Do you really want the government to keep people from calling you, protect your e-mail from spam and even manage the lock on your door?
Protecting private property is a proper function of government. That includes punishing people who ignore "KEEP OUT" notices.
Get caller ID and Telezapper if you're bothered by somebody calling you.
That's useful, just as it's useful to put a lock on your front door. However, failure to do so does not grant people a license to ignore my property rights. (If I do take such measures, circumventing them becomes an aggrivating factor in the offense.)
Has the government has ever provided a cheap and effective solution to anything?
The DNC List seems to have worked rather well, and is paid for (as it should be) by the telemarketers who caused the problem in the first place.
He poked and chided me, saying, "Boy, I bet you Libertarians are stumped on this one, eh?"
I hope you told him that Libertarians are far from "stumped" on the issue of trespassing (we're agin' it, and consider it a legitimate function of government to stop it when the trespasser won't respond to friendly persuasion).
This attitude of Telemarketers. They should be lobbying in FAVOUR of Do not Call Lists. What does a do not call list represent? People who DO NOT WANT to be called. People who are not likely to be influenced by your sales pitch because they find this kind of call intrusive. Do not call lists allows telemarketers to weed out the most unlikely clients from the bunch who are more amenable to that marketing strategy. By having to call less people, they need to hire less employees for the same number of sales at the end of the road. It's actually BETTER for them.
You're overlooking the dirty little secret of telemarketing -- its ideal target is a person of diminished mental or psychological capacity (e.g. the stereotypical lonely senior citizen in the early stages of dementia).
People who are well-equipped to make their own decisions and stick to them either want your product (in which case they'll find it themselves without being pestered) or not (in which case pestering them won't do any good). It's among people who aren't so well-situated where telemarketing actually makes a difference to the bottom line.
sign up at your local telemarketting call center and work there for just one month
I'm not interested in selling my soul (and certainly not for the crummy pay I'd get for one month of dronework).
they are are people trying to make a living
So are numbers runners and crack dealers -- for whom I have more respect inasmuch as they generally confine their attentions to people who actually want to place bets or smoke crack.
One of the arguments made by the property owners was that eminent domain could only be used for economic development in "blighted" areas. At least one of the justices retorted something to the effect of, "But isn't it likely that this area of New London will become blighted in just a few years from now if nothing is done to imrove the economy?"
By this reasoning, the police should be allowed to arrest neer-do-well teenagers on the grounds that they're likely to grow into criminals if nothing is done to scare them straight.
It's not that it wasn't protected, it's that the concept is so inane as to have been un-heard-of.
Yep. Here's one example of a Supreme Court justice describing this very thing as so outrageous as to be obviously out of bounds:
Wilkinson v Leland, 2 Pet 627, 658 (1829); Justice Story said: "The fundamental maxims of free government seem to require, that the rights of personal liberty and private property should be held sacred. At least no court of justice in this country would be warranted in assuming, that the power to violate and disregard them; a power so repugnant to the common principles of justice and civil liberty; lurked under any general grant of legislative authority, or ought to be implied from any general expressions of the will of the people... a different doctrine is utterly inconsistent with the great and fundamental principle of republican government, and with the right of citizens to the free enjoyment of their property lawfully acquired. We know of no case, in which a legislative act to transfer the property of A to B without his consent, has ever been held a constitutional exercise of legislative power in any state in the Union. On the contrary, it has been constantly resisted as inconsistent with just principles by every judicial tribunal in which it has been attempted to be enforced."
Your parents didn't create the land.
Some other things that are tangible products of someone's labor: radios, computers, guitars, cars, bicycles. Just about any tangible item other than land.
This is the most nonsensical statement I've seen on/. for weeks (and that's saying something).
Making a plot of land into something actually useful (e.g. by building a house on it) is no different than making a chunk of silicon and metal into something useful (e.g. by fashioning it into a radio). In both cases, something that previously exists in its natural state is converted into an economic good. There is no meaningful way to distinguish between the two cases.
One last note: one of the many definitions of SF is "it must obey all known scientific laws. If it breaks one (and only one, per story), then a) that needs to be *necessary* for the plot, and b) it needs to do believable handwaving that *also* does not violate known scientific laws.
I see no point in the "only one per story" rule, so long as the two conditions are met for each bending of (currently known) scientific law. There are quite a few phenomena, rather one and only one, that are recognized facts in 2005 and flatly violations scientific laws as understood in 1895 (e.g. anything dependent on nuclear energy or quantum physics).
For the first ones, it really depends on how you define "most". In 1861 (over 100 years ago, thus further than over half our history ago), a man was elected president from a new party founded on the basis of abolishing slavery. He recieved most of the popular vote.
No; Lincoln got about 40% of the popular vote. He won because the way the popular vote was distributed (he got enough votes to carry most of the free states, and virtually zero in the slave states) gave him a majority of the electoral vote.
Yes, and I have a rock that *APPARENTLY* keeps tigers away. I can personally attest that I have never been attacked by a tiger while I had the rock.
This is one of the myths about spam: that it must work, because otherwise spammers wouldn't be doing it. And it's just that: a myth.
It doesn't matter if people buy things from spammers, or if people don't buy things from spammers. The spammers will still spam because A) it costs them nothing, and B) they *BELIEVE* it must work, because there is so much spam.
More precisely, all a spammer has to do is convince a few clients that spamming works. By the time the client finds out that, no, it doesn't, the spammer has his money (and religiously obeys the First Rule of Acquisition).
(In terms of your metaphor, if you can convince some sucker that your rock will keep tigers away, and are not encumbered with an inconvenient attack of conscience, you can sell your rock for perfectly good money, notwithstanding the fact that it's just an ordinary piece of rock.)
Shifting the operations offshore won't help them unless the spammers themselves leave the country -- if they just try to run the spam operation by remote control, they can still be prosecuted/sued. Most countries that are half-decent places to live either have laws of their own or are willing to extradite perps to the US.
Hilary Rosen complaining about the inconvenient side effects of DRM schemes is like Ted Kennedy complaining that his taxes are too high or John Ashcroft complaining that the government is poking into his private business.
The worst offender was found to have 48% non work related emails by volume. That translated into approximately 2 hours of wasted time PER DAY.
Let me guess: This time figure is based on the implicit assumption that zapping off the latest joke takes exactly the same amount of time as drafting and sending a preliminary report.
nine years served is pretty damn harsh, especially given the details of this case
Actually, given the details of this case (defrauding large numbers of people out of hundreds or thousands of dollars each) nine years is much too lenient.
Taxpayers of Virginia, is keeping this guy off the street really worth that much to you?
Given the economic damage caused by spam, sending the message, "DON'T SPAM OR THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU" is cheap at ten times the price.
One more thing about criminalizing spam that makes me uncomfortable is the whole free speech thing.
For the thousandth time, this is not a free speech issue. It is a property rights issue.
if I send mass emails from my own machines without breaking into anything and without defrauding anyone
Since Jaynes both broke into things (by bypassing anti-spam filters) and defrauded people (see the records of the court case) on a mass basis, this comment is irrelevant.
Does spam count as free speech too?
No. It counts as theft of other people's computer resources.
By all means, slashdotters let me know any rational arguments you can think of for criminalizing spam that doesn't include other forms of crime already.
If you can find any examples of spam that don't include other crime (note that any attempt to evade anti-spam filtering is a circumvention of other people's computer security), let us know.
If they do go through with this, I think they should come out with a $20 "citizenship card" or something that you can get at your local security of state. Otherwise it's just going to be a major pain in the ass for everyone and it's going to hurt the economy on both sides of the border.
A bulky document like a passport is superior to a wallet-sized card, precisely because people aren't going to routinely carry it unless they know they're going to need it. This creates a barrier against the sort of "mission creep" that has afflicted (for example) US Social Security numbers.
(Personally, I'd recommend creating a standardized bulky document -- call it a passport, or not -- for all occasions where proof of identity could be legitimately required. Ideally, it should be required at the polls, but then the government would have to make it available at no cost.)
Next time I get one of the hundreds "Invest in this penny stock" junk faxes, I'll look for the "unsubscribe" number, which clearly says "call me to confirm that you want to get faxes for the rest of your life"
They're going to be sending lots of faxes to public pay phones, then....
Slashdot Mirror
Protecting private property is a proper function of government. That includes punishing people who ignore "KEEP OUT" notices.
Get caller ID and Telezapper if you're bothered by somebody calling you.
That's useful, just as it's useful to put a lock on your front door. However, failure to do so does not grant people a license to ignore my property rights. (If I do take such measures, circumventing them becomes an aggrivating factor in the offense.)
Has the government has ever provided a cheap and effective solution to anything?
The DNC List seems to have worked rather well, and is paid for (as it should be) by the telemarketers who caused the problem in the first place.
I hope you told him that Libertarians are far from "stumped" on the issue of trespassing (we're agin' it, and consider it a legitimate function of government to stop it when the trespasser won't respond to friendly persuasion).
You're overlooking the dirty little secret of telemarketing -- its ideal target is a person of diminished mental or psychological capacity (e.g. the stereotypical lonely senior citizen in the early stages of dementia).
People who are well-equipped to make their own decisions and stick to them either want your product (in which case they'll find it themselves without being pestered) or not (in which case pestering them won't do any good). It's among people who aren't so well-situated where telemarketing actually makes a difference to the bottom line.
I'm not interested in selling my soul (and certainly not for the crummy pay I'd get for one month of dronework).
they are are people trying to make a living
So are numbers runners and crack dealers -- for whom I have more respect inasmuch as they generally confine their attentions to people who actually want to place bets or smoke crack.
If you want the subsidy to be limited to converter boxes that only pick up educational and news channels, why didn't you say so?
By this reasoning, the police should be allowed to arrest neer-do-well teenagers on the grounds that they're likely to grow into criminals if nothing is done to scare them straight.
Yep. Here's one example of a Supreme Court justice describing this very thing as so outrageous as to be obviously out of bounds:
Some other things that are tangible products of someone's labor: radios, computers, guitars, cars, bicycles. Just about any tangible item other than land.
This is the most nonsensical statement I've seen on /. for weeks (and that's saying something).
Making a plot of land into something actually useful (e.g. by building a house on it) is no different than making a chunk of silicon and metal into something useful (e.g. by fashioning it into a radio). In both cases, something that previously exists in its natural state is converted into an economic good. There is no meaningful way to distinguish between the two cases.
With an across-the-board rate cut to compensate -- the government has quite enough money already, thank you.
I see no point in the "only one per story" rule, so long as the two conditions are met for each bending of (currently known) scientific law. There are quite a few phenomena, rather one and only one, that are recognized facts in 2005 and flatly violations scientific laws as understood in 1895 (e.g. anything dependent on nuclear energy or quantum physics).
It demonstrably helps the wearer pick up women.
No; Lincoln got about 40% of the popular vote. He won because the way the popular vote was distributed (he got enough votes to carry most of the free states, and virtually zero in the slave states) gave him a majority of the electoral vote.
Only if it has a happy ending (i.e. if The Spam Seven meet a fate similar to that of the protagonists of Spartacus or Braveheart).
This is one of the myths about spam: that it must work, because otherwise spammers wouldn't be doing it. And it's just that: a myth.
It doesn't matter if people buy things from spammers, or if people don't buy things from spammers. The spammers will still spam because A) it costs them nothing, and B) they *BELIEVE* it must work, because there is so much spam.
More precisely, all a spammer has to do is convince a few clients that spamming works. By the time the client finds out that, no, it doesn't, the spammer has his money (and religiously obeys the First Rule of Acquisition).
(In terms of your metaphor, if you can convince some sucker that your rock will keep tigers away, and are not encumbered with an inconvenient attack of conscience, you can sell your rock for perfectly good money, notwithstanding the fact that it's just an ordinary piece of rock.)
Shifting the operations offshore won't help them unless the spammers themselves leave the country -- if they just try to run the spam operation by remote control, they can still be prosecuted/sued. Most countries that are half-decent places to live either have laws of their own or are willing to extradite perps to the US.
Hilary Rosen complaining about the inconvenient side effects of DRM schemes is like Ted Kennedy complaining that his taxes are too high or John Ashcroft complaining that the government is poking into his private business.
We now return you to our discussion of relevant matters, already in progress....
Let me guess: This time figure is based on the implicit assumption that zapping off the latest joke takes exactly the same amount of time as drafting and sending a preliminary report.
Secure Startup ain't done till Linux won't run.
File this one under "Stereotypes Come To Life" (e.g. "French Army Rifle: never fired; only dropped once").
Actually, given the details of this case (defrauding large numbers of people out of hundreds or thousands of dollars each) nine years is much too lenient.
Given the economic damage caused by spam, sending the message, "DON'T SPAM OR THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU" is cheap at ten times the price.
One more thing about criminalizing spam that makes me uncomfortable is the whole free speech thing.
For the thousandth time, this is not a free speech issue. It is a property rights issue.
if I send mass emails from my own machines without breaking into anything and without defrauding anyone
Since Jaynes both broke into things (by bypassing anti-spam filters) and defrauded people (see the records of the court case) on a mass basis, this comment is irrelevant.
Does spam count as free speech too?
No. It counts as theft of other people's computer resources.
By all means, slashdotters let me know any rational arguments you can think of for criminalizing spam that doesn't include other forms of crime already.
If you can find any examples of spam that don't include other crime (note that any attempt to evade anti-spam filtering is a circumvention of other people's computer security), let us know.
A bulky document like a passport is superior to a wallet-sized card, precisely because people aren't going to routinely carry it unless they know they're going to need it. This creates a barrier against the sort of "mission creep" that has afflicted (for example) US Social Security numbers.
(Personally, I'd recommend creating a standardized bulky document -- call it a passport, or not -- for all occasions where proof of identity could be legitimately required. Ideally, it should be required at the polls, but then the government would have to make it available at no cost.)
"US out of the UN; UN out of the US"
They're going to be sending lots of faxes to public pay phones, then....