Don't blame TiVo... If it sees that someone recorded a season pass to Will & Grace, and the movie Junior (Arnold Schwartzenegger and Danny Divito), what's it supposed to think???;-)
;-)
I think that most of us who find this whole area of technology creepy and invasive of our privacy would say that a machine (TiVo or any other machine) ISN'T supposed to think, and especially isn't supposed to do our thinking for us. <sigh>
I don't own a TV or want to watch TV shows, so TiVo isn't an issue. But I also don't sign up for "MyDomain" accounts on web sites I visit, or give any genuine private information to any web site except at my bank or the very few sites where I buy things online. If one of those sites started recommending things it thought I wanted when I logged on, I'd turn that off. (Or quit using the site if it wouldn't let me.)
That isn't because I'm genuinely afraid of what most of those sites would do, although privacy is a concern. It's an esthetic issue before anything else -- I absolutely HATE having someone or something watching over my shoulder. I've never understood why so many people find that kind of thing helpful.:/
Among my other activities, I maintain a spam filter. Like most other people who do spam filtering, I rely upon my own spamtrap addresses, reports by my users, and then crosscheck with news.admin.net-abuse.sightings and a few private mailing lists used by anti-spammers. A canonical archive of spam, however, would be a wonderfully helpful tool.
I can see a number of issues that will need to be managed with a list like this, however. Here are a few:
Where will the spam come from? Where will the Spam Archive get its spam, and how will it ensure that only spam, and not legitimate bulk email, is included?
This is not a trivial issue. Relying on reports of spam from random individuals almost guarantees that some of your "take" will be legitimate, solicited email. Some spammers report legitimate email as spam in order to make a spam filter ineffective by polluting it. Some anti-spammers consider all commercial email to be spam, whether it was solicited or not. Other users sign up for an email list and then forget that they did so -- lots of people are trigger happy these days because of the deluge of spam. (I'm not making this up -- this has happened to me more than once.)
How will spammed email addresses, particularly spamtrap addresses, be protected? Spam is sent to specific email addresses. One of the best sources of "clean" spam -- spam that you know is spam -- are spamtrap addresses deliberately created and planted for spammers to find, which are never used for any other purpose.
However, if people submit spam sent to a spamtrap address to the archive, spammers can then access the archive and remove those addresses from their mailing lists, or "listwash" them, making them less useful. In addition, troublemakers can feed those addresses to web sites or subscribe them to legitimate mailing lists. This ruins these addresses for their intended purpose. It can also result in mailbombing spamtrap addresses with a flood of confirmation messages for properly-run email lists.
How will you classify and cross-reference the database? To be most useful, a database of this type needs to be searchable. It will rapidly grow large enough to require a supercomputer to search unless the maintainers set it up properly. (Even if they do, I foresee them needing several very powerful computers.)
How are they planning to pay for the resources they will need? If by donations, they need to set up a non-profit organization, and solicit donations. I'd be happy to donate, but I suspect that they'll need more money than I and a few geeks who like the idea can afford.:)
I'm sure I'll think of other concerns as time goes on, but this should get some discussion started. I can think of some ways I'd handle these issues, but I'd like to hear what other Slashdot readers have to say....
Work -- almost all the companies I work for use it and mandate it. At home, I've been planning to install Linux onto my laptop for months, but keep not having the time. It is going to be a non-trivial task, unfortunately -- finding the drivers for a laptop isn't always easy.
Your #1 is good, but I prefer an email program that doesn't interpret ANY HTML automatically.
I realize this means I'm a backwards crotchety old fart, but email is text, dammit.
Yep, you are indeed a backwards crotchety old fart. Since I use elm on a Unix shell myself,I guess I qualify too.;>
From a security standpoint, though, that isn't necessary. Any email program that doesn't interpret active scripts, IFRAME tags, or retrieve images or other media objects is pretty safe. HTML alone is no more capable of carrying a virus or trojan than text is.
I admit, though, that in email (or on Usenet) it is annoying.
My primary complaint against Outlook is that there's no way to disable the HTML rendering engine.
I understand that users of Windows XP who have applied Service Pack #1 now have the option of configuring their Outlook to read email only as text. I haven't tested this out myself, though. I don't do XP or Outlook -- not voluntarily, anyway.:)
Actually they do have your data. If you preview any e-mail they typically have something like
<img src=/spamcity/tracker.pl?id=177729299>
Where 177729299 is your personal id number.
This won't give spammers what they'd need to make a Bayesian filter work to get past other Bayesian filters, though. Some of the most important information a good Bayesian filter gets is not from your spam, but from your legitimate email. A good Bayesian filter notes who you routinely correspond with and what you talk about, and uses that information to prevent false positives. That means that it can go aggressively after stuff that looks like spam and not worry too much about catching legitimate email.
Still, tracking codes and other such stuff is why users should:
Get an email program that doesn't open links or display images automatically.
Install a good software firewall, like ZoneAlarm or Kerio, and configure it to block this cr*p.
Install Proxomitron to filter out what gets past the firewall.
Computer security and privacy can be enhanced considerably by taking a number of relatively simple measures.
The lawyer was full of... stuff..., of course. But the REAL Bill Wyman handled this exactly as it should have been handled -- publicized it with precisely the right mixture of annoyance and amusement. The lawyer now looks like an idiot, and no harm has been done.
Even better, the lawyer might well receive, in due course, a Cease and Desist letter from his own client, the Other Bill Wyman, who probably found out about this today and is not happy to have his lawyer make him look like an idiot.
Would all foolish threats of legal action would provide such entertainment value and end so harmlessly....
In a recent article [slashdot.org] we discussed the futility of implementing a detector detector in a network. This seems that this would be one use that would actually help as an extra layer of defense.
Stratum8 Networks, perhaps? (Disclaimer -- I work there, so I'm not unbiased.):)
One of them gets detected with a pringles can across the street from an NSA office
That same cantenna manages to sniff enough packets to crack the keys
My money is on Friday, November 22, 2002
D*mn, I thought the Kennedy conspiracy theorists had finally gone dormant....;>
If it isn't a Pringles can, it'll be some other low-tech, widely available object slightly modified by a bright teenage kid showing off for his buddies.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
I personally think Michael Hayden stated the issue he faces, and we all face, extremely clearly, and thereby did us all a favor. I also think Benjamin Franklin drew the line where it needs to be drawn -- do not sacrifice essential liberty at all, and especially not for temporary safety.
The task we face is to determine which liberties are essential. I'd start with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and especially the First and Second Amendments. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of conscience and expression. The Second Amendment guarantees that individual citizens, rather than the government, hold the balance of power.
I'd also point to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as important. We must not carelessly and capriciously deny due process to those whom we suspect. Historically, when we have, we've done no good -- for the others or ourselves. (Remember the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII?)
Perhaps a better way of stating it is that this election one should pay close attention to the candidate's positions on campaign finance reform and also to what campaign contributions influenced different politicians voting patterns (especially where Microsoft is concerned) and actively vote against it.
That might be a worthwhile strategy. At least, it wouldn't lead a voter to make the mistake of assuming that a candidate's party affiliation will tell you much about how they will vote on this type of issue.
I fully believe that the timing of this judgement verdict was planned in advance so that it was right before the election to allow some candidates to champion that they "cleared the decks for economic recovery by cleaning the slate for Microsoft" in last minute stump speeches without fully having to answer to more developed responses that haven't had time to be formed yet from those who fully understand how bad a decision this verdict was.
I don't buy this. That isn't how the judicial system or courts work; they're aggressively independent and judges rarely make judgements based on the considerations you or I would think important.
It wouldn't surprise me if this is how a number of politicians respond to things, though. <sigh>
" If you think voting for Democrats versus Republicans is going to solve the Microsoft problem you are truly mistaken"
It may not solve the problem but it does send a strong message. If enough people vote democrat then this administration might get scared and change their attitude and policies.
I'm not sure it does.... During the last election, voters in Washington state tossed out an incumbent Republican senator, Slade Gorton, who was informally known of as the "Senator from Microsoft". In his place, they elected a Democratic senator, Maria Cantwell, who is rapidly becoming known of as the "Senator from Microsoft". <wry grin> (And also known of as the Real Networks VP largely responsible for Real's record as an unrepentant spammer and abusive marketer.):/
IMHO any assumption that a vote for the Democrats is going to help the situation with Microsoft is unsupported by the evidence. Look at the records and views of the individual candidates, and vote for the individual candidates whose track record and express views are most favorable to preserving a truly free market.
(And, no, this isn't a sneaky post urging you to vote Libertarian instead.);>
...a move that critics complained could make the group indifferent to ordinary users and hurt innovation.
Right. With this latest move, unresponsiveness now becomes a distinct possibility. I'd really hate to see ICANN become indifferent to ordinary users...
No sh*t^H^H^H^Hkidding. <sigh> Still, this change will mean that the public has even less access to the ICANN board. At least now, they have to listen when Karl Auerbach objects to some of their more idiotic decisions.
While I'm disappointed at this, though, at the same time I can't say that I'm surprised. ICANN was set up as an essentially non-representative body from the outset. It isn't surprising that ICANN's real constituency has grown restless having to give at least some heed to what the elected board members had to say.:/
I'm not sure whether the solution is a complete change in the ICANN charter and ground-up revamp of its mission, composition, and methods, or shutting down the organization and starting over from scratch. Since the two would probably be close to the same thing, maybe it doesn't matter.
Maybe they could salvage the science by throwing out any results from anyone that submitted more than (name some number, like 100,000) work units, thereby eliminating a great number of cheaters.
Yeah. The problem is, that will throw out a huge amount of honest work by people who only wanted to help with the science too. I'm not at 100,000 yet, but I'm close and might well reach it by the time the competition closes. I've been doing this for over three years, though, and currently have four computers running SETI packets. (Two of them with at least 90% of their capacity going to SETI.)
It should be possible to come up with some formula, though, that will catch wildly improbable reported results, perhaps by dumping any results where a user reports more than twenty or forty different results in a single day?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke
Truer words were never spake.
You win the prize. As do a couple of others, technically, but you actually said something interesting in addition to answering the question.;>
And while the basic science may not seem like magic, the eventual implementation might. Imagine a featureless ball with anti-matter somewhere within that plugs into a fitted hollow and all other necessary steps for the transfer of the matter and the creation of energy take place without any visible activity. Magic. (At least from our limited point of view.)
Well, that will look like magic to people who don't live with the realities of physics, at any rate. Those who do are positively immersed in realities that they can never see.
Which (in my opinion, anyway) doesn't make it a bit less apparently magical.;)
If the eventual starship driven by the anti-matter engine is built out of nano-built materials, it might look even more magical, or so I'm told by a friend with a background in physics and engineering who follows MNT and nanotechnology in general. The reason? Among the strongest and lightest structural forms in the world are crystals. The lighter your starship is, the more it can carry without sacrificing speed. My friend and others in the MNT community think that nano-built structures, especially those used on spaceships, are likely to make considerable use of crystal forms.
At this point, my often prosaic scientist/engineer friend gets poetic, describing a spacship that looks like something out of Aladdin's cave -- a cluster of gemlike structures that capture, fracture, and throw back light....
Of course, the first example of this type of ship will probably cost considerably more than a ship built out of diamonds and rubies would. <wry grin> But it would be a sight worth seeing in so many ways.... <sigh>
However, any advanced design like this is not without its hurdles. "The real hub is the storage," Howe says. "There's a lot of technology between here and there."
That is quite possibly the most circuitous way I have ever seen someone admit that something is impossible. Fascinating.
Nothing so interesting, IMHO -- it's just a garden case of someone not reading what someone else said very carefully, or possibly not understanding it well. <wry grin>
A scientist or engineer who claims that there is a "lot of technology" between here and there is merely saying that we can't do it now, with today's technology. Given the rate of change in technology over the past hundred years, saying that something can't be done today is hardly the same as saying it can't be done at all.
While no physicist expects Star Trek-like warp drive any time soon (or at all), we've known that anti-matter exists since the late 1920s, when Paul Dirac developed the equations that showed that it had to exist. We first "saw" real anti-matter in the mid-1930s, when Carl Anderson observed a positron, or anti-electron. Both of these men won Nobel prizes for their work -- this is not exactly news to anyone who keeps up with science and especially physics.
Antimatter isn't the brainchild of some writer with lots of imagination and little grasp of science. It exists. It is real. Further, its properties are widely understood -- we know how it behaves.
More to the point, we know that, to produce and keep large quantities of it, we must determine how to isolate it from regular matter. We know that, to use it in an engine, we must expose it to regular matter in a controlled fashion, and harness the energy released when it and the regular matter annhilate each other.
In other words, we already have the basic science in hand. What we haven't figured out yet is how to do what needs to be done economically and reliably -- we don't have the technology in hand.
This doesn't sound impossible to me. It sounds like it will take time and effort, probably quite a bit of time and effort, but as technology goes it isn't sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic. (Five mod points to anyone who identifies that reference.);>
I get almost no telemarketing calls whatsoever. This is how:
My home phone number is unlisted.
My home phone number has voicemail, and the recorded message tells telemarketers to hang up and to add my number to their no-call lists.
I leave the ringer on my home phone number turned off, so that people who want to contact me that way must leave a message.
I make sure that family and friends have my cell phone number and call it when they want to reach me, not my voice mail.
I do not print my cell phone number on my business cards -- if I want someone to have it, I write it on the card by hand.
In the last few months, I've gotten two or three "prerecords" -- automated callers that left recorded messages on my voice mail. I reported those to the phone company and California AG, since they are illegal. I have never gotten a telemarketing call to my cell phone, and have never been disturbed by one to my home phone number either.
When California has a do-not-call list, I will list the home phone and cell phone. If that proves to open the floodgates to telemarketers calling my cell phone, I'll just change the number and not repeat that mistake.:)
That's right -- the first and biggest domain registrar in the world has done exactly the same thing -- they have also sent "renewal" notices to the administrative contact addresses of domains registered with different registrars. They've had to settle with at least a couple of other registrars whose customers they tried to steal.
It would be nice if someone would crack down on them this way.
As learned in the AOL CD story a few days ago (so don't blame me if it's inaccurate,/me points at everyone else), anything that comes bulk mail doesn't have any return to sender fees associated with it, so the post office throws it out if you send it return to sender. Meaning that all you do then is increase the load on the postal service, with out inconveniencing the sender at all, and subsequently increasing postal rates.
True. If, however, the postal junk mailer included a Business Reply envelope or postcard, you can always use it to express your displeasure at being put on their junk mail list.... No cost to you, extra revenue for the Post Office, and they pay to hear that you don't like to be bombarded with the stuff.;>
In general, I do this only for companies that I never bought from and that bombard me with LOTS of junk mail. Since a company pays to send junk mail, I don't find unsolicited postal mail offensive in itself. I save my real ire for junk faxes and spam.
Well, the bank has incentive to not screw with you a whole lot. Mainly because of the competition and mainly because the Gov't takes that type of crap very seriously.
The bank knows that the big, bad SEC will be breathing down its neck in a microsecond if it crosses certain boundaries. Both the banking laws and banking tradition keep its competitive force/greed in check.
The high-tech world hasn't got the equivalent of the SEC. And, of course, it doesn't WANT an SEC looking over its shoulder, although Microsoft's behavior certainly indicates it needs one.:/
Even parts of the high-tech world that overlap on the SEC's territory, like online banking (PayPal, anyone?) or online stockbroking, are often not regulated as the equivalent real-world businesses would be. PayPal, for example, doesn't operate under the same laws and regulations as a bank, although its business is unquestionably banking. That's why I won't use PayPal.
Stopping Microsoft and the RIAA on the "Trusted/Treacherous Computing Initiative" is going to take both a grassroots refusal to use products that have that technology and a significant political effort. Time to call the EFF....
Libertarians, on the other hand, are a bunch of independent SOBs who have trouble agreeing on enough issues to form a political party.
Unlike the members of the two major parties, we agree on nearly all major political issues, but we get hung up in the principles, like how many objectivists can dance on the head of a pin. Since we tend to care more about principles and purity more than actual achievement of practical goals, we tend to get bogged down without making progress.
I'd say that you agree on general principles, but not on "the issues". I think, though, that we're using the term "issues" differently rather than disagreeing in substance. I certainly agree that the Libertarian party runs into its biggest problems trying to come up with political positions on actual issues that appeal to a significant enough number of voters to win their support. (Well, outside of Colorado and the Silicon Valley, anyway.)
The Free State Project is a practical project that avoids detailed ideological discussions. Those are interesting, and they have their place, which is somewhere else.
But how likely is it that the supporters of this project will accomplish their goals? First, are they going to impose their views on the existing population to the extent that the existing population will react or choose to leave? That may be legal, but not getting along with your neighbors is NOT smart policy in most cases.
Second, just how long do you think a group of libertarians will be able to work together creating a "free state" before they disagree vehemently about some issue of principle, and split? From what I've seen, libertarians are just as prone toward schism as any other ideologically-driven group, and in addition often lack a strong sense of community or desire to stick together.
"Utopianism" is a primitive but common epithet.
"Primitive" in what way? It's a term out of the Renaissance and created by one of the great thinkers and writers of the Renaissance. That doesn't sound primitive to me.
It also isn't an epithet, at least as I use it. It's a description of a particular mindset that envisions creating a perfect or quasi-perfect society.
Communism was utopian ("let's change human nature!") but there is nothing utopian about wanting to reduce taxes, legalize drugs and prostitution, and adopt a neutral foreign policy.
That depends on how you define these things, and what you are willing to do to achieve them. The last one is especially problematic; there are a LOT of definitions of "neutral foreign policy" out there.
Those three things are already successfully in place in Singapore, The Netherlands, and Switzerland--nothing new or impractical about them.
Legalization of drugs is in place in Singapore? I think your information is a bit out-of-date on that one. <wry grin>
The shorter version: libertarians suffer from the same problems as Marxists. They've even got Rand to substitute for Lenin.
Libertarian != Objectivist. And even Objectivists don't meet my definition of a cult.
Since I was in a cult for ten years, though, I am perhaps a bit more careful about how I use the term than are others who haven't been touched by a cult. <wry grin>
Utopian thinking is one very common characteristic of cults, but it's also common outside of cults. There are plenty of people and groups who tend towards utopianism, but who don't use thought reform techniques or otherwise meet the usual criteria for being considered a cult.
I do consider a specific offshot of Objectivism called Neotech to be a cult. Objectivism itself contains a number of cultish elements, but I wouldn't term it a cult. It's just a group of people whose thinking is overly black and white and tends not to let the facts get in the way of a good theory.
Libertarians, on the other hand, are a bunch of independent SOBs who have trouble agreeing on enough issues to form a political party, let alone a cult.;gt; Some libertarians annoy me, but cultists they ain't.
These guys evidently think you can make a perfect society with less than perfect human beings.
It needn't be perfect, just better. Or even just different.
I have no objection to attempting an improved society. I read the page in question in the Google Cache, though, and what I saw sounded, not like "improvement", but like "CHARGE!":/ I live in the Silicon Valley and work in high tech; I listen to all sorts of libertarian Utopian stuff constantly. What I read on that page sounded extremely familiar, and IMHO:
Ain't happening, and
Wouldn't be an improvement if it did.
First, libertarian Utopias tend not to get off the ground for the same reason the Libertarian party hasn't -- most people who would be libertarian are too d****d independent to join a party. <G>
Second, most libertarians dislike the idea of imposing their will on others -- that's why they are libertarians. So what would they do with the existing population in whatever state they move to, many of whom will view their "invasion" much as eastern Oregon did the influx of Rajneeshees in the early 1980s.:/ (I saw that happen from a few miles distance -- I was in college in Portland at the time.)
From where I sit, the libertarians who want to do this would either have to buy into some kind of groupthink organization that is spookily like a religious cult, or settle for something short of their goals because they aren't willing to violate their principles and trample the freedom of others. My guess is that they'd do the second, and this effort wouldn't get much off the ground.
It is nice to see that Jesse Helms isn't taking a vacation in his last few months in office. (He's a short-timer -- he retires at teh end of the year.)
Slashdot Mirror
;-)
I think that most of us who find this whole area of technology creepy and invasive of our privacy would say that a machine (TiVo or any other machine) ISN'T supposed to think, and especially isn't supposed to do our thinking for us. <sigh>
I don't own a TV or want to watch TV shows, so TiVo isn't an issue. But I also don't sign up for "MyDomain" accounts on web sites I visit, or give any genuine private information to any web site except at my bank or the very few sites where I buy things online. If one of those sites started recommending things it thought I wanted when I logged on, I'd turn that off. (Or quit using the site if it wouldn't let me.)
That isn't because I'm genuinely afraid of what most of those sites would do, although privacy is a concern. It's an esthetic issue before anything else -- I absolutely HATE having someone or something watching over my shoulder. I've never understood why so many people find that kind of thing helpful. :/
I love this idea.
Among my other activities, I maintain a spam filter . Like most other people who do spam filtering, I rely upon my own spamtrap addresses, reports by my users, and then crosscheck with news.admin.net-abuse.sightings and a few private mailing lists used by anti-spammers. A canonical archive of spam, however, would be a wonderfully helpful tool.
I can see a number of issues that will need to be managed with a list like this, however. Here are a few:
This is not a trivial issue. Relying on reports of spam from random individuals almost guarantees that some of your "take" will be legitimate, solicited email. Some spammers report legitimate email as spam in order to make a spam filter ineffective by polluting it. Some anti-spammers consider all commercial email to be spam, whether it was solicited or not. Other users sign up for an email list and then forget that they did so -- lots of people are trigger happy these days because of the deluge of spam. (I'm not making this up -- this has happened to me more than once.)
However, if people submit spam sent to a spamtrap address to the archive, spammers can then access the archive and remove those addresses from their mailing lists, or "listwash" them, making them less useful. In addition, troublemakers can feed those addresses to web sites or subscribe them to legitimate mailing lists. This ruins these addresses for their intended purpose. It can also result in mailbombing spamtrap addresses with a flood of confirmation messages for properly-run email lists.
I'm sure I'll think of other concerns as time goes on, but this should get some discussion started. I can think of some ways I'd handle these issues, but I'd like to hear what other Slashdot readers have to say....
Work -- almost all the companies I work for use it and mandate it. At home, I've been planning to install Linux onto my laptop for months, but keep not having the time. It is going to be a non-trivial task, unfortunately -- finding the drivers for a laptop isn't always easy.
Yep, you are indeed a backwards crotchety old fart. Since I use elm on a Unix shell myself,I guess I qualify too. ;>
From a security standpoint, though, that isn't necessary. Any email program that doesn't interpret active scripts, IFRAME tags, or retrieve images or other media objects is pretty safe. HTML alone is no more capable of carrying a virus or trojan than text is.
I admit, though, that in email (or on Usenet) it is annoying.
I understand that users of Windows XP who have applied Service Pack #1 now have the option of configuring their Outlook to read email only as text. I haven't tested this out myself, though. I don't do XP or Outlook -- not voluntarily, anyway. :)
This won't give spammers what they'd need to make a Bayesian filter work to get past other Bayesian filters, though. Some of the most important information a good Bayesian filter gets is not from your spam, but from your legitimate email. A good Bayesian filter notes who you routinely correspond with and what you talk about, and uses that information to prevent false positives. That means that it can go aggressively after stuff that looks like spam and not worry too much about catching legitimate email.
Still, tracking codes and other such stuff is why users should:
Computer security and privacy can be enhanced considerably by taking a number of relatively simple measures.
The lawyer was full of... stuff..., of course. But the REAL Bill Wyman handled this exactly as it should have been handled -- publicized it with precisely the right mixture of annoyance and amusement. The lawyer now looks like an idiot, and no harm has been done.
Even better, the lawyer might well receive, in due course, a Cease and Desist letter from his own client, the Other Bill Wyman, who probably found out about this today and is not happy to have his lawyer make him look like an idiot.
Would all foolish threats of legal action would provide such entertainment value and end so harmlessly....
Stratum8 Networks , perhaps? (Disclaimer -- I work there, so I'm not unbiased.) :)
D*mn, I thought the Kennedy conspiracy theorists had finally gone dormant....;>
If it isn't a Pringles can, it'll be some other low-tech, widely available object slightly modified by a bright teenage kid showing off for his buddies.
I personally think Michael Hayden stated the issue he faces, and we all face, extremely clearly, and thereby did us all a favor. I also think Benjamin Franklin drew the line where it needs to be drawn -- do not sacrifice essential liberty at all, and especially not for temporary safety.
The task we face is to determine which liberties are essential. I'd start with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and especially the First and Second Amendments. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of conscience and expression. The Second Amendment guarantees that individual citizens, rather than the government, hold the balance of power.
I'd also point to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as important. We must not carelessly and capriciously deny due process to those whom we suspect. Historically, when we have, we've done no good -- for the others or ourselves. (Remember the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII?)
Does anyone see anything important I've missed?
That might be a worthwhile strategy. At least, it wouldn't lead a voter to make the mistake of assuming that a candidate's party affiliation will tell you much about how they will vote on this type of issue.
I don't buy this. That isn't how the judicial system or courts work; they're aggressively independent and judges rarely make judgements based on the considerations you or I would think important.
It wouldn't surprise me if this is how a number of politicians respond to things, though. <sigh>
I'm not sure it does.... During the last election, voters in Washington state tossed out an incumbent Republican senator, Slade Gorton, who was informally known of as the "Senator from Microsoft". In his place, they elected a Democratic senator, Maria Cantwell, who is rapidly becoming known of as the "Senator from Microsoft". <wry grin> (And also known of as the Real Networks VP largely responsible for Real's record as an unrepentant spammer and abusive marketer.) :/
IMHO any assumption that a vote for the Democrats is going to help the situation with Microsoft is unsupported by the evidence. Look at the records and views of the individual candidates, and vote for the individual candidates whose track record and express views are most favorable to preserving a truly free market.
(And, no, this isn't a sneaky post urging you to vote Libertarian instead.) ;>
No sh*t^H^H^H^Hkidding. <sigh> Still, this change will mean that the public has even less access to the ICANN board. At least now, they have to listen when Karl Auerbach objects to some of their more idiotic decisions.
While I'm disappointed at this, though, at the same time I can't say that I'm surprised. ICANN was set up as an essentially non-representative body from the outset. It isn't surprising that ICANN's real constituency has grown restless having to give at least some heed to what the elected board members had to say. :/
I'm not sure whether the solution is a complete change in the ICANN charter and ground-up revamp of its mission, composition, and methods, or shutting down the organization and starting over from scratch. Since the two would probably be close to the same thing, maybe it doesn't matter.
So, who wants to bell the cat?
Yeah. The problem is, that will throw out a huge amount of honest work by people who only wanted to help with the science too. I'm not at 100,000 yet, but I'm close and might well reach it by the time the competition closes. I've been doing this for over three years, though, and currently have four computers running SETI packets. (Two of them with at least 90% of their capacity going to SETI.)
It should be possible to come up with some formula, though, that will catch wildly improbable reported results, perhaps by dumping any results where a user reports more than twenty or forty different results in a single day?
You win the prize. As do a couple of others, technically, but you actually said something interesting in addition to answering the question. ;>
Well, that will look like magic to people who don't live with the realities of physics, at any rate. Those who do are positively immersed in realities that they can never see.
Which (in my opinion, anyway) doesn't make it a bit less apparently magical. ;)
If the eventual starship driven by the anti-matter engine is built out of nano-built materials, it might look even more magical, or so I'm told by a friend with a background in physics and engineering who follows MNT and nanotechnology in general . The reason? Among the strongest and lightest structural forms in the world are crystals. The lighter your starship is, the more it can carry without sacrificing speed. My friend and others in the MNT community think that nano-built structures, especially those used on spaceships, are likely to make considerable use of crystal forms.
At this point, my often prosaic scientist/engineer friend gets poetic, describing a spacship that looks like something out of Aladdin's cave -- a cluster of gemlike structures that capture, fracture, and throw back light....
Of course, the first example of this type of ship will probably cost considerably more than a ship built out of diamonds and rubies would. <wry grin> But it would be a sight worth seeing in so many ways.... <sigh>
Nothing so interesting, IMHO -- it's just a garden case of someone not reading what someone else said very carefully, or possibly not understanding it well. <wry grin>
A scientist or engineer who claims that there is a "lot of technology" between here and there is merely saying that we can't do it now, with today's technology. Given the rate of change in technology over the past hundred years, saying that something can't be done today is hardly the same as saying it can't be done at all.
While no physicist expects Star Trek-like warp drive any time soon (or at all), we've known that anti-matter exists since the late 1920s, when Paul Dirac developed the equations that showed that it had to exist. We first "saw" real anti-matter in the mid-1930s, when Carl Anderson observed a positron, or anti-electron. Both of these men won Nobel prizes for their work -- this is not exactly news to anyone who keeps up with science and especially physics.
Antimatter isn't the brainchild of some writer with lots of imagination and little grasp of science. It exists. It is real. Further, its properties are widely understood -- we know how it behaves.
More to the point, we know that, to produce and keep large quantities of it, we must determine how to isolate it from regular matter. We know that, to use it in an engine, we must expose it to regular matter in a controlled fashion, and harness the energy released when it and the regular matter annhilate each other.
In other words, we already have the basic science in hand. What we haven't figured out yet is how to do what needs to be done economically and reliably -- we don't have the technology in hand.
This doesn't sound impossible to me. It sounds like it will take time and effort, probably quite a bit of time and effort, but as technology goes it isn't sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic. (Five mod points to anyone who identifies that reference.) ;>
I get almost no telemarketing calls whatsoever. This is how:
In the last few months, I've gotten two or three "prerecords" -- automated callers that left recorded messages on my voice mail. I reported those to the phone company and California AG, since they are illegal. I have never gotten a telemarketing call to my cell phone, and have never been disturbed by one to my home phone number either.
When California has a do-not-call list, I will list the home phone and cell phone. If that proves to open the floodgates to telemarketers calling my cell phone, I'll just change the number and not repeat that mistake. :)
Nah, they probably think it's a legitimate missionary effort....
That's right -- the first and biggest domain registrar in the world has done exactly the same thing -- they have also sent "renewal" notices to the administrative contact addresses of domains registered with different registrars. They've had to settle with at least a couple of other registrars whose customers they tried to steal.
It would be nice if someone would crack down on them this way.
True. If, however, the postal junk mailer included a Business Reply envelope or postcard, you can always use it to express your displeasure at being put on their junk mail list.... No cost to you, extra revenue for the Post Office, and they pay to hear that you don't like to be bombarded with the stuff. ;>
In general, I do this only for companies that I never bought from and that bombard me with LOTS of junk mail. Since a company pays to send junk mail, I don't find unsolicited postal mail offensive in itself. I save my real ire for junk faxes and spam .
The bank knows that the big, bad SEC will be breathing down its neck in a microsecond if it crosses certain boundaries. Both the banking laws and banking tradition keep its competitive force/greed in check.
The high-tech world hasn't got the equivalent of the SEC. And, of course, it doesn't WANT an SEC looking over its shoulder, although Microsoft's behavior certainly indicates it needs one. :/
Even parts of the high-tech world that overlap on the SEC's territory, like online banking (PayPal, anyone?) or online stockbroking, are often not regulated as the equivalent real-world businesses would be. PayPal, for example, doesn't operate under the same laws and regulations as a bank, although its business is unquestionably banking. That's why I won't use PayPal.
Stopping Microsoft and the RIAA on the "Trusted/Treacherous Computing Initiative" is going to take both a grassroots refusal to use products that have that technology and a significant political effort. Time to call the EFF....
By then, I hope we have some ships headed for other stars, at least slower-than-light generation ships....
I'd say that you agree on general principles, but not on "the issues". I think, though, that we're using the term "issues" differently rather than disagreeing in substance. I certainly agree that the Libertarian party runs into its biggest problems trying to come up with political positions on actual issues that appeal to a significant enough number of voters to win their support. (Well, outside of Colorado and the Silicon Valley, anyway.)
But how likely is it that the supporters of this project will accomplish their goals? First, are they going to impose their views on the existing population to the extent that the existing population will react or choose to leave? That may be legal, but not getting along with your neighbors is NOT smart policy in most cases.
Second, just how long do you think a group of libertarians will be able to work together creating a "free state" before they disagree vehemently about some issue of principle, and split? From what I've seen, libertarians are just as prone toward schism as any other ideologically-driven group, and in addition often lack a strong sense of community or desire to stick together.
"Primitive" in what way? It's a term out of the Renaissance and created by one of the great thinkers and writers of the Renaissance. That doesn't sound primitive to me.
It also isn't an epithet, at least as I use it. It's a description of a particular mindset that envisions creating a perfect or quasi-perfect society.
That depends on how you define these things, and what you are willing to do to achieve them. The last one is especially problematic; there are a LOT of definitions of "neutral foreign policy" out there.
Legalization of drugs is in place in Singapore? I think your information is a bit out-of-date on that one. <wry grin>
Libertarian != Objectivist. And even Objectivists don't meet my definition of a cult.
Since I was in a cult for ten years, though, I am perhaps a bit more careful about how I use the term than are others who haven't been touched by a cult. <wry grin>
Utopian thinking is one very common characteristic of cults, but it's also common outside of cults. There are plenty of people and groups who tend towards utopianism, but who don't use thought reform techniques or otherwise meet the usual criteria for being considered a cult.
I do consider a specific offshot of Objectivism called Neotech to be a cult. Objectivism itself contains a number of cultish elements, but I wouldn't term it a cult. It's just a group of people whose thinking is overly black and white and tends not to let the facts get in the way of a good theory.
Libertarians , on the other hand, are a bunch of independent SOBs who have trouble agreeing on enough issues to form a political party, let alone a cult. ;gt; Some libertarians annoy me, but cultists they ain't.
I have no objection to attempting an improved society. I read the page in question in the Google Cache, though, and what I saw sounded, not like "improvement", but like "CHARGE!" :/ I live in the Silicon Valley and work in high tech; I listen to all sorts of libertarian Utopian stuff constantly. What I read on that page sounded extremely familiar, and IMHO:
First, libertarian Utopias tend not to get off the ground for the same reason the Libertarian party hasn't -- most people who would be libertarian are too d****d independent to join a party. <G>
Second, most libertarians dislike the idea of imposing their will on others -- that's why they are libertarians. So what would they do with the existing population in whatever state they move to, many of whom will view their "invasion" much as eastern Oregon did the influx of Rajneeshees in the early 1980s. :/ (I saw that happen from a few miles distance -- I was in college in Portland at the time.)
From where I sit, the libertarians who want to do this would either have to buy into some kind of groupthink organization that is spookily like a religious cult, or settle for something short of their goals because they aren't willing to violate their principles and trample the freedom of others. My guess is that they'd do the second, and this effort wouldn't get much off the ground.
I'd call Senator Jesse Helms at least a 2 ton gorilla myself.... ;>
It is nice to see that Jesse Helms isn't taking a vacation in his last few months in office. (He's a short-timer -- he retires at teh end of the year.)