It is not about the content of the material, but the intent with which it was produced. This is one thing that the legal system spends a lot of time considering and is, for example, the distinction between homicide and murder. And despite the usual character witnesses wheeled out by high-profile defendents, the only person who truly knows the intent is the person who actually did the act.
Publishing offensive material is a time-honoured means of increasing circulation. Certain radio hosts are notorious for pushing the limits of decency - all the while building their reputation among the dissatisfied and disaffected. Neither is blocked by law, since the intention has never been proven to divide or offend, but simply to improve commercial returns.
In repressive countries, many acts are automatically deemed to harm the national interest. In the West, there will always be someone who pushes the envelope too far. In the past, those pushing have had the aggressives on their side.
In this battle, the aggressives find themselves on opposing teams - both of which are being encouraged against the other. We softies in the middle are the easy target - and our greatest weapon is to just hold our ground, point out the double-standards and fallacies they insist upon, and risk being shot eight times and stabbed in the street.
That, my friend, is freedom of speech. Stand up and risk everything, don't just lie down and take it. It is what Jesus recommended when he said to "turn the other cheek" - ie: tell your oppressors that they missed a bit, and have another go.
So, would I choose to publish the cartoons? In the interests of informed debate, you bet I would! The claimed intents of solidarity and free speech reek of dishonesty to my nose, as it appears to have purely been a fame-grab.
Do I agree with the glorification Islamic terrorism? No, because the intent is only to drive a wedge between two groups who are still trying to work out who each other really are.
As you may have noticed, there is an element of irony in my argument. By using the same emotive, attacking style as the fundamentalist, I undermine my own case. There are zealots on both sides, and the Freedom zealots are no better than the Fundamentalist zealots - both take up their cause without thinking their argument through, and fight on emotional rallying cries rather than reason. How often have "Democracy" and "Freedom" been the rallying cries during the so-called "War on Terror"?
The truly free don't need to battle on this level, but anyone who relies on someone else to do the thinking for them is soon "converted" to the thinking, and willing to risk their own life for someone else's passionate belief.
And this is why freedom will wither and die in the face of growing fundamentalism. There are no valid rallying cries to "convert" the masses to freedom. Freedom is an individual journey, and a willingness to stand alone for what you know is right. Fundamentalism tells you what to think, and brings you together with others on that road.
The Western group-think of today is to minimise risk (and maximise profit). Not a fundamentalist issue, true, but definitely a freedom issue. New laws continue to reduce individual freedoms in the interests of reducing risks. Fundamentalism also plays on this drive to reduce risk, since it tells you the rules by which to play. As Yahoo!, Google and MSN have shown, shareholders demand pacifying foreign governments, even if it goes against moral or historical national policy.
That a company can come out and choose to increase risk - by invoking the possible ire of the Chinese Government - is a brave step in a risk-averse world. It is a move which should occur more oten, if freedom is truly what we are all fighting for.
You're right, of course. While the actions of the Chinese Government parallel the actions of fundamentalists, the causes are quite dissimilar. One is simple oppression, while the other holds to a higher duty. Regardless of the cause, the effect is still the same.
And I do maintain that Fundamentalism is opposed to Freedom. I am not saying that everyone opposed to freedom is a Fundamentalist - although anyone interested in freedom is definitely opposed to fundamentalism.
Perhaps the truer word is "oppression" rather than "fundamentalism"? But fundamentalism is really just a part of the whole oppression umbrella.
An interesting op-ed piece I read today suggested that this is a war between Freedom and Fundamentalism. As we are seeing with the current Congressional Hearing involving Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, Capitalism doesn't much care either way for Freedom or Fundamentalism, but is calculated solely on risk and reward - even if you purport to "do no evil". To look at Western politics around the world, and more topically the effects of those Danish cartoons which are not being published, most people don't have much of an opinion here either.
As has been said here previously, free speech only continues to exist when people exercise it. There is much uninformed opinion in the world, and even our leaders are increasingly elected on the basis of limited amounts of tightly controlled information. Does this lead us closer to Freedom and Democracy?
The Fundamentalist has a narrow agenda, is easily inflamed, readily invokes fear to reinforce their message, and has little respect for all who disagree. Those who favour Freedom will always suffer at the hands of Fundamentalists - Freedom is Fundamentalism's single worst enemy, and the uninformed Free will happily trade minor freedoms for any illusion of security against perceived threats. Against this slow but steady onslaught, Freedom's only weapon is exercising available freedoms - even to risk one's own life if necessary.
While it is the duty of the Free to selflessly attempt to liberate the oppressed, Capitalism guides us to minimise risk now and build short-term rewards. In the face of rising global Fundamentalism (whether Christian or Muslim, Capitalist or Socialist), Freedom dies by a thousand cuts.
It will do us all good to see more fearless initiatives like this one from Canada.
Success is not about your ability to code. Gentoo was successful not because it was great code, but because it was an idea whose time had come.
When you stop just writing code, and actually come up with a great idea, even the best coder in the world will need to write the code out as fast as he or she can, for the simple pleasure of seeing their idea actually take form.
There is a myth doing the rounds which suggests there is always time for a rewrite, but practice suggests that the people who have one good idea usually have better things to do - and are often on to their next good idea. Plus, no-one ever thanks you for a re-write.
You know you've got a jaundiced view on life when you read an interested researcher's real science comments, and instinctively feel disgusted by the blatant PR grab.
On re-reading the parent comment, I almost feel obliged to visit the web site, to prove to myself that not everyone's just after the PR, but might actually have something relevant to say.
It's been a tough few weeks for SlashDot readers, full of front-page advertorials. Now the editorial sloppiness is causing me to doubt even "Score: 5, Informative" comments.
From recent personal experience, there are two major ways we absorb data - intellectual and intuitive.
The intellectual approach allows you to carefully weigh the data on relevance, sources, and cross-references, allowing you to absorb information, and improve your knowledge. It's the approach everyone claims to aspire to, as you might then be able to put it into practice, and gain wisdom. But it's time-consuming, and without discipline can lead to a never-ending pyramid of learning (oh, the shame).
The intuitive approach allows you to quickly scan a wide range of data, and take a hunch on what it means. It relies on short facts from trusted sources. It's the approach increasingly encouraged in our short-attention-span society, as you can drop the topic as soon as you get your first answer. Sources are often trusted on a hunch, and so the whole process of learning pivots on an initial lucky guess. Since we're only ever looking for a quick answer, we usually focus on the information which supports our own position. The Internet only encourages this.
As with any human experience, there are levels of grey between the two extremes which are where we're likely to have the best success - learning real information without spending too much time about it.
How this pans out in your GP vs hypochondriac scenario, is that the doctor approaches it as learning, while the hypochondriac is only seeking confirmation of her original beliefs.
In my case, I have found the simple process of pregnancy (over 6 billion successes and going strong) has such breadth of conflicting information (and fear) available that you either approach it intellectually (check sources and cross-reference), or just ignore the whole thing and trust in biology.
Anyone else got a favorite way of producing misleading bug scores?
My favourites for making U/L look bad:
3. Count the number of page hits on community support forums;
2. Count the number of front-page articles on slashdot on the problems;
1. Count the number of comments moderated "Informative" or "Interesting" in Slashdot, on articles about bugs in Linux.
My favourites to make Windows look bad:
5. Multiply the number of bugs by the number of licenses sold;
4. Multiply the number of bugs by the value of licenses sold;
3. Ignore the number of bugs, and count only the cost of additional software and phone calls;
2. Count the number of identical posts in community support forums;
and my favourite...
1. Count the number of comments moderated "Funny" or "Troll" in Slashdot, on articles about bugs in Windows.
As we are social animals, we are bound to want to share something of ourselves with others. We need to believe that we have something of value to share with friends as well as strangers. Exactly what information we choose to share is determined by how much trust we believe we can place in the other person. ("Person" including groups and organisations as well as individuals).
That's what the real problem comes down to - we are being given no choice. We are made to believe that our information is of no value, and so we should willingly give it up to some person whom we increasingly find ourselves unable to trust. It is not that we don't want to trust them, so much as the behaviour of those people reinforces to us that we cannot trust them.
When asked to provide private information as partial payment for goods or services (or to receive discounts or rebates on same), we instinctively feel cheated because we are trading our humanity for cash. We fight down that instinct at every turn, as we manage to convince ourselves that it is only a small loss for such great gain.
As other posters have pointed out before, if it's really of so little value, why are we repeatedly given such incentives to give out such information? Especially when the information we provide is so irrelevant for the goods or services provided?
A credit card company needs to know that you are 18 years of age, and have some way of uniquely identifying you - but date of birth is too much information for the former, and too little for the latter. Is the email address I provide when I enrol going to be used to save trees, or is it really just cheaper marketing? We're lapping up the convenience on offer, enjoying the opportunity to get something for almost nothing, and feeling trapped by something we just can't put our fingers on. And now, as individuals faced with increasingly long and complex forms (and an out-of-control legal system), none of us really knows how much information is required by law, and how much is just an opportunistic marketing grab.
In the end, I don't believe the problem is that we lack privacy. Most forms carry no penalty for lying. No, the problem is that we neither know nor trust the people we're giving our details to. And that's a situation that won't change while most of us chase after our personal privacy.
So what? You're suggesting that Symantec is being blocked by US export restrictions because they haven't bothered to renew their export license?
Seems the other way round from how 99% of the other comments read, including the summary at top. To read those, you'd think that it's the export laws themselves that had changed. Or that Symantec are hiding something (cue the conspiracy theorists).
... he clings to the vague notion that wartime places him above the law...
Isn't this exactly right? As a war-time Commander-in-Chief, the President has the duty to do everything possible to protect US citizens from the enemy. Of course, a few key definitions have been re-defined by this Administration in recent years:
The Enemy - "If you're not with us, you're with the Terrorists."
Terrorist - "Anyone who threatens the American Way Of Life (TM)." Apparently this has nothing to do with Constitutional definitions.
War - "It's an enemy unlike any we've faced before..." but somehow the traditional rules of war apply to Presidential powers.
As many others have noted, once you start looking for enemies based on what they say or how they act, you'll see enemies everywhere. At least with a traditional enemy you can keep an eye on people because they look different or live in another country. When a terrorist could have been living peacefully in your own backyard for the last 10 years, well... anyone who thinks "outside the square" could be a threat to the American Way Of Life (TM), and the only way to be certain is to keep a really close eye on everyone. This rapidly enters the realm of paranoia (or, indeed, Paranoia). Just ask any Communist who survived McCarthyism.
(Counting down the seconds for a knock on the door...)
What you're saying is that you are happy to give up your anonymity when the people who have your information are known to you. The only problem you have is when you deliver your personal information into an amorphous, anonymous system.
Here's one for you: The problem is not that we wish to remain anonymous.
We are social animals - we love getting to know one another. Intimacy is the opposite of anonymity, and intimacy is the best thing we've got! The real problem is that The System has become anonymous to us. As humans, we have an unerring instinct to not trust anything (people, governments, animals, roads,...) we don't know.
Corporations and Governments want to know you, so they can trust you... (for the Greater Good(TM), of course!) But they don't see the need to play fair, and insist that you don't need to know who they are, since they are working for the Greater Good(TM).
Privacy is the problem, sure. The problem is that there's too much of it!
...the tusks are a giant tooth that grows inside out, with hard tissue inside and sensitive nerves on the outside.
What with all the garbage and noise we've been dumping into the world's oceans over the past century, these guys must be living with the toothache from hell. It sounds like the equivalent of exposed root canals - and at least dentists can kill those nerves so we humans don't suffer the pain any more.
Which raises an interesting question - if you're born with a toothache, and live your whole life with a toothache, do you still feel the pain?
The 2nd release candidate of sub-version of a product is "News"???
Any product that has more than one sub-version release in 12 months hardly counts as "news".
If it was only updated, say, every other year - then we might be talking... but this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Especially since RC1 (already in use by the really keen) will tell you about it automatically!
Sigh...
Appropriate uses and the long-term view
on
VoIP Going Wireless
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In the First World, we live in hyper-wired environments. I have over 30 wired IP telephones in sight of me right now, as well as a choice of cellphone providers and technologies (CDMA or GSM). I also have a choice of wired and wireless IP providers - again over a variety of technologies including dialup, cable, xDSL, ATM, or even Ethernet, as well as WiFi, WiMax, and 1xEvDO.
In the Third World - and probably in two-thirds of the world besides - it just costs too damned much to roll out and maintain cabling. Cellphone technologies like GSM and CDMA are really only useful for a voice service (unless the end user has cash to burn).
IP technologies make so much sense, since you roll out voice AND data all in the one roll-out, and don't have to worry about tracking down the badly soldered joins, or the waterlogged junctions. It also gets the equation around the right way - instead of trying to run data over a voice service, you're running voice over a data service. Brilliant!
Get the technology right in the world where we've already got so many choices, and the rest of the world will be so much better off.
Too often, people look at the "oo-aah" factor, and leave the proven technologies behind.
It couldn't be too hard to provide CCTV into the forward cabin, back to the cockpit - whether an actual screen (does the cockpit need more clutter?) or as an input into an automated pattern-match system. Any manic activity in the cabin gets noticed; any attempt to gain entry to the cockpit is checked against a video screen... however the mechnics function.
Providing a wireless system for "discrete notification" into the cockpit? As others have pointed out - how long until that gets hacked, or until lack of maintenance and/or interest renders it useless?
CCTV is widely deployed, secure, etc, etc. A cabin looks pretty tame 99% of the time, and if it isn't calm and organised, the captain probably needs to know anyway.
Spotting flaws in any technology - easy. Example: QWERTY keyboards sux0rs!
Recommending a solution is - good. Example: Dvorak keyboard r0x0rs!
To fix the problem before everyone gets used to the broken implementation - divine. Example: I've never met anyone who uses a Dvorak keyboard.
Just like this guy's rant against Windows, it seems everyone now knew that New Orleans was doomed. Problem was, everyone got used to it the way it was, and felt the money could be better used elsewhere.
So, humanity has settled all the really good land, and cheaper land is being settled by the poor as global population increases.
If a city's population increases 10% in 5 years, as people move off the land to seek jobs, the poor are going to buy the cheap land that noone else wants to buy - because when you've got nothing to begin with, having a job and a house is just brilliant, even if you're living below water level.
If there's been no inundation for 100 years, then it's never going to happen - right? And when you've got thousands of people who started with nothing and have built up their entire lives on that false belief, you end up with shock and disbelief and a deep-felt sense of betrayal.
You just lost EVERYTHING because of government inaction? No - you just bought the demo.
Why do these catastrophes affect the poor? Because they've put their entire lives into the opportunities that come from living near a population centre. They can afford to take the risk on marginal land, because it is better than having nothing at all - better than no hope at all. When the wind/wave/flood comes, they're back where they started.
When access devices are cheap, they break easily - but that's okay, because they're easy to replace. 1,000 people each replacing a $100 item is an easy decision.
When infrastructure is (relatively) cheap, it breaks easily - and that's bad. To service those same 1,000 people, you need one company to justify spending $100,000. Much less likely to happen in a hurry, especially if the company was just scraping by... errr... highly competitive... to begin with.
Of course, if they'd done it right the first time, and paid a 10% premium up front, there wouldn't have been such a big problem - but from a cashflow perspective it's better to upset 0.01% of your customers for a month every year than it is to have 10% less market coverage.
All that is true, but the land had been peopled by ex-Europeans for a long time before any Declaration of Independence. All that time, people had been streaming out of Europe to enjoy the freedom to practice their religion. There's a very good reason why they were called "pilgrims".
Such a tax would do nothing to discourage ownership of large vehicles, since paying $5 mileage tax on top of $50 fuel is almost nothing (10%). For a small car, it might well be $20 tax on top of $20 fuel (100%)!
Wouldn't it be simpler/fairer to raise the tax on each gallon of fuel, and really hit the SUV owner where it hurts. Or is it un-American to tax fuel?
The tax here (outside US) is something like 50% of the final price of fuel, with tax concessions for primary producers, etc.
Am I the only one who sees the irony in DarkNinja's comment?
Statement:You forget that only a small minority of people actually think for themselves. Example:I totally agree with Parker and Stone when they say that if you have to be bribed or coerced into voting or if you are voting out hate or for purely partisan reasons, you probably should just stay at home.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not about the content of the material, but the intent with which it was produced. This is one thing that the legal system spends a lot of time considering and is, for example, the distinction between homicide and murder. And despite the usual character witnesses wheeled out by high-profile defendents, the only person who truly knows the intent is the person who actually did the act.
Publishing offensive material is a time-honoured means of increasing circulation. Certain radio hosts are notorious for pushing the limits of decency - all the while building their reputation among the dissatisfied and disaffected. Neither is blocked by law, since the intention has never been proven to divide or offend, but simply to improve commercial returns.
In repressive countries, many acts are automatically deemed to harm the national interest. In the West, there will always be someone who pushes the envelope too far. In the past, those pushing have had the aggressives on their side.
In this battle, the aggressives find themselves on opposing teams - both of which are being encouraged against the other. We softies in the middle are the easy target - and our greatest weapon is to just hold our ground, point out the double-standards and fallacies they insist upon, and risk being shot eight times and stabbed in the street.
That, my friend, is freedom of speech. Stand up and risk everything, don't just lie down and take it. It is what Jesus recommended when he said to "turn the other cheek" - ie: tell your oppressors that they missed a bit, and have another go.
So, would I choose to publish the cartoons? In the interests of informed debate, you bet I would! The claimed intents of solidarity and free speech reek of dishonesty to my nose, as it appears to have purely been a fame-grab.
Do I agree with the glorification Islamic terrorism? No, because the intent is only to drive a wedge between two groups who are still trying to work out who each other really are.
As you may have noticed, there is an element of irony in my argument. By using the same emotive, attacking style as the fundamentalist, I undermine my own case. There are zealots on both sides, and the Freedom zealots are no better than the Fundamentalist zealots - both take up their cause without thinking their argument through, and fight on emotional rallying cries rather than reason. How often have "Democracy" and "Freedom" been the rallying cries during the so-called "War on Terror"?
The truly free don't need to battle on this level, but anyone who relies on someone else to do the thinking for them is soon "converted" to the thinking, and willing to risk their own life for someone else's passionate belief.
And this is why freedom will wither and die in the face of growing fundamentalism. There are no valid rallying cries to "convert" the masses to freedom. Freedom is an individual journey, and a willingness to stand alone for what you know is right. Fundamentalism tells you what to think, and brings you together with others on that road.
The Western group-think of today is to minimise risk (and maximise profit). Not a fundamentalist issue, true, but definitely a freedom issue. New laws continue to reduce individual freedoms in the interests of reducing risks. Fundamentalism also plays on this drive to reduce risk, since it tells you the rules by which to play. As Yahoo!, Google and MSN have shown, shareholders demand pacifying foreign governments, even if it goes against moral or historical national policy.
That a company can come out and choose to increase risk - by invoking the possible ire of the Chinese Government - is a brave step in a risk-averse world. It is a move which should occur more oten, if freedom is truly what we are all fighting for.
You're right, of course. While the actions of the Chinese Government parallel the actions of fundamentalists, the causes are quite dissimilar. One is simple oppression, while the other holds to a higher duty. Regardless of the cause, the effect is still the same.
And I do maintain that Fundamentalism is opposed to Freedom. I am not saying that everyone opposed to freedom is a Fundamentalist - although anyone interested in freedom is definitely opposed to fundamentalism.
Perhaps the truer word is "oppression" rather than "fundamentalism"? But fundamentalism is really just a part of the whole oppression umbrella.
An interesting op-ed piece I read today suggested that this is a war between Freedom and Fundamentalism. As we are seeing with the current Congressional Hearing involving Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, Capitalism doesn't much care either way for Freedom or Fundamentalism, but is calculated solely on risk and reward - even if you purport to "do no evil". To look at Western politics around the world, and more topically the effects of those Danish cartoons which are not being published, most people don't have much of an opinion here either.
As has been said here previously, free speech only continues to exist when people exercise it. There is much uninformed opinion in the world, and even our leaders are increasingly elected on the basis of limited amounts of tightly controlled information. Does this lead us closer to Freedom and Democracy?
The Fundamentalist has a narrow agenda, is easily inflamed, readily invokes fear to reinforce their message, and has little respect for all who disagree. Those who favour Freedom will always suffer at the hands of Fundamentalists - Freedom is Fundamentalism's single worst enemy, and the uninformed Free will happily trade minor freedoms for any illusion of security against perceived threats. Against this slow but steady onslaught, Freedom's only weapon is exercising available freedoms - even to risk one's own life if necessary.
While it is the duty of the Free to selflessly attempt to liberate the oppressed, Capitalism guides us to minimise risk now and build short-term rewards. In the face of rising global Fundamentalism (whether Christian or Muslim, Capitalist or Socialist), Freedom dies by a thousand cuts.
It will do us all good to see more fearless initiatives like this one from Canada.
Success is not about your ability to code. Gentoo was successful not because it was great code, but because it was an idea whose time had come.
When you stop just writing code, and actually come up with a great idea, even the best coder in the world will need to write the code out as fast as he or she can, for the simple pleasure of seeing their idea actually take form.
There is a myth doing the rounds which suggests there is always time for a rewrite, but practice suggests that the people who have one good idea usually have better things to do - and are often on to their next good idea. Plus, no-one ever thanks you for a re-write.
[[ Offtopic, Meta-comment ]]
You know you've got a jaundiced view on life when you read an interested researcher's real science comments, and instinctively feel disgusted by the blatant PR grab.
On re-reading the parent comment, I almost feel obliged to visit the web site, to prove to myself that not everyone's just after the PR, but might actually have something relevant to say.
It's been a tough few weeks for SlashDot readers, full of front-page advertorials. Now the editorial sloppiness is causing me to doubt even "Score: 5, Informative" comments.
Thanks.
From recent personal experience, there are two major ways we absorb data - intellectual and intuitive.
The intellectual approach allows you to carefully weigh the data on relevance, sources, and cross-references, allowing you to absorb information, and improve your knowledge. It's the approach everyone claims to aspire to, as you might then be able to put it into practice, and gain wisdom. But it's time-consuming, and without discipline can lead to a never-ending pyramid of learning (oh, the shame).
The intuitive approach allows you to quickly scan a wide range of data, and take a hunch on what it means. It relies on short facts from trusted sources. It's the approach increasingly encouraged in our short-attention-span society, as you can drop the topic as soon as you get your first answer. Sources are often trusted on a hunch, and so the whole process of learning pivots on an initial lucky guess. Since we're only ever looking for a quick answer, we usually focus on the information which supports our own position. The Internet only encourages this.
As with any human experience, there are levels of grey between the two extremes which are where we're likely to have the best success - learning real information without spending too much time about it.
How this pans out in your GP vs hypochondriac scenario, is that the doctor approaches it as learning, while the hypochondriac is only seeking confirmation of her original beliefs.
In my case, I have found the simple process of pregnancy (over 6 billion successes and going strong) has such breadth of conflicting information (and fear) available that you either approach it intellectually (check sources and cross-reference), or just ignore the whole thing and trust in biology.
My favourites for making U/L look bad:
My favourites to make Windows look bad:
Let me throw a different perspective in here...
As we are social animals, we are bound to want to share something of ourselves with others. We need to believe that we have something of value to share with friends as well as strangers. Exactly what information we choose to share is determined by how much trust we believe we can place in the other person. ("Person" including groups and organisations as well as individuals).
That's what the real problem comes down to - we are being given no choice. We are made to believe that our information is of no value, and so we should willingly give it up to some person whom we increasingly find ourselves unable to trust. It is not that we don't want to trust them, so much as the behaviour of those people reinforces to us that we cannot trust them.
When asked to provide private information as partial payment for goods or services (or to receive discounts or rebates on same), we instinctively feel cheated because we are trading our humanity for cash. We fight down that instinct at every turn, as we manage to convince ourselves that it is only a small loss for such great gain.
As other posters have pointed out before, if it's really of so little value, why are we repeatedly given such incentives to give out such information? Especially when the information we provide is so irrelevant for the goods or services provided?
A credit card company needs to know that you are 18 years of age, and have some way of uniquely identifying you - but date of birth is too much information for the former, and too little for the latter. Is the email address I provide when I enrol going to be used to save trees, or is it really just cheaper marketing? We're lapping up the convenience on offer, enjoying the opportunity to get something for almost nothing, and feeling trapped by something we just can't put our fingers on. And now, as individuals faced with increasingly long and complex forms (and an out-of-control legal system), none of us really knows how much information is required by law, and how much is just an opportunistic marketing grab.
In the end, I don't believe the problem is that we lack privacy. Most forms carry no penalty for lying. No, the problem is that we neither know nor trust the people we're giving our details to. And that's a situation that won't change while most of us chase after our personal privacy.
So what? You're suggesting that Symantec is being blocked by US export restrictions because they haven't bothered to renew their export license?
Seems the other way round from how 99% of the other comments read, including the summary at top. To read those, you'd think that it's the export laws themselves that had changed. Or that Symantec are hiding something (cue the conspiracy theorists).
Isn't this exactly right? As a war-time Commander-in-Chief, the President has the duty to do everything possible to protect US citizens from the enemy. Of course, a few key definitions have been re-defined by this Administration in recent years:
As many others have noted, once you start looking for enemies based on what they say or how they act, you'll see enemies everywhere. At least with a traditional enemy you can keep an eye on people because they look different or live in another country. When a terrorist could have been living peacefully in your own backyard for the last 10 years, well... anyone who thinks "outside the square" could be a threat to the American Way Of Life (TM), and the only way to be certain is to keep a really close eye on everyone. This rapidly enters the realm of paranoia (or, indeed, Paranoia). Just ask any Communist who survived McCarthyism.
(Counting down the seconds for a knock on the door...)
What you're saying is that you are happy to give up your anonymity when the people who have your information are known to you. The only problem you have is when you deliver your personal information into an amorphous, anonymous system.
Here's one for you: The problem is not that we wish to remain anonymous.
We are social animals - we love getting to know one another. Intimacy is the opposite of anonymity, and intimacy is the best thing we've got! The real problem is that The System has become anonymous to us. As humans, we have an unerring instinct to not trust anything (people, governments, animals, roads, ...) we don't know.
Corporations and Governments want to know you, so they can trust you... (for the Greater Good(TM), of course!) But they don't see the need to play fair, and insist that you don't need to know who they are, since they are working for the Greater Good(TM).
Privacy is the problem, sure. The problem is that there's too much of it!
Which raises an interesting question - if you're born with a toothache, and live your whole life with a toothache, do you still feel the pain?
The 2nd release candidate of sub-version of a product is "News"???
Any product that has more than one sub-version release in 12 months hardly counts as "news".
If it was only updated, say, every other year - then we might be talking... but this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Especially since RC1 (already in use by the really keen) will tell you about it automatically!
Sigh...
In the First World, we live in hyper-wired environments. I have over 30 wired IP telephones in sight of me right now, as well as a choice of cellphone providers and technologies (CDMA or GSM). I also have a choice of wired and wireless IP providers - again over a variety of technologies including dialup, cable, xDSL, ATM, or even Ethernet, as well as WiFi, WiMax, and 1xEvDO.
In the Third World - and probably in two-thirds of the world besides - it just costs too damned much to roll out and maintain cabling. Cellphone technologies like GSM and CDMA are really only useful for a voice service (unless the end user has cash to burn).
IP technologies make so much sense, since you roll out voice AND data all in the one roll-out, and don't have to worry about tracking down the badly soldered joins, or the waterlogged junctions. It also gets the equation around the right way - instead of trying to run data over a voice service, you're running voice over a data service. Brilliant!
Get the technology right in the world where we've already got so many choices, and the rest of the world will be so much better off.
Too often, people look at the "oo-aah" factor, and leave the proven technologies behind.
It couldn't be too hard to provide CCTV into the forward cabin, back to the cockpit - whether an actual screen (does the cockpit need more clutter?) or as an input into an automated pattern-match system. Any manic activity in the cabin gets noticed; any attempt to gain entry to the cockpit is checked against a video screen... however the mechnics function.
Providing a wireless system for "discrete notification" into the cockpit? As others have pointed out - how long until that gets hacked, or until lack of maintenance and/or interest renders it useless?
CCTV is widely deployed, secure, etc, etc. A cabin looks pretty tame 99% of the time, and if it isn't calm and organised, the captain probably needs to know anyway.
- Spotting flaws in any technology - easy.
- Recommending a solution is - good.
- To fix the problem before everyone gets used to the broken implementation - divine.
Just like this guy's rant against Windows, it seems everyone now knew that New Orleans was doomed. Problem was, everyone got used to it the way it was, and felt the money could be better used elsewhere.Example: QWERTY keyboards sux0rs!
Example: Dvorak keyboard r0x0rs!
Example: I've never met anyone who uses a Dvorak keyboard.
Wake me when there's some real news.
So, humanity has settled all the really good land, and cheaper land is being settled by the poor as global population increases.
If a city's population increases 10% in 5 years, as people move off the land to seek jobs, the poor are going to buy the cheap land that noone else wants to buy - because when you've got nothing to begin with, having a job and a house is just brilliant, even if you're living below water level.
If there's been no inundation for 100 years, then it's never going to happen - right? And when you've got thousands of people who started with nothing and have built up their entire lives on that false belief, you end up with shock and disbelief and a deep-felt sense of betrayal.
You just lost EVERYTHING because of government inaction? No - you just bought the demo.
Why do these catastrophes affect the poor? Because they've put their entire lives into the opportunities that come from living near a population centre. They can afford to take the risk on marginal land, because it is better than having nothing at all - better than no hope at all. When the wind/wave/flood comes, they're back where they started.
Of course they're bitter.
This is the downside of price-based competition.
When access devices are cheap, they break easily - but that's okay, because they're easy to replace. 1,000 people each replacing a $100 item is an easy decision.
When infrastructure is (relatively) cheap, it breaks easily - and that's bad. To service those same 1,000 people, you need one company to justify spending $100,000. Much less likely to happen in a hurry, especially if the company was just scraping by... errr... highly competitive... to begin with.
Of course, if they'd done it right the first time, and paid a 10% premium up front, there wouldn't have been such a big problem - but from a cashflow perspective it's better to upset 0.01% of your customers for a month every year than it is to have 10% less market coverage.
All that is true, but the land had been peopled by ex-Europeans for a long time before any Declaration of Independence. All that time, people had been streaming out of Europe to enjoy the freedom to practice their religion. There's a very good reason why they were called "pilgrims".
Whoever said there was no money to be made in Open Source?
Such a tax would do nothing to discourage ownership of large vehicles, since paying $5 mileage tax on top of $50 fuel is almost nothing (10%). For a small car, it might well be $20 tax on top of $20 fuel (100%)!
Wouldn't it be simpler/fairer to raise the tax on each gallon of fuel, and really hit the SUV owner where it hurts. Or is it un-American to tax fuel?
The tax here (outside US) is something like 50% of the final price of fuel, with tax concessions for primary producers, etc.
A 200-employee Walmart store costs taxpayers $400,000 a year in welfare, that's $2.5 billion per annum over the U.S.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17647
Monopolies may bring low prices, sure... but at what cost?
I love how every pet project becomes the "next cool thing"...?
Am I the only one who sees the irony in DarkNinja's comment?
Statement: You forget that only a small minority of people actually think for themselves.
Example: I totally agree with Parker and Stone when they say that if you have to be bribed or coerced into voting or if you are voting out hate or for purely partisan reasons, you probably should just stay at home.