one out)
3. Find a way to reign in the media companies so they are not such big propagandist entities (i.e. remove the profit motive in journalism).
My response to people willing to give up their rights so easily is usually to quote Martin Niemöller:
First the Nazis came...
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
This is exactly how the situation should be treated.
Being part of the IT organization in the DoC means he should have at least been aware of the generic problems that plague almost everyones computers--namely spyware, keyloggers and viruses. These things, especially keyloggers, could lead a hacker to gain access to his sensitive information on the computer and access to any place he logs into.
Even though I don't have a wife and kids yet, when I do you better believe everyone is going to have separate computers (especially if I use one of them for work). The kids will have their own. The wife will her own. And, I'll have several, although at least one that is separate from everyone else's.
If you don't at least understand the basics of security, especially if you are working from home with sensitive information, then you don't deserve a position in the IT organization.
Someone with some mod points please counter this troll rating. There is no reason for it.
Seems like someone just disagreed with what he said.
Mod Parent Up
While I'll admit that I'm in the minority, that do not mean that I can't be right about an opinion.
In my daily interactions with people I know in person and online, I see a growing number of people waking up and seeing that things have been getting worse here as a more systemic problem and not something limited to a minor issue here or there. We talk about lots of the negative things going on in our society here on Slashdot on a daily basis. Sure, some of it is overblown or completely false and many people point out when something like this comes up.
But overall we are faltering as a nation. We have the most terrible sock-puppet president I could imagine with several of "his" people behind the scenes trying to take away our liberties in the name of security. I believe we very well could be months away from war with Iran which will almost certainly mean a draft. We've almost doubled our national debt in the last 7 years. Our currency is in a freefall as well as our economy. More people care about American Idol than electing good leaders. Of the less than half of eligible people that do vote, most will just vote along party lines and not care who it is as long as it's "their party".
There is plenty more which I won't get into but suffice to say we are decaying as a nation and something like what happened to Roman or Germany (post WWI) is likely to be in our future unless we can steer this country back on course. Of course it's hard to predict the future and I'm not claiming to be a profit of any kind. But it doesn't take a genius to take what you are seeing and follow it to it's most likely conclusion. A lot of people don't do this in their daily lives and that is why I made a reference to "Bread and Circuses". They just worry about their own little world and as long as nothing comes along to disrupt it then in their view they don't have to worry about it.
Thank you for one of the funniest posts I've read in a long time!
Yes, but you can't catch all the crimes that happen all the time. Our Justice system realizes that you can't catch every single law infraction and that sometimes you'll have to let a criminal go free. I'm not sure how you could even come close to catching every time someone breaks the law without 1984-esque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four monitoring like in a Panopticon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon. Obviously, this is not the kind of country I want to live in. A place where you are in constant fear of being taken away for the smallest crime or even for no crime at all.
I'd feel pretty damn good if the biggest upset in my day to day life was a bad ring tone. Unfortunately that is not the reality we live in.
Whether someone chooses to stick their head in the sand about the problems we face in our society is their business. But when enough of them do it then it become my business and everyone else's for that matter. "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" - Unknown, but often attributed to Edmund Burke.
We see this happening in our society today (much like the Romans before their fall) where apathy and "Bread and Circuses" take over society. Several years ago, I used to be blissfully ignorant of the country we live in. Other than what appeared to be some minor problems here and there (nothing endemic), I didn't see anything majorly wrong with this country and the direction it was heading. I saw this country for what it has been idealized in the media rather than what it actually was. Now things are coming into focus.
The road we currently walk as a country is one that's going blindly over the cliff. We are such a strong nation but like strong nations before us, it is ultimately the internal problems that destroy us not the external threats.
There will have to be some event, or series of events, for people to wake up and see the decaying corpse for what it is. But it will have to be something that affects their everyday lives or it won't work. That is what it will take for "Joe Apathetic" to realize that it does matter what the government does.
I realize that most of my post has been very "doom and gloom" but you have to look for the light to keep going. I know there are still plenty of good people in the world and I do what I can to help them get into the right positions to help change things for the better.
We should all do the same where ever we can.
*Steps off the soap box*
Just because there is a problem with some parts of the government doesn't mean that the whole government and everyone in it is corrupt.
However, the longer you let corruption fester without confronting it, the more systemic it gets and eventually it will spread to every corner of the government. I don't think we're there yet in this country but unfortunately we are well on our way.
"Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" - Unknown, but often attributed to Edmund Burke
Yes, but we've replaced these old problems with a bunch of new ones that have been festering for decades and are really much bigger and scarier issues:
Unending war of against the Iraq's
Another Permanent War (on small groups of Islamic Fundamentalists)
Removal of our basic Civil Rights
Fundamental loss of confidence in our political process (picking the best of two awful candidates is often our only choice)
Unsafe food from China
Unsafe toys from China
Nearly doubling of our National Debt in only 7 years (5 trillion to 9 trillion)
And much much more...
Oh yeah, and still no Duke Nukem Forever... Sorry.
Hell isn't freezing over, it's shifting into high gear!
I don't think that underage person deserves anytime in jail. But for the purposes of this discussion, I suppose this is just being pedantic.
One of the best things we could do in this country with regards to our jails is to legalize most/all drugs and stop putting people in jail for victimless crimes. By most estimates we could free up 60-85% of our jails and prisons by releasing drug offenders.
I will add one thing to my pro-don't-put-people-in-jail rant. Anyone that DOES actual harm usually deserves jail time. For example, if someone while on drugs kills another person in a car accident (that wouldn't have reasonably happened had they been "sober") then they do deserve jail time because they are responsible for their actions that resulted in the crash and they are a menace that society needs to be protected from.
In this case, the answer to the question is a resounding "YES!". And to how many people is a bit of a gray area but I would be willing to bet that the number of people being harmed by this feature will be at least 10% of Facebook users in the near term (with near 100% being reasonable given enough time and the fact that no one is an angel, despite their claims to the contrary)
I did. But that's more because of it's life sucking ability (as in no life outside of WoW).
I found one thing to be true about reading the WoW forums. The longer you read them the more depressed you get. The best advise is to just never read them.
I remember this from those videos they showed in Driver's Ed. when I was 16.
The correct answer is "Nothing". Let them go around you into oncoming traffic or onto the sidewalk or whatever. If anything bad happens because of you moving out of their way (e.g. going out into oncoming traffic T-boning you) then you will be responsible for it.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I've seen some back-of-the-envelope calculations on charging in a few minutes and as I remember it, it's pretty insane how much power you need. Got a citation with more details?
Where is this? Is it across the whole state?
It sounds like a really good idea and I'd like to see this done across the board. It's a way to make sure people get competent legal advise and reduces the possibility of putting an innocent person in jail.
Yeah, that is very scary that many people don't understand what this country is supposed to stand for and why its so vitally important.
:D)". She says, "No, I've got a receipt for it officer." For the sake of argument we'll say the officer doesn't believe her and decides to arrest her.
Since you didn't go into details of how you tried to communicate why it was important I'm going to assume that you didn't use any real life scenarios that she could relate to. Try putting it in a context she can understand. Try something like this...
You go to the mall and do some shopping with some friends. On your way out to your car you're stopped by a police officer. He says "I've gotten a report that you stole some stuff from the Gap (or where ever kids go now
Here is where we diverge from our story depending on which kind of government you live in. I would start by telling her how our system works. You have to be charged within 72 hours of arrest. You may then have to go before a judge and possibly jury. There you can present your argument to a neutral third party. You show them you're receipt, you have your friends testify on your behalf etc. And you get justice (we won't get into the semantics of how much it can cost to do this as that's not important when teaching someone about their rights).
And here is what would happen in a Police State. You get thrown in jail, maybe for a week, maybe for a year while awaiting a trial that may never come. You have no idea. If you're lucky you might go before a judge. You show your evidence, assuming you're even allowed to (its up to the judge). He says he thinks you faked the evidence and adds another charge of presenting false evidence to a court of law. Then he gives you a sentence of 5 years. Request for appeals are denied, no reason given. You're now in jail for 5 years and you did nothing wrong and there are no checks and balances in place to make sure that justice is served.
I'm sure you could go into even more detail than I have but I think this would get the point across. Evil prospers when good men (and women) do nothing!
I agree that is what they should be doing; buildouts to the point of never having to worry about saturating their lines.
We should definitely be pushing hard to have them do this despite the large capital expenditures. The thing is this kind of investment only happens with the correct prodding. The way this happens in a Capitalist-like society (we're not true Capitalists) is by having lots of companies competing in an area for business. There are only a handful of these areas in the country because of local monopolies on wiring and competition. In those areas, like New York, where you have two cable companies, Verizon FiOS and others there is a lot of options. This ensures that the customer should, in theory at least, be getting what's advertised because if they don't they will jump ship. And since companies often times want to be better than their competition they will always be trying to show their service is better (in this case by increasing speeds and delivering on those promises).
What I'm getting at is that if we fix the problem by making sure there is lots of competition then the bandwidth problem is likely to be a lot less of a issue or possibly go away completely . Until we address this on at least a state, if not federal, level then we won't see much serious change.
I agree that they should be held more accountable for actually providing the service that they purport to have. I would be fine with reigning them in just so long as we all don't end up going from being able to get 15 mbps most of the time to 3 mbps all the time.
Vuze is correct in thinking that protocols and the Internet connections as a whole shouldn't be throttled, in theory, however in practice ISPs are limited in how much available bandwidth they have. As much as I don't like it, there is often a requirement that ISPs throttle some of the more bandwidth intensive protocols so that everyone on their network can have an enjoyable Internet experience.
Now, ideally, I think that the ISPs should be actively lighting up lots of new fiber between each other (peering) and lines out of their DSLAMs and Headends but it does take time and as we all know, since they are profit driven, they need to be making lots of money to keep their investors happy.
Lastly, there is a difference between throttling (normal for most ISPs) and what Comcast is doing, actively blocking/sabotage. Comcast deserves to get smacked down hard for what they are doing.