I would really love to agree with you. But I checked with the Dean campaign, and they admitted to the mistake. This did come from them.
They didn't know the person they contracted with would pass off the order to a spammer.
A lot of people in the e-mail world have the same problem. You have a budget. You get two bids. One is 1,000 times higher than the other. That's what it costs to manage a true double opt-in system.
You've heard from ISPs here (look for the one who responded to a Dean denial with the word BULLSHIT) about the costs of managing double opt-in. He said he sometimes sends addresses to those he's sending for and demands detailed information on them?
That takes time. IT takes a human's time. And a human's time is going to cost money. A lot of money, compared with a computer's time.
So the idea that someone in the Dean campaign screwed up is plausible. The fact that the contract was ended immediately is plausible.
The question I want answered is, what should the Dean campaign do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Remember, this is mainly a volunteer effort. The state organizations are, on the whole, autonomous. So are the other volunteer groups, like Seniors4dean. Even Deanspace, their programming force, is autonomous.
This is the necessary risk you take when you "let go" of the message, when you give people responsibility. Someone is going to screw up.
How would you do this if you were the Dean campaign? What processes and procedures would you set up for the delivery of e-mail on the campaign's behalf, that would both empower the volunteers (necessary) and keep you out of this kind of trouble (also necessary).
Put yourself in their shoes, and offer solutions. They will be heard.
You assume too much evil intent. I think it was an honest mistake.
After all, when notified, the Dean campaign shut the relationship down immediately.
Yes, they regret it. Yes, they admit it. Yes, they took corrective action. No, there's nothing, absolutely nothing, they can do perhaps to get on your good side in this matter.
But is there anything that would help? Unlike the Bush people (who hide behind a form), I've found the Dean campaign quite accessible.
So practical ideas, gentlemen (and ladies). If you offer practical ideas, I think you'll get action.
I run an e-mail newsletter. It's small, and done through double opt-in.
Yet I've been blacklisted by some over-zealous subscriber who didn't know they had subscribed, and so has my provider.
I have also had dozens of subscribers drop out because "content" filters or "javascript" filters rejected my newsletter. Some didn't even tell me the address that was bounced. One, whom I called (because his phone number was on the bounce) simply called me names and hung up.
The idea that a legitimate e-mail, using the very best processes, can be accused of spam isn't fantasy. It's reality.
It's reality because opt-in is not mandated, and thus it's not managed. It's reality because the direct mail industry insists on opt-out for "legitimate" e-mail (theirs), and halts any legislative move toward correcting the problem.
I don't disagree that he's centrist. I don't disagree that he's pissed off Vermont's left. Your comparing him to Clinton (minus the bimbo eruptions) is a high compliment.
There are several factors involved in sending a digital radio signal. One is the antenna. Another is the radio receiver. Then there are the DSPs that are filtering-out interference and translating the signal.
All these devices are improving exponentially, in a "Moore's Law" way (www.corante.com/mooreslore). That's how 802.11 got from 1 Mbps to 11 Mbps, and now to 54 Mbps in the same frequency space.
The Internet is based on several developments which improve exponentially. So too with digital radio. Antennas are getting much, much better very, very fast. Radios are getting much, much better very, very fast. And the same is true with DSPs. You get a multiplier-on-a-multiplier.
Reed's conclusions should surprise no one who uses Slashdot. It's what we've been working toward here for years and years.
The original "Iron Chef" actually ended its run in 1999, although they had a two-hour special for the year 2000. In the first half their regular villain (Kandagawa appeared as the "Dean of Kansai" against Michiba and then as the head of the "Ota Fashion" against Morimoto) beat Sakai. In the second half Bobby Flay beat Morimoto, who'd beaten Flay in New York.
I would have been much happier had Morimoto's win in New York gotten him Flay's own show. "Hot off the Grill with Masaharu Morimoto" sounds like pretty cool programming, don't you think?
UPN briefly tried an "Iron Chef USA" starring William Shatner as Chairman Kaga, but it was terrible and failed, I think, after just one episode.
Given that all his shows are done "at home" (and have you noticed how his homes have gotten bigger during the run of the show) I'd say Alton is a bigger threat to appear in an ad campaign for "Kroger" or "Bed, Bath & Beyond."
Cooking is the best, cheapest, most romantic and sexiest date in the world. Find a recipe you both enjoy, buy the ingredients together, work together over a glass of your favorite beverage, and when the dishes are done you're just steps from the bedroom!
Start with a pounded chicken dish, like a quick chicken piccata. (Pound breasts flat, sweat onion and garlic, flour (salt and pepper) chicken and saute, deglaze with white wine and lemon juice to make sauce after they're all fried, add capers and pour over the chicken, serve with pasta.
Later on, get more adventurous. Many woman love things with clams and other shellfish.
Another Food Network cook offered a great recipe recently called "salmon in the dish washer." Wrap the salmon with some spices, lemon and maybe thin-sliced squash in tin foil, real tight. Fold it three times down from the top, three times in from the sides. Make sure it's tight. Toss it in the dishwasher, with your dishes, and set the dial to "normal." When the dishes are done, so's the salmon. I tried this over the weekend -- it works! (I'll bet it would work with sea bass, too - just a nice thick piece of fish that would normally take about 15 minutes to steam.)
Stone soup. The story was a hungry man came upon a village, and told the people he would make soup out of a stone. Everyone wanted to try it, so he urged them to bring various vegetables to add to it. Pretty soon he had enough soup to feed everyone.
My mom's "stone soup" features such things as carrots, cabbage, potatoes, white beans, tomatoes, salt and vinegar to taste. You always start with aromatics (onion, garlic, etc.) giving them a good "sweat." (Cook in a little oil at low heat.) When they start to look clear, add water (a few quarts) and your thickest veggies (such as turnips) to the pot. If you're going with uncooked beans, toss them in early and wait an hour before starting the veggies. Then add 'em slowly, in reverse-order of cooking time (thick, fibrous stuff like potatoes and carrots before quick-cooking corn, for instance). Cook some rice on the side. Offer Tabasco for those who want it kicked up, salt for those who don't. Crackers. Since it's not got any meat in it, it ought to keep several days in the fridge. Make new meals of it by having different kinds of fancy breads with it at different meals -- Hawaiian sweet bread, for instance. Super-cheap, very good for you (beans and rice are a complete protein), and plenty of room for your taste and imagination.
I think there's more talent to good programming than cooking. Good cooking mainly comes from practice. Use the recipes until you have them down by heart. Then make some slight alterations that work for your taste. (Alton likes olives and capers and you don't? Don't use 'em). Gradually you'll figure out the basic techniques -- stir-fry, braising, stewing, etc. You'll find a few dishes you really do well. Your repertoire will gradually expand. Programming, on the other hand, really good programming. That takes talent.
If you burn the pot roast, toss in some canned gravy or soup stock. All you'll really "lose" will be the stuff that's totally carbon. The rest should be OK.
Oh, and if you use Alton's method (wrap it in tin foil, cook it low and slow) you shouldn't have that problem. Put in maybe 1/2 cup of liquid (with diced veggies), seal the foil after searing the meat and leave it alone for about 2 1/2 hours.
Try Quesadillas on a hot plate. Turn on the hot plate, put a pan on it, and after about 4 minutes (test it with a few drops of water -- if they sizzle you're good) lay down a few drops of oil (canola, vegetable, olive, whatever), then a flour tortilla (preferably a bit smaller than the pan), then the cheese, whatever cooked meat you like (ham, pepperoni, chicken), maybe a little chili powder for "bammage," then another flour tortilla. (Got something to cover the top of the pan? Good.) After about a minute, flip it and cook the other side. (You really just want to heat the cheese to gooey and brown the tortilla.) Tasty, fast, inexpensive, and filling.
Yahoo is just private-labelling Northern Light's existing pay-per-search offerings, which include content that's behind firewalls. The "corporate business" will be retained by Northern Light under Divine Inc. The man behind the deal is Andrew Flipowski, a Chicagoan who formerly controlled Platinum Software (now part of CA) and then tried to launch an Internet incubator. Now he's trying to be a junior-grade Ted Forstmann -- buy 'em, split 'em, sell 'em.
This is not a big deal, except it makes Yahoo's investment bankers happy, because they can claim there's big money coming. There ain't.
We do have a lot of ID, and it sucks. This causes a great deal of fraud and commercial identity theft. A national standard based on encryption and biometrics may not be perfect, but it would be better than what we have. And it would have a million-and-one commercial applications, applications we all want and need and now deal with using insecure, incompatible, easy-to-hack systems that let anyone steal your identity by simply finding your social security number and doing a bad forgery of your signature.
The Administration has consistently refused to discuss the whole subject of ground forces.
A Marine friend of mine suggests they're already on the ground. Their mission may be to simply identify targets, and to use the confusion of the attacks to discover exactly where Bin Laden and his buddies are hiding.
Once those mountains are blown to bits, they would probably follow to identify bodies and kill the survivors (if any).
That may be the initial hope, but my guess is that even if they do identify hidey-holes, they won't be able to blow 'em out from the sky, and we will have to go in with significant numbers of troops.
It's at that point that the sciences involved in insulation come into play. Any skier knows we've made great strides in that area in recent decades. I think the snow might actually turn into an advantage. But I'm an optimist.
Even assuming all goes well, Afghanistan is just one home to terrorism. There's still Iraq. There's still Syria. There's still Iran, and Iran is (in some ways) a democracy.
The key to all the rest of the propaganda war. And that's a war I fear we're not winning. We don't have to convince 90% of Americans we're right. We have to convince 95% of Muslims that their Fundamentalist preachers are wrong. Otherwise we're just raising a new batch of terrorists.
Certain rights we consider sacrosanct are amended and even jettisoned during war time.
This was true in the Civil War, certainly. It was also true in World War I and World War II.
I have no objections to temporary measures designed to prosecute this war against medieval extremism.
What I fear, and I think what most people fear, is "mission creep." The "temporary changes" made during the war would become permanent.
We saw that in the aftermath of WWII. No one objected to the measures of that time (although there was, later, guilt over what happened to Japanese-Americans). But the attitudes of us vs. them, of absolute war, were carried over for political reasons into the horror we now call McCarthyism.
Any suspension of any of our rights, then, must be a war-time measure, part of the government's war-time efforts, aimed solely at prosecuting this war the President has declared. (Personally I'd like a Congresssionally-approved declaration, but they're having difficult defining the enemy.)
I have no objections to measures enacted with the aim of winning this war. I do object, strongly, and will lay down my life, against their being made permanent.
First, Jon, thanks again for your wonderful first-hand reporting. The ability to see horror, yet retain the sanity to describe it accurately in words (rather than just playing a camera on it) is a rare gift, and we are fortunate to have people like you on this Earth.
Now let's address the war, and how to really win it.
We need to cut off our enemy's blood supply in two ways.
First, by re-starting the peace process. We were close last time. We must pressure Israel, hard (I mean really hard) to get back to where it was, in terms of a deal with the Palestinians (some of whom are Christian, not Muslim). That will eliminate a cause of the conflict.
Many Jews and supporters of Israel say this is impossible. They dehumanize all Palestinians. But they have practical alternative to peace. They must either commit genocide, suicide, or come right back to where they were a year ago. There are no other choices. And the United States cannot support either of those first two choices any more.
Second, we need to switch from hydrocarbon-based energy to hydrogen-based energy. Electricity from wind, or surf, or sun can produce hydrogen, and liquify it. Hydrogen can be combined with oxygen from the air to create energy in fuel cells used in transport and for electrical power generation. These non-grid sources of non fossil-fuel energy are necessary not just for the environment, but to destroy our dependence on Middle East oil, which fuels the tyrannies Muslims rail against as well as Bin Laden himself.
I agree, in general, with most of the posts on this board. We need to declare war on Afghanistan. We must take out the Taliban, pour in food and medicine for the people, and hunt down the heart of Bin Laden's cells. I don't object to anything the U.S. government has proposed in terms of the war -- I just object to their ignorance on how to end it and secure the peace.
Tom Standage in his book "The Victorian Internet" describes just how the scenario of driftingwalrus played out in the 19th century.
The use of oblique references is common by mobsters, bodda-bing, bodda-boom. It's even a cliche. Prosecutors have to go through the laborious process of proving that what they said meant X while the defendants say they were meaning Y, showing how X was impossible.
The example offered by driftingwalrus would, if entered in court, be an example of this kind of encryption.
Dressing up pro-Bell propaganda in ideological clothes by a college sophomore ignores history. The Bells were granted monopolies in exchange for regulation. Eliminating the regulation while retaining the monopoly (since they're not required to share the product of the monopoly) simply results in an unregulated monopoly
If you're going to completely deregulate and "let the market work its will" (which even the author admits the Bells haven't allowed) the only thing to do is break up the Bells. Separate the retail and wholesaling arms, have the wholesale arm own the infrastructure and then force the Bells to play even-steven against voice and data CLECs in a truly free market
There's a bill in Congress to that effect, S. 1364 from South Carolina Democrat Fritz Hollings. The Bells will fight that tooth-and-nail. They'll even hire college juniors (not just sophomores) to write diatribes against it...
A serious question here, Jon. What has Russia done to protest this arrest and imprisonment? This guy should be a hero in his own country -- why isn't he being treated as such?
Imagine the irony. A Russian political prisoner in an American jail, in prison for speech and programming that is legal under his own nation's law.
Where's Putin on all this? Where's the Russian press? Where, at least, is Amnesty International?
If America is to be the enemy of freedom, then the friends of freedom around the world need first to make the charge. I haven't seen that happen. Which may be why this case is being ignored.
There are several reasons why the media isn't treating this as Watergate.
1. There's no organized opposition to the DMCA.
2. The victim here isn't a reporter, but an entrepreneur. A Russian one, at that.
3. The DMCA act itself is fairly new and not well understood. Both political parties supported its enactment. It was seen at the time as a "compromise."
It is long past time for those who love the Internet, and who understand the noxious implications of this law, to organize and get involved. That means (boys and girls) that you get involved in *politics*. You are being turned into criminals by politicians, and all you're doing is sitting there whining. How many have to go to jail before you wake up?
I don't know the answer to that question, except to say the answer is definitely "more than one."
It's never free. You pay for it with your time. You're paying for this.
The point is important because, for a long time, many publishers thought they could pay for stuff simply based on grabbing a piece of your time and putting some advertising beside the content. That didn't work (starting this year) and now they want to get money directly from you.
Of course, there is another way. If you get a magazine like "Information Week," you probably don't pay for it, but you do have to jump through some information-gathering hoops to get it. That way, "Information Week" can tell advertisers how much of the IT industry they're reaching with their ad, and which part of it. That justifies the expense.
If you want "free" stuff, and your time alone won't get it, you're going to be asked to pay for it with honest, actionable information advertisers can use.
First, it's Attention Deficit Difference, Jon, not disorder. End of rant.
Second, there is a way to gain attention without paying for it. You earn credibility. Yes, papers like "The New York Times" come to the market with a certain credibility assumed, but they still have to earn it, every day. They can lose it.
And newcomers can earn credibility in the Attention Economy. Slashdot didn't exist before the Attention Economy, yet it has earned enormous credibility. How? By understanding and catering to its audience.
The fear is that new gatekeepers will arise who just pay for attention and don't deliver value in exchange. We're already seeing more-and-more newscasts that are just promos for various network programs. And guess what, Jon? Their ratings continue to go down. They're trading in their own credibility for short-term gain, and credibility is very very hard to earn.
You should know this. You've earned a lot of credibility over the years. And you continue to earn it. Keep up the good work.
Journalists work for publishers, and when publishers go out of business journalists feel it in their guts.
I can understand where Jon is coming from. (He didn't mention VA Linux, Slashdot's troubled parent, in his analysis but I suspect it hangs heavy with him.) But I can't agree with his conclusions.
The fact is Feed, Suck, Slate and Salon have no real business model. They don't know who their readers are -- they just throw out content. That's not publishing, that's printing.
Print publishers are winning right now because printed magazines know who their audiences are. They can describe to advertisers the branding impact of their ads. Very few online publications can do this, and the reason is that few had the business discipline to go out and learn it.
There will be a second generation. There is just too much potential in this medium for it to be any other way. But the second generation will be run by professionals, people who understand the nature of publishing, who know who their readers are and who organize and advocate a market or lifestyle.
Feed and suck did none of these things. They deserve to die.
Slashdot Mirror
I would really love to agree with you. But I checked with the Dean campaign, and they admitted to the mistake. This did come from them.
They didn't know the person they contracted with would pass off the order to a spammer.
A lot of people in the e-mail world have the same problem. You have a budget. You get two bids. One is 1,000 times higher than the other. That's what it costs to manage a true double opt-in system.
You've heard from ISPs here (look for the one who responded to a Dean denial with the word BULLSHIT) about the costs of managing double opt-in. He said he sometimes sends addresses to those he's sending for and demands detailed information on them?
That takes time. IT takes a human's time. And a human's time is going to cost money. A lot of money, compared with a computer's time.
So the idea that someone in the Dean campaign screwed up is plausible. The fact that the contract was ended immediately is plausible.
The question I want answered is, what should the Dean campaign do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Remember, this is mainly a volunteer effort. The state organizations are, on the whole, autonomous. So are the other volunteer groups, like Seniors4dean. Even Deanspace, their programming force, is autonomous.
This is the necessary risk you take when you "let go" of the message, when you give people responsibility. Someone is going to screw up.
How would you do this if you were the Dean campaign? What processes and procedures would you set up for the delivery of e-mail on the campaign's behalf, that would both empower the volunteers (necessary) and keep you out of this kind of trouble (also necessary).
Put yourself in their shoes, and offer solutions. They will be heard.
I don't think so.
You assume too much evil intent. I think it was an honest mistake.
After all, when notified, the Dean campaign shut the relationship down immediately.
Yes, they regret it. Yes, they admit it. Yes, they took corrective action. No, there's nothing, absolutely nothing, they can do perhaps to get on your good side in this matter.
But is there anything that would help? Unlike the Bush people (who hide behind a form), I've found the Dean campaign quite accessible.
So practical ideas, gentlemen (and ladies). If you offer practical ideas, I think you'll get action.
I run an e-mail newsletter. It's small, and done through double opt-in.
Yet I've been blacklisted by some over-zealous subscriber who didn't know they had subscribed, and so has my provider.
I have also had dozens of subscribers drop out because "content" filters or "javascript" filters rejected my newsletter. Some didn't even tell me the address that was bounced. One, whom I called (because his phone number was on the bounce) simply called me names and hung up.
The idea that a legitimate e-mail, using the very best processes, can be accused of spam isn't fantasy. It's reality.
It's reality because opt-in is not mandated, and thus it's not managed. It's reality because the direct mail industry insists on opt-out for "legitimate" e-mail (theirs), and halts any legislative move toward correcting the problem.
I don't disagree that he's centrist. I don't disagree that he's pissed off Vermont's left. Your comparing him to Clinton (minus the bimbo eruptions) is a high compliment.
You convinced me. Keep up the good work.
There are several factors involved in sending a digital radio signal. One is the antenna. Another is the radio receiver. Then there are the DSPs that are filtering-out interference and translating the signal.
All these devices are improving exponentially, in a "Moore's Law" way (www.corante.com/mooreslore). That's how 802.11 got from 1 Mbps to 11 Mbps, and now to 54 Mbps in the same frequency space.
The Internet is based on several developments which improve exponentially. So too with digital radio. Antennas are getting much, much better very, very fast. Radios are getting much, much better very, very fast. And the same is true with DSPs. You get a multiplier-on-a-multiplier.
Reed's conclusions should surprise no one who uses Slashdot. It's what we've been working toward here for years and years.
I would have been much happier had Morimoto's win in New York gotten him Flay's own show. "Hot off the Grill with Masaharu Morimoto" sounds like pretty cool programming, don't you think?
UPN briefly tried an "Iron Chef USA" starring William Shatner as Chairman Kaga, but it was terrible and failed, I think, after just one episode.
Given that all his shows are done "at home" (and have you noticed how his homes have gotten bigger during the run of the show) I'd say Alton is a bigger threat to appear in an ad campaign for "Kroger" or "Bed, Bath & Beyond."
Start with a pounded chicken dish, like a quick chicken piccata. (Pound breasts flat, sweat onion and garlic, flour (salt and pepper) chicken and saute, deglaze with white wine and lemon juice to make sauce after they're all fried, add capers and pour over the chicken, serve with pasta.
Later on, get more adventurous. Many woman love things with clams and other shellfish.
Another Food Network cook offered a great recipe recently called "salmon in the dish washer." Wrap the salmon with some spices, lemon and maybe thin-sliced squash in tin foil, real tight. Fold it three times down from the top, three times in from the sides. Make sure it's tight. Toss it in the dishwasher, with your dishes, and set the dial to "normal." When the dishes are done, so's the salmon. I tried this over the weekend -- it works! (I'll bet it would work with sea bass, too - just a nice thick piece of fish that would normally take about 15 minutes to steam.)
My mom's "stone soup" features such things as carrots, cabbage, potatoes, white beans, tomatoes, salt and vinegar to taste. You always start with aromatics (onion, garlic, etc.) giving them a good "sweat." (Cook in a little oil at low heat.) When they start to look clear, add water (a few quarts) and your thickest veggies (such as turnips) to the pot. If you're going with uncooked beans, toss them in early and wait an hour before starting the veggies. Then add 'em slowly, in reverse-order of cooking time (thick, fibrous stuff like potatoes and carrots before quick-cooking corn, for instance). Cook some rice on the side. Offer Tabasco for those who want it kicked up, salt for those who don't. Crackers. Since it's not got any meat in it, it ought to keep several days in the fridge. Make new meals of it by having different kinds of fancy breads with it at different meals -- Hawaiian sweet bread, for instance. Super-cheap, very good for you (beans and rice are a complete protein), and plenty of room for your taste and imagination.
I think there's more talent to good programming than cooking. Good cooking mainly comes from practice. Use the recipes until you have them down by heart. Then make some slight alterations that work for your taste. (Alton likes olives and capers and you don't? Don't use 'em). Gradually you'll figure out the basic techniques -- stir-fry, braising, stewing, etc. You'll find a few dishes you really do well. Your repertoire will gradually expand.
Programming, on the other hand, really good programming. That takes talent.
Oh, and if you use Alton's method (wrap it in tin foil, cook it low and slow) you shouldn't have that problem. Put in maybe 1/2 cup of liquid (with diced veggies), seal the foil after searing the meat and leave it alone for about 2 1/2 hours.
Try Quesadillas on a hot plate. Turn on the hot plate, put a pan on it, and after about 4 minutes (test it with a few drops of water -- if they sizzle you're good) lay down a few drops of oil (canola, vegetable, olive, whatever), then a flour tortilla (preferably a bit smaller than the pan), then the cheese, whatever cooked meat you like (ham, pepperoni, chicken), maybe a little chili powder for "bammage," then another flour tortilla. (Got something to cover the top of the pan? Good.) After about a minute, flip it and cook the other side. (You really just want to heat the cheese to gooey and brown the tortilla.) Tasty, fast, inexpensive, and filling.
Alton did an episode on the "Iron Chef" theme, in which he showed how to make bacon. The "Iron Chef" won. Evidently, Alton thinks it's fixed.
This is not a big deal, except it makes Yahoo's investment bankers happy, because they can claim there's big money coming. There ain't.
We do have a lot of ID, and it sucks. This causes a great deal of fraud and commercial identity theft. A national standard based on encryption and biometrics may not be perfect, but it would be better than what we have. And it would have a million-and-one commercial applications, applications we all want and need and now deal with using insecure, incompatible, easy-to-hack systems that let anyone steal your identity by simply finding your social security number and doing a bad forgery of your signature.
A Marine friend of mine suggests they're already on the ground. Their mission may be to simply identify targets, and to use the confusion of the attacks to discover exactly where Bin Laden and his buddies are hiding.
Once those mountains are blown to bits, they would probably follow to identify bodies and kill the survivors (if any).
That may be the initial hope, but my guess is that even if they do identify hidey-holes, they won't be able to blow 'em out from the sky, and we will have to go in with significant numbers of troops.
It's at that point that the sciences involved in insulation come into play. Any skier knows we've made great strides in that area in recent decades. I think the snow might actually turn into an advantage. But I'm an optimist.
Even assuming all goes well, Afghanistan is just one home to terrorism. There's still Iraq. There's still Syria. There's still Iran, and Iran is (in some ways) a democracy.
The key to all the rest of the propaganda war. And that's a war I fear we're not winning. We don't have to convince 90% of Americans we're right. We have to convince 95% of Muslims that their Fundamentalist preachers are wrong. Otherwise we're just raising a new batch of terrorists.
This was true in the Civil War, certainly. It was also true in World War I and World War II.
I have no objections to temporary measures designed to prosecute this war against medieval extremism.
What I fear, and I think what most people fear, is "mission creep." The "temporary changes" made during the war would become permanent.
We saw that in the aftermath of WWII. No one objected to the measures of that time (although there was, later, guilt over what happened to Japanese-Americans). But the attitudes of us vs. them, of absolute war, were carried over for political reasons into the horror we now call McCarthyism.
Any suspension of any of our rights, then, must be a war-time measure, part of the government's war-time efforts, aimed solely at prosecuting this war the President has declared. (Personally I'd like a Congresssionally-approved declaration, but they're having difficult defining the enemy.)
I have no objections to measures enacted with the aim of winning this war. I do object, strongly, and will lay down my life, against their being made permanent.
Now let's address the war, and how to really win it.
We need to cut off our enemy's blood supply in two ways.
First, by re-starting the peace process. We were close last time. We must pressure Israel, hard (I mean really hard) to get back to where it was, in terms of a deal with the Palestinians (some of whom are Christian, not Muslim). That will eliminate a cause of the conflict.
Many Jews and supporters of Israel say this is impossible. They dehumanize all Palestinians. But they have practical alternative to peace. They must either commit genocide, suicide, or come right back to where they were a year ago. There are no other choices. And the United States cannot support either of those first two choices any more.
Second, we need to switch from hydrocarbon-based energy to hydrogen-based energy. Electricity from wind, or surf, or sun can produce hydrogen, and liquify it. Hydrogen can be combined with oxygen from the air to create energy in fuel cells used in transport and for electrical power generation. These non-grid sources of non fossil-fuel energy are necessary not just for the environment, but to destroy our dependence on Middle East oil, which fuels the tyrannies Muslims rail against as well as Bin Laden himself.
I agree, in general, with most of the posts on this board. We need to declare war on Afghanistan. We must take out the Taliban, pour in food and medicine for the people, and hunt down the heart of Bin Laden's cells. I don't object to anything the U.S. government has proposed in terms of the war -- I just object to their ignorance on how to end it and secure the peace.
The use of oblique references is common by mobsters, bodda-bing, bodda-boom. It's even a cliche. Prosecutors have to go through the laborious process of proving that what they said meant X while the defendants say they were meaning Y, showing how X was impossible.
The example offered by driftingwalrus would, if entered in court, be an example of this kind of encryption.
If you're going to completely deregulate and "let the market work its will" (which even the author admits the Bells haven't allowed) the only thing to do is break up the Bells. Separate the retail and wholesaling arms, have the wholesale arm own the infrastructure and then force the Bells to play even-steven against voice and data CLECs in a truly free market
There's a bill in Congress to that effect, S. 1364 from South Carolina Democrat Fritz Hollings. The Bells will fight that tooth-and-nail. They'll even hire college juniors (not just sophomores) to write diatribes against it...
Imagine the irony. A Russian political prisoner in an American jail, in prison for speech and programming that is legal under his own nation's law.
Where's Putin on all this? Where's the Russian press? Where, at least, is Amnesty International?
If America is to be the enemy of freedom, then the friends of freedom around the world need first to make the charge. I haven't seen that happen. Which may be why this case is being ignored.
1. There's no organized opposition to the DMCA.
2. The victim here isn't a reporter, but an entrepreneur. A Russian one, at that.
3. The DMCA act itself is fairly new and not well understood. Both political parties supported its enactment. It was seen at the time as a "compromise."
It is long past time for those who love the Internet, and who understand the noxious implications of this law, to organize and get involved. That means (boys and girls) that you get involved in *politics*. You are being turned into criminals by politicians, and all you're doing is sitting there whining. How many have to go to jail before you wake up?
I don't know the answer to that question, except to say the answer is definitely "more than one."
The point is important because, for a long time, many publishers thought they could pay for stuff simply based on grabbing a piece of your time and putting some advertising beside the content. That didn't work (starting this year) and now they want to get money directly from you.
Of course, there is another way. If you get a magazine like "Information Week," you probably don't pay for it, but you do have to jump through some information-gathering hoops to get it. That way, "Information Week" can tell advertisers how much of the IT industry they're reaching with their ad, and which part of it. That justifies the expense.
If you want "free" stuff, and your time alone won't get it, you're going to be asked to pay for it with honest, actionable information advertisers can use.
Second, there is a way to gain attention without paying for it. You earn credibility. Yes, papers like "The New York Times" come to the market with a certain credibility assumed, but they still have to earn it, every day. They can lose it.
And newcomers can earn credibility in the Attention Economy. Slashdot didn't exist before the Attention Economy, yet it has earned enormous credibility. How? By understanding and catering to its audience.
The fear is that new gatekeepers will arise who just pay for attention and don't deliver value in exchange. We're already seeing more-and-more newscasts that are just promos for various network programs. And guess what, Jon? Their ratings continue to go down. They're trading in their own credibility for short-term gain, and credibility is very very hard to earn. You should know this. You've earned a lot of credibility over the years. And you continue to earn it. Keep up the good work.
I can understand where Jon is coming from. (He didn't mention VA Linux, Slashdot's troubled parent, in his analysis but I suspect it hangs heavy with him.) But I can't agree with his conclusions.
The fact is Feed, Suck, Slate and Salon have no real business model. They don't know who their readers are -- they just throw out content. That's not publishing, that's printing.
Print publishers are winning right now because printed magazines know who their audiences are. They can describe to advertisers the branding impact of their ads. Very few online publications can do this, and the reason is that few had the business discipline to go out and learn it.
There will be a second generation. There is just too much potential in this medium for it to be any other way. But the second generation will be run by professionals, people who understand the nature of publishing, who know who their readers are and who organize and advocate a market or lifestyle.
Feed and suck did none of these things. They deserve to die.