"U.S. Gov't wants to ban everything, encryption-wise, that they do not have a back door for."
Is that why use North Americans can use 128-bit encryption, but only allowed to export 56-bit? I would have thought they'd have just told everybody to use 56-bit.
Is that why part of the NSA's mission is to develop new encryption algorithms to keep confidential American information (government or otherwise) confidential? After all, that IS the NSA's reason for trying to code SE Linux.
If everybody in the government wanted what you're suggesting, it'd be done by now. Now, maybe if paranoids like you came out of their armed camps every once in a while to have a look-see, you might notice this.
OK, according to this contest, I can give customer info to Microsoft, and I'll...
1.) Get fired by my employer for violating company policy (if not breech of contract) by giving out internal information on customers
2.) Get sued by my former employer, so they can recoup their losses from getting sued by the customer for giving out internal company information.
3.) Never get hired in the same industry again, since it can be seen from my work history that I'll give out confidential and valuable internal information for almost nothing.
4.) Be entered into a drawing for a watch.
This sounds more like something from a Douglas Adams novel than real life. Forget ethical/unethical, I have my doubts this is LEGAL. If it's against the law to incite or pay someone to commit a felony, what about this?
Oh, and to all you people out there who complain about anti-Microsoft flamers on this topic, going on about how Microsoft isn't the only company to do things like this: Hitler wasn't the only person to invade Poland, but that doesn't mean he also wasn't the first to set up death camps there.
"Then you get labelled a terrorist and get to enjoy the whole tazer and tear gas treatment."
You see, that's what happens when you loot stores, set cars on fire, and beat traffic cops into critical condition. Locals tend not to like having city blocks razed by protesters, especially when the locals have little to nothing to do with it. If you ask me, you're lucky you're not getting shot at.
You know what the ironic thing is? We're able to sit down and discuss ways to censor and figure out a better way to keep people in the dark because we ourselves aren't censored...
"Its not as if "Man Power" is a difficult thing to come by in China.."
It's true they have a lot of people they can hire, but that also means they have a lot of people they have to watch. A double-edged sword, if you will.
"This is a country that can AFFORD to employ threehundred thousand people to sit a PC all day and jot down non-china sites.."
Google says there are about 1.3 billion web sites out there. Even if the average time it takes to read those sites and scan for verboten material is only one minute, it will still take those 300,000 about 7 10-hour shifts to do a complete scan of the web, assuming that no pages change during that time. If, for example, the Free Nepal people figure out their weekly cycle, they can mirror the People's Daily six days of the week, post the good word from the Dalai Lama every Sunday, and still have only a 1 in 7 chance of ever being caught. And, if they are, they change IPs and do it again.
Also, 300,000 is only a drop in the bucket of their population, leaving 1.1997 billion people left to watch, to make sure they're not circumventing filters. That's 3,999 people to watch per employee. If they work 10-hour shifts, they can only devote 9 seconds to each censoree per day. Even if they had super-advanced AI to help them out, I don't see it working.
And besides, their per capita GDP is still only about $3800 US, about 1/10 of ours. Those 300,000 jobs means more deaths due to starvation out in the western provinces. Dead people tend to have pissed off families.
See, in the US, when you don't agree with a policy, you can yell at your Congresscritters, hire yourself some lawyers (or talk with the ACLU), march around outside with a sign telling politicians where to stick it...
In China, though, you have three choices: Consent, be "re-educated," or "disappear."
I'll stick with the US system, thank you very much.
As can be seen from Napster and child-protection software, machine-only information filtering just isn't all it's cracked up to be. There'll need to be somebody to actually monitor what's passing through the filter. If that's the case, it'd be easier for China to just block most or all foreign web servers (which would be another neat trick to see, since they'd have to go through all the IPs and see where they're at, as well as prevent IP spoofing).
They're chasing their own tail by trying to implement censorship in general. They'll need to employ half their population to keep tabs on what the other half is reading.
Besides, there's also the whole "forbidden fruit" school of thought...
According to history, the Texas legislature put forward an ordinance of secession on 1 February 1861, where it passed by a vote of 166 to 8. It was then put before the voters, where it again won 46,153 to 14,747 on 23 February 1861. It became official in March of 1861, when they also opted to join the Confederacy.
This information is available here, where it is maintained by the Texas State Historical Association and hosted by the University of Texas.
"get your facts strait, just because the mason dixon line was above TX doesn't mean that all the states south of it seceded."
There were 3 states wholly below the Mason-Dixon line that did not secede. Kentucky essentially sat on the fence for several years, Maryland's legislature and the Port of Baltimore were essentially held hostage, and Kansas was admitted into the union as a free state 29 January 1861, just over a month after South Carolina left. None of these three was Texas.
"Ya know stupid people piss me off."
Need any help getting that foot out of your mouth?:)
"They didn't know how to run a business, and didn't give a thought to figuring out how fast they could become profitable."
That may be part of the problem, but it wouldn't be quite as bad if they weren't dependent upon their competitors for part of their infrastructure. That right there is asking for trouble.
"companies that buy their equipment at dirt cheap prices (like AT&T)"
If my experiences with AT&T's WorldNet is indicative of what AT&T is doing with that cheap hardware, they aren't even getting what they paid for.
"chip companies that can not only take a loss, but know how to turn a profit"
Blue chips and other big names can make dumb business mistakes as easily as newcomers. AT&T originally scoffed at the internet. IBM let a third party write its operating system. Xerox let GUI and ethernet walk out the door. It all depends on who's in charge at that particular moment.
"For all I care Texas should secede already and make their own country."
IIRC, they tried that twice already. The first time was from Mexico in the 1840's (they succeeded), and the second was from the US in the 1860's (they failed).
"I imagine it will be an ARIAN nation of sorts"
That would be interesting to see, considering the way their former governor has a latina for a wife.
"and maybe we could even get rid of the asshole Bush that way too, as a bonus."
Oh, come now. It's also been the home of great Democrat presidents as well, like Johnson.
"Are their members creating them themselves, or are they just ripping them off from other places?"
So I should be arrested for copyright infringement for being able to identify a chord I hear? How ever will bands and orchestras be able to stay in tune? The next step is outlawing tuning forks!
What's next? Elementary school students can't sound out a difficult word for fear of infringing upon the author's copyright? Best Buy won't be able to use an album's name in its advertisements without consent of the copyright holder? Will Microsoft sue me for typing the word "microsoft" in my browser in an attempt to get to microsoft.com?
"Because several wealthy landowners didn't want to pay taxes"
Wealthy land-owners in the US still don't want to pay taxes. However, they at least have the option to bitch and moan to Congress. No such luck with Parliament, since they ain't constituants.
"-- and (probably more importantly) were angry at being treated as 2nd (or third) class by the european aristocracy."
Well, we WERE second-class citizens. Have you ever sat down and had a look at Mercantileism?
"Oh, I see. You actually believed their PR machine.."
Oh, and you forgot "idiotic anti-manufacturing laws that dictated that we have to pay outrageous shipping costs for almost anything."
However, you did not suggest what should be the default position.
Setting a "default position" like that can be kind of tricky, since it requires predicting the future, and books-worth of legal-ese. IMO, it's better to be a little vague and let the courts decide on a case-by-case basis as they come up.
"so the default should be to the lowest risk behaviour"
Lowest-risk behavior means not getting out of bed in the morning. Actually, lowest-risk behavoir means not sleeping in a bed because you might fall out.
Everything operates on the idea of acceptable risk. It's why you're allowed to drive on the Interstate twice a day to get to and from work. It's why child-proof medicine bottles don't need a band saw to open
Besides, this is moot. The corporate argument is that the laws in place were too much effort for too little gain. They made this argument to an international body with equal representation from the USA, Canada, and Mexico. They agreed with the argument. It's not like the corporations had carte blanche to remove laws as they pleased.
"If a country wants to democratically institute a stupid law, all the power to them."
Um, no. A democracy should never be allowed to pass a law that tramples on the rights of the individual. Why do you think the American Revolution happened to begin with?
Of course, if you WANT to support laws like the DMCA and UCITA...
Some will say that forty years of economic sanctions have made Cuba the "frail old man of the Caribbean". I say let up on our blockade and face a murderous red horde in rusted-out '55 Oldsmobiles thundering down Main Street by next Wednesday.
"The discussions about democracy clauses in the recent discussions in Quebec city amount to little more than transparent window dressing. "
Yeah, right... the US government REALLY wants to do business with Cuba. The whole 40-year-embargo thing is just a front.
"This is the situation. The investor rights provisions in the FTAA grant corporate interests broad-based rights to sue over government regulation and government delivery of services."
Only if the government unfairly favors a local corporation over an international one. The Argentine law doesn't say "no American software," it just says "no closed-source software." If the former were the case, they'd be up a creek without Mozilla (for example).
"If regulations relating to occupational and health standards can be struck down by lawsuits from these legal fictions,"
From what I've heard, the laws you mentioned were struck down because the governmental arms weren't able to produce reliable evidence that such laws were really nessecary.
"then how do we believe that such a law by the Argentinian government will stand?"
Because the law is about how the software is written, not who wrote it.
"In Canada, UPS is suing our government over the services provided by our national postal agency."
As I mentioned in an earlier post, UPS is suing because Canada Post appears to be giving preferential treatment and pricing to Canadian corporations (like Purolator). If UPS really wanted to go after a government postal service, they'd try to sue the USPS, to which pales Canada Post by comparison. But they're not suing the USPS because they have yet to quote different postages to FedEx (or anybody else, for that matter) than they have to UPS.
"We have no control over the outcome of this, because we surrendered much of our sovereignty by signing NAFTA."
I fail to see what corporations have to do with national soverignty, unless you're talking about a socialistic system.
"And for what? Trade with American nations other than the current signatories to NAFTA amounts to less than one percent of our trade. We gain nothing and lose much from this deal. "
That's because the FTAA isn't operational yet. If you want to make comparisons, you'll have to stick with the mostly-operational NAFTA. After NAFTA, Mexico supplanted Japan as our #2 source of imports (Canada' still #1). Anybody who remembers anything about the 80's and early 90's should realize just how big a drop that is for Japan, while I don't think I've even seen the phrase "Hecho en Mexico" until recent years.
The idea of FTAA is to increase the trade with the rest of the hemisphere, just like we have with Mexico.
"The FTAA is about unrestrained corporatism."
You must be seeing something I'm not, because from where I'm sitting, the SEC doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
"Any law that interfears with the profits of a corperation is deamed illegal."
No, any law that unfairly favors a local corporation over a foreign one is deemed illegal. UPS is suing becuase it appears to them that Purolator (a Canadian corproation) is getting preferential treatment, in the form of being able to use Canada Post's facilities at a bargain, while UPS can't.
If UPS really felt it could get away with going after any government arm that interferes with its business, there's a far more juicier target here in the US. The US Postal Service is a part of the government (privatize all you want, anything with its own law-enforcement arm is a government body), handles damned near half of the world's card and letter volume, can get a letter from Pureto Rico to Guam in under a week for only $0.34 USD, and has been offering next-day Express Mail and 2-3 day Priority Mail services for several decades now. Don't you think that UPS would like just a little bit of that action?
UPS isn't suing the USPS because it charges the same price to everybody, period. They're after Canada Post because it doesn't seem to be the same way.
The Argentine law applies evenly to all corporations, international or local. That's why the FTAA won't affect it.
It's tempting to buy a piece of history (these things have been flying since the 60's), I'd be even more tempted if they included a Proton rocket to put it on top of.
Well, if you want to get technical about it, only if you're talking about atoms and the usual isotopes. An isotope can have any number of neutrons and still be considered "helium" as long as it has two and only two protons. And if there's no electrons, then couldn't we call it a helium ion?:)
... Gorshkov and Ivanov used computers... to scan the Internet for vulnerable business operating systems.
They... are believed to have made tens of thousands of probes and intrusions into computer systems,
usually through a vulnerable version of Microsoft Windows NT
If the hackers in question attacked Chinese property and violated Chinese laws, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'd have a problem with the People's Liberation Army parachuting into the US to arrest these hackers, but as long as they enter Chinese territory of their own free will, then there's nothing to complain about.
All amendment 10 says is that the rights not explicitly granted to the feds by the Constitution belong to the states or the people.
On the other hand, amendment 4 says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated(.)
There's nothing anywhere in the Constitution that suggests that "people" here means anything but the "people of the United States," as mentioned in the preamble. If it meant all people, then you'd be suggesting that US law applies to everybody and every nation the world over.
Besides, if you're in the process of comitting a crime, and the feds are sitting there watching you do it, wouldn't a search of you and your posessions be "reasonable?"
Slashdot Mirror
Is that why use North Americans can use 128-bit encryption, but only allowed to export 56-bit? I would have thought they'd have just told everybody to use 56-bit.
Is that why part of the NSA's mission is to develop new encryption algorithms to keep confidential American information (government or otherwise) confidential? After all, that IS the NSA's reason for trying to code SE Linux.
If everybody in the government wanted what you're suggesting, it'd be done by now. Now, maybe if paranoids like you came out of their armed camps every once in a while to have a look-see, you might notice this.
This sounds more like something from a Douglas Adams novel than real life. Forget ethical/unethical, I have my doubts this is LEGAL. If it's against the law to incite or pay someone to commit a felony, what about this?
Oh, and to all you people out there who complain about anti-Microsoft flamers on this topic, going on about how Microsoft isn't the only company to do things like this: Hitler wasn't the only person to invade Poland, but that doesn't mean he also wasn't the first to set up death camps there.
How many non-Windows PCs has Microsoft bought for things like Hotmail?
You see, that's what happens when you loot stores, set cars on fire, and beat traffic cops into critical condition. Locals tend not to like having city blocks razed by protesters, especially when the locals have little to nothing to do with it. If you ask me, you're lucky you're not getting shot at.
You know what the ironic thing is? We're able to sit down and discuss ways to censor and figure out a better way to keep people in the dark because we ourselves aren't censored...
It's true they have a lot of people they can hire, but that also means they have a lot of people they have to watch. A double-edged sword, if you will.
"This is a country that can AFFORD to employ threehundred thousand people to sit a PC all day and jot down non-china sites.."
Google says there are about 1.3 billion web sites out there. Even if the average time it takes to read those sites and scan for verboten material is only one minute, it will still take those 300,000 about 7 10-hour shifts to do a complete scan of the web, assuming that no pages change during that time. If, for example, the Free Nepal people figure out their weekly cycle, they can mirror the People's Daily six days of the week, post the good word from the Dalai Lama every Sunday, and still have only a 1 in 7 chance of ever being caught. And, if they are, they change IPs and do it again.
Also, 300,000 is only a drop in the bucket of their population, leaving 1.1997 billion people left to watch, to make sure they're not circumventing filters. That's 3,999 people to watch per employee. If they work 10-hour shifts, they can only devote 9 seconds to each censoree per day. Even if they had super-advanced AI to help them out, I don't see it working.
And besides, their per capita GDP is still only about $3800 US, about 1/10 of ours. Those 300,000 jobs means more deaths due to starvation out in the western provinces. Dead people tend to have pissed off families.
In China, though, you have three choices: Consent, be "re-educated," or "disappear."
I'll stick with the US system, thank you very much.
They're chasing their own tail by trying to implement censorship in general. They'll need to employ half their population to keep tabs on what the other half is reading.
Besides, there's also the whole "forbidden fruit" school of thought...
According to history, the Texas legislature put forward an ordinance of secession on 1 February 1861, where it passed by a vote of 166 to 8. It was then put before the voters, where it again won 46,153 to 14,747 on 23 February 1861. It became official in March of 1861, when they also opted to join the Confederacy.
This information is available here, where it is maintained by the Texas State Historical Association and hosted by the University of Texas.
"get your facts strait, just because the mason dixon line was above TX doesn't mean that all the states south of it seceded."
There were 3 states wholly below the Mason-Dixon line that did not secede. Kentucky essentially sat on the fence for several years, Maryland's legislature and the Port of Baltimore were essentially held hostage, and Kansas was admitted into the union as a free state 29 January 1861, just over a month after South Carolina left. None of these three was Texas.
"Ya know stupid people piss me off."
Need any help getting that foot out of your mouth? :)
That may be part of the problem, but it wouldn't be quite as bad if they weren't dependent upon their competitors for part of their infrastructure. That right there is asking for trouble.
"companies that buy their equipment at dirt cheap prices (like AT&T)"
If my experiences with AT&T's WorldNet is indicative of what AT&T is doing with that cheap hardware, they aren't even getting what they paid for.
"chip companies that can not only take a loss, but know how to turn a profit"
Blue chips and other big names can make dumb business mistakes as easily as newcomers. AT&T originally scoffed at the internet. IBM let a third party write its operating system. Xerox let GUI and ethernet walk out the door. It all depends on who's in charge at that particular moment.
"For all I care Texas should secede already and make their own country."
IIRC, they tried that twice already. The first time was from Mexico in the 1840's (they succeeded), and the second was from the US in the 1860's (they failed).
"I imagine it will be an ARIAN nation of sorts"
That would be interesting to see, considering the way their former governor has a latina for a wife.
"and maybe we could even get rid of the asshole Bush that way too, as a bonus."
Oh, come now. It's also been the home of great Democrat presidents as well, like Johnson.
So I should be arrested for copyright infringement for being able to identify a chord I hear? How ever will bands and orchestras be able to stay in tune? The next step is outlawing tuning forks!
What's next? Elementary school students can't sound out a difficult word for fear of infringing upon the author's copyright? Best Buy won't be able to use an album's name in its advertisements without consent of the copyright holder? Will Microsoft sue me for typing the word "microsoft" in my browser in an attempt to get to microsoft.com?
Wealthy land-owners in the US still don't want to pay taxes. However, they at least have the option to bitch and moan to Congress. No such luck with Parliament, since they ain't constituants.
"-- and (probably more importantly) were angry at being treated as 2nd (or third) class by the european aristocracy."
Well, we WERE second-class citizens. Have you ever sat down and had a look at Mercantileism?
"Oh, I see. You actually believed their PR machine.."
Oh, and you forgot "idiotic anti-manufacturing laws that dictated that we have to pay outrageous shipping costs for almost anything."
Setting a "default position" like that can be kind of tricky, since it requires predicting the future, and books-worth of legal-ese. IMO, it's better to be a little vague and let the courts decide on a case-by-case basis as they come up.
Lowest-risk behavior means not getting out of bed in the morning. Actually, lowest-risk behavoir means not sleeping in a bed because you might fall out.
Everything operates on the idea of acceptable risk. It's why you're allowed to drive on the Interstate twice a day to get to and from work. It's why child-proof medicine bottles don't need a band saw to open
Besides, this is moot. The corporate argument is that the laws in place were too much effort for too little gain. They made this argument to an international body with equal representation from the USA, Canada, and Mexico. They agreed with the argument. It's not like the corporations had carte blanche to remove laws as they pleased.
"If a country wants to democratically institute a stupid law, all the power to them."
Um, no. A democracy should never be allowed to pass a law that tramples on the rights of the individual. Why do you think the American Revolution happened to begin with?
Of course, if you WANT to support laws like the DMCA and UCITA...
Yeah, right... the US government REALLY wants to do business with Cuba. The whole 40-year-embargo thing is just a front.
"This is the situation. The investor rights provisions in the FTAA grant corporate interests broad-based rights to sue over government regulation and government delivery of services."
Only if the government unfairly favors a local corporation over an international one. The Argentine law doesn't say "no American software," it just says "no closed-source software." If the former were the case, they'd be up a creek without Mozilla (for example).
"If regulations relating to occupational and health standards can be struck down by lawsuits from these legal fictions,"
From what I've heard, the laws you mentioned were struck down because the governmental arms weren't able to produce reliable evidence that such laws were really nessecary.
"then how do we believe that such a law by the Argentinian government will stand?"
Because the law is about how the software is written, not who wrote it.
"In Canada, UPS is suing our government over the services provided by our national postal agency."
As I mentioned in an earlier post, UPS is suing because Canada Post appears to be giving preferential treatment and pricing to Canadian corporations (like Purolator). If UPS really wanted to go after a government postal service, they'd try to sue the USPS, to which pales Canada Post by comparison. But they're not suing the USPS because they have yet to quote different postages to FedEx (or anybody else, for that matter) than they have to UPS.
"We have no control over the outcome of this, because we surrendered much of our sovereignty by signing NAFTA."
I fail to see what corporations have to do with national soverignty, unless you're talking about a socialistic system.
"And for what? Trade with American nations other than the current signatories to NAFTA amounts to less than one percent of our trade. We gain nothing and lose much from this deal. "
That's because the FTAA isn't operational yet. If you want to make comparisons, you'll have to stick with the mostly-operational NAFTA. After NAFTA, Mexico supplanted Japan as our #2 source of imports (Canada' still #1). Anybody who remembers anything about the 80's and early 90's should realize just how big a drop that is for Japan, while I don't think I've even seen the phrase "Hecho en Mexico" until recent years.
The idea of FTAA is to increase the trade with the rest of the hemisphere, just like we have with Mexico.
"The FTAA is about unrestrained corporatism."
You must be seeing something I'm not, because from where I'm sitting, the SEC doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
No, any law that unfairly favors a local corporation over a foreign one is deemed illegal. UPS is suing becuase it appears to them that Purolator (a Canadian corproation) is getting preferential treatment, in the form of being able to use Canada Post's facilities at a bargain, while UPS can't.
If UPS really felt it could get away with going after any government arm that interferes with its business, there's a far more juicier target here in the US. The US Postal Service is a part of the government (privatize all you want, anything with its own law-enforcement arm is a government body), handles damned near half of the world's card and letter volume, can get a letter from Pureto Rico to Guam in under a week for only $0.34 USD, and has been offering next-day Express Mail and 2-3 day Priority Mail services for several decades now. Don't you think that UPS would like just a little bit of that action?
UPS isn't suing the USPS because it charges the same price to everybody, period. They're after Canada Post because it doesn't seem to be the same way.
The Argentine law applies evenly to all corporations, international or local. That's why the FTAA won't affect it.
It's tempting to buy a piece of history (these things have been flying since the 60's), I'd be even more tempted if they included a Proton rocket to put it on top of.
By your analogy, ANY arrest could be considered "kidnapping."
Well, if you want to get technical about it, only if you're talking about atoms and the usual isotopes. An isotope can have any number of neutrons and still be considered "helium" as long as it has two and only two protons. And if there's no electrons, then couldn't we call it a helium ion? :)
If the hackers in question attacked Chinese property and violated Chinese laws, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'd have a problem with the People's Liberation Army parachuting into the US to arrest these hackers, but as long as they enter Chinese territory of their own free will, then there's nothing to complain about.
Neither is the example of the ship firing from international waters, so long as the ship isn't acting under orders from a foreign government.
On the other hand, amendment 4 says:
There's nothing anywhere in the Constitution that suggests that "people" here means anything but the "people of the United States," as mentioned in the preamble. If it meant all people, then you'd be suggesting that US law applies to everybody and every nation the world over.Besides, if you're in the process of comitting a crime, and the feds are sitting there watching you do it, wouldn't a search of you and your posessions be "reasonable?"