Before the advent of mass media, people would go and listen to the best banjo player in the neighborhood, or the best storyteller, and they liked it just fine. Now with the Internet, we can watch the best banjo player or storyteller in some other neighborhood, as long as someone has a couple thousand bucks worth of hardware to put together a video or audio recording of the performance.
Another way of looking at it is that the "neighborhood" just got a lot bigger. So that for every banjo player and storyteller there are a lot more people who might want to listen to his or her playing or stories.
We don't need corporate media. We can entertain ourselves, and entertain each other.
The interesting question is how many "banjo players" do so because they enjoy playing the banjo, enjoy playing to an audience, want it to be their main source of income. Ditto for storytellers.
I can see that becoming a necessity in the US where you're currently only a democracy in name, not in deed (there is a large amount of irony in trying to force 'democracy' on Iraq, for instance, without a prior vote, but I digress).
More to the point it's an oxymoron. It being utterly impossible for the government of a country under foreign occupation to be any kind of democracy.
> whatever your reasons are you have no right to break the law.
If the law is unjust, it's not only wrong, but your obligation to break it.
Or to not enforce it, not help in it's enforcement, obstruct it's enforcement, etc. Even if you are not actually breaking an unjust law there are plenty of ways to oppose one.
How do we know that it is being used to scare society rather than as a fair punishment? Because millions of people do exactly the same as them and if everyone were prosecuted to such a degree, US civilisation would go bankrupt en masse.
More likely the US economy would fall over due to "cash flow problems".
Punishments designed to scare people are not in proportion to the crime, because that is not their purpose.
The actual purpose is to try and scare people into modifying their behavior. The generic term for such activities (especially where there is a political goal involved) is "terrorism".
If a law is deemed working properly when it can destroy someones life for the sake of a few MP3's, I would say that what we have here is fascism.
It makes rather a mockery of the idea of justice when someone is being fined harshly (most likely to the point of bankruptcy) for something which may or may not actually have harmed anyone. Whereas people who's actions have caused demonstratable damage often get away with much lighter punishments. The just thing for the court to have done would have been to fine her the retail cost of the 24 tracks. i.e. 23 dollers & 76 cents.
The problem with e-voting (in my opinion) is not so much the audit trail, but the fact that e-voting adds unnecessary levels of complexity (and obfuscation and unaccountability) to the voting process. This is the result of government leaders attempting to perform vital civic services on the cheap: why pay poll workers and vote counters, when we can just use machines that do this fast and automagically?
Is using these machines actually that cheap. You still need plenty of people and you have to pay for the complex machines.
What the use of e-voting machines invites is the ability/potential not only to count votes FASTER, but to do so behind a hardware/software interface, where much malfeasance can be conjured in code and executed on-the-fly, beyond the observational capacity of effectively the entire voting population.
In the typical US election speed isn't even an issue. Because the results don't take effect for a long period of time. Efficent and secure manual counting systems are used in many places where the election results take effect within hours. A large part of the security is provided by any results manipulation requiring a large conspiracy where self interest prevents such a conspiracy being likely.
Maybe I missed something, but it seems to me that this is simply an issue about whether the machines should have a printer attached.
Actually the issue is more one of "why use a machine for something better done by humans". Redoing this election as pen/pencil on (hemp) paper. Would be far more reliable than messing about with any of these machines. Even if they need to employ Canadians to do the job.
Dunno about you, but my home has heat insulation in the walls. And in any case, infrared is only slightly more penetrating that visible light, so it couldn't be used for seeing through opaque objects anyway.
There is no good reason for the glass in a vehicle to transmit anything other than visible light. There are actually quite good reasons for having it reflect IR.
They're just automating an inspection that could have been performed by cops on the ground. I know because I got a ticket for driving in the stupid carpool lane once.
It's quite possible to come up with ways of fooling machines which people would easily spot. In this case heated manequins...
Anti-illegal immigrant technology actually. Used mostly to look for stowaways in luggage and cargo.
Luggage and cargo areas tend not to be heated. Whereas the passenger compartments of cars typically have the ability to control the ambient temperature.
In my area it's either light pollution or crime. Having been the victim of a couple of car break-ins because we didn't have the outside lights on, I choose light pollution.
Poorly though out lighting can actually encourage crime. Since it enables the criminals to see what they are doing, be their intention theft or vandalism.
It's either that or armed guards, and electric is cheaper.
Another alternative would be a car alarm. One which flashes the internal and external lights on the vehicle will draw people's attention to it without very well illuminating anything valuable which might be inside.
And the problem is that we tend to generate a lot of light pollution that is a waste. We don't just illuminate the areas that needs it, but throw off a lot of light pollution because our lights are not focused on the needed area.
Assuming the intended area of illumination is actually well illuminated. It can easily be the case that the light in question isn't actually of much use. Even to the point where not having it at all is actually an improvement.
I worked in health care for years, and it was easier to encrypt all emails rather than picking through the sensitive ones.
This is also a good policy since only encrypting some can leak a lot of valuable information through traffic analysis or give pointers to where to go looking for information considered sensitive.
I think that a lot of people are less concerned with the government and more concerned with non-government people reading their emails.
When the evesdropper is "the government" they also tend to come partnered with other governments, big business, organised crime, etc.
Governments have a nasty habit of taking innocuous data and trying to make something sinister out of it. They can either try to make something out of the information itself directly or choose to draw strange inferences out of it.
Especially parts of government who claim to be persuing "bad people". Not only are there frequent historical examples of abuse typically at the same time said "security services" either ignore or even "partner with" some actually highly dangerous groups. If a government agency claims they need such and such a power to "fight terrorism" (or similar) without any effective oversight a large pinch of salt is called for.
For tax preparation software, I can understand it. It changes considerably every year, you only need it for one or two days out of the year, and it facilitates electronic filing.
Also, if it's done correctly, the result is completly cross platform.
The only point would be collaboration or having the documents automatically saved somewhere other than your own hard drive, for folks that don't want to go to the minimal effort of backing up their computers themselves.
Who also don't care who else might be reading their files.
Part two. The installer should have insured the firmware was original before running the update. Not original? No update. It's a brain dead simple task for any programmer here to run a checksum and compare it to another checksum.
It isn't exactly that hard to write a network lock for a phone which does not require any code modification to remove either.
It's not third party software. It's modified software, and it's not just some random OS files--it's the modem firmware itself. If you dick around with your BIOS, no one but you is responsible for problems with the BIOS.
You wouldn't expect a board to "brick" because you had set a system password, disabled the onboard sound card, connected more than one CDROM/DVD, etc. That is because the BIOS code stored in different locations from the data. Typically you have at least 3 data areas, one holds the regular settings, another holds a spash screen and the third holds OEM data (used for such things as "BIOS locked" Windows).
The problem here isn't just that you're pissing off people by bricking their phones. The problem is you are locking down a device that would otherwise be a killer development platform.
Regardless of this development platform issue the way Apple appear to have decided to network lock their phone just isn't the way things are done. There probably wouldn't have been any "bricking" issues had Apple used an approach to network locking which just required a variable change to turn it off.
I'm sure there are some warranty information that came along with the phone when people bought it that clearly stated that the warranty was voided if the phone was modified in any way, shape or form other than as approved by Apple.
Unless Apple is a nation state and possibly also only if the customer's passport states that they are a Citizen of Apple then it dosn't really matter much what Apple's warranty statement may or may not say. What matters is what the law of the land says, Apple's text is only relevent where it is consistent with that body of law. If it is mutually exclusive with statute or case law then it is null and void. Even in the "corporate friendly" USA there exist laws protecting customers.
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Before the advent of mass media, people would go and listen to the best banjo player in the neighborhood, or the best storyteller, and they liked it just fine. Now with the Internet, we can watch the best banjo player or storyteller in some other neighborhood, as long as someone has a couple thousand bucks worth of hardware to put together a video or audio recording of the performance.
Another way of looking at it is that the "neighborhood" just got a lot bigger. So that for every banjo player and storyteller there are a lot more people who might want to listen to his or her playing or stories.
We don't need corporate media. We can entertain ourselves, and entertain each other.
The interesting question is how many "banjo players" do so because they enjoy playing the banjo, enjoy playing to an audience, want it to be their main source of income. Ditto for storytellers.
What about the fact that decent actors/actresses (or ones that people want to see) want huge amounts of money, upfront?
Nobody starts as an expensive actor, not even the son/daughter of one. IIRC there is no lack of supply when it comes to competent actors.
I can see that becoming a necessity in the US where you're currently only a democracy in name, not in deed (there is a large amount of irony in trying to force 'democracy' on Iraq, for instance, without a prior vote, but I digress).
More to the point it's an oxymoron. It being utterly impossible for the government of a country under foreign occupation to be any kind of democracy.
> whatever your reasons are you have no right to break the law.
If the law is unjust, it's not only wrong, but your obligation to break it.
Or to not enforce it, not help in it's enforcement, obstruct it's enforcement, etc. Even if you are not actually breaking an unjust law there are plenty of ways to oppose one.
How do we know that it is being used to scare society rather than as a fair punishment? Because millions of people do exactly the same as them and if everyone were prosecuted to such a degree, US civilisation would go bankrupt en masse.
More likely the US economy would fall over due to "cash flow problems".
Punishments designed to scare people are not in proportion to the crime, because that is not their purpose.
The actual purpose is to try and scare people into modifying their behavior. The generic term for such activities (especially where there is a political goal involved) is "terrorism".
If a law is deemed working properly when it can destroy someones life for the sake of a few MP3's, I would say that what we have here is fascism.
It makes rather a mockery of the idea of justice when someone is being fined harshly (most likely to the point of bankruptcy) for something which may or may not actually have harmed anyone. Whereas people who's actions have caused demonstratable damage often get away with much lighter punishments.
The just thing for the court to have done would have been to fine her the retail cost of the 24 tracks. i.e. 23 dollers & 76 cents.
I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists. I think modern journalism is the one area that seriously needs to be looked in to.
You just need to book the Chaser Team from ABC.
The problem with e-voting (in my opinion) is not so much the audit trail, but the fact that e-voting adds unnecessary levels of complexity (and obfuscation and unaccountability) to the voting process. This is the result of government leaders attempting to perform vital civic services on the cheap: why pay poll workers and vote counters, when we can just use machines that do this fast and automagically?
Is using these machines actually that cheap. You still need plenty of people and you have to pay for the complex machines.
What the use of e-voting machines invites is the ability/potential not only to count votes FASTER, but to do so behind a hardware/software interface, where much malfeasance can be conjured in code and executed on-the-fly, beyond the observational capacity of effectively the entire voting population.
In the typical US election speed isn't even an issue. Because the results don't take effect for a long period of time.
Efficent and secure manual counting systems are used in many places where the election results take effect within hours. A large part of the security is provided by any results manipulation requiring a large conspiracy where self interest prevents such a conspiracy being likely.
Agreed but it's highly illegal to take all politicians and corperate executives and kill them on pikes in public.
Would a Jury convict? As a practical issue you might need to ensure you had enough pikes.
Maybe I missed something, but it seems to me that this is simply an issue about whether the machines should have a printer attached.
Actually the issue is more one of "why use a machine for something better done by humans".
Redoing this election as pen/pencil on (hemp) paper. Would be far more reliable than messing about with any of these machines. Even if they need to employ Canadians to do the job.
Dunno about you, but my home has heat insulation in the walls. And in any case, infrared is only slightly more penetrating that visible light, so it couldn't be used for seeing through opaque objects anyway.
There is no good reason for the glass in a vehicle to transmit anything other than visible light. There are actually quite good reasons for having it reflect IR.
They're just automating an inspection that could have been performed by cops on the ground. I know because I got a ticket for driving in the stupid carpool lane once.
It's quite possible to come up with ways of fooling machines which people would easily spot. In this case heated manequins...
Anti-illegal immigrant technology actually. Used mostly to look for stowaways in luggage and cargo.
Luggage and cargo areas tend not to be heated. Whereas the passenger compartments of cars typically have the ability to control the ambient temperature.
In my area it's either light pollution or crime. Having been the victim of a couple of car break-ins because we didn't have the outside lights on, I choose light pollution.
Poorly though out lighting can actually encourage crime. Since it enables the criminals to see what they are doing, be their intention theft or vandalism.
It's either that or armed guards, and electric is cheaper.
Another alternative would be a car alarm. One which flashes the internal and external lights on the vehicle will draw people's attention to it without very well illuminating anything valuable which might be inside.
And the problem is that we tend to generate a lot of light pollution that is a waste. We don't just illuminate the areas that needs it, but throw off a lot of light pollution because our lights are not focused on the needed area.
Assuming the intended area of illumination is actually well illuminated. It can easily be the case that the light in question isn't actually of much use. Even to the point where not having it at all is actually an improvement.
Some people may not care what the authorities see, but don't really want some random shmoe reading their emails.
In practical terms these are the same thing. "The authorities" actually equate to "some random shmoes".
I worked in health care for years, and it was easier to encrypt all emails rather than picking through the sensitive ones.
This is also a good policy since only encrypting some can leak a lot of valuable information through traffic analysis or give pointers to where to go looking for information considered sensitive.
I think that a lot of people are less concerned with the government and more concerned with non-government people reading their emails.
When the evesdropper is "the government" they also tend to come partnered with other governments, big business, organised crime, etc.
Governments have a nasty habit of taking innocuous data and trying to make something sinister out of it. They can either try to make something out of the information itself directly or choose to draw strange inferences out of it.
Especially parts of government who claim to be persuing "bad people". Not only are there frequent historical examples of abuse typically at the same time said "security services" either ignore or even "partner with" some actually highly dangerous groups.
If a government agency claims they need such and such a power to "fight terrorism" (or similar) without any effective oversight a large pinch of salt is called for.
For tax preparation software, I can understand it. It changes considerably every year, you only need it for one or two days out of the year, and it facilitates electronic filing.
Also, if it's done correctly, the result is completly cross platform.
The only point would be collaboration or having the documents automatically saved somewhere other than your own hard drive, for folks that don't want to go to the minimal effort of backing up their computers themselves.
Who also don't care who else might be reading their files.
In other words, a CVS with limited application?
Umm... anyone could explain to my why I'd want that instead of some real CVS?
Especially considering that it probably won't let you use arbitraty encryption on the files. Which you'd need to have any chance of security.
Part two. The installer should have insured the firmware was original before running the update. Not original? No update. It's a brain dead simple task for any programmer here to run a checksum and compare it to another checksum.
It isn't exactly that hard to write a network lock for a phone which does not require any code modification to remove either.
It's not third party software. It's modified software, and it's not just some random OS files--it's the modem firmware itself. If you dick around with your BIOS, no one but you is responsible for problems with the BIOS.
You wouldn't expect a board to "brick" because you had set a system password, disabled the onboard sound card, connected more than one CDROM/DVD, etc. That is because the BIOS code stored in different locations from the data. Typically you have at least 3 data areas, one holds the regular settings, another holds a spash screen and the third holds OEM data (used for such things as "BIOS locked" Windows).
The problem here isn't just that you're pissing off people by bricking their phones. The problem is you are locking down a device that would otherwise be a killer development platform.
Regardless of this development platform issue the way Apple appear to have decided to network lock their phone just isn't the way things are done. There probably wouldn't have been any "bricking" issues had Apple used an approach to network locking which just required a variable change to turn it off.
I'm sure there are some warranty information that came along with the phone when people bought it that clearly stated that the warranty was voided if the phone was modified in any way, shape or form other than as approved by Apple.
Unless Apple is a nation state and possibly also only if the customer's passport states that they are a Citizen of Apple then it dosn't really matter much what Apple's warranty statement may or may not say. What matters is what the law of the land says, Apple's text is only relevent where it is consistent with that body of law. If it is mutually exclusive with statute or case law then it is null and void. Even in the "corporate friendly" USA there exist laws protecting customers.