I should also point out that it is because of the situation mentioned above that the US does not use the gold standard. We learned right after the Gold Rush in California that relying on gold for the value of currency is not good.
I believe it was William Jennings Bryant who stated something like "You shall not hang the nation on a cross of gold", or something like that...
For countries that rely on gold to back up their currencies, this would be a bad thing. Fortunately, in the US, we don't have that problem. There's probably a few others as well.
And provides that you may be incarcerated for a significant portion of your life.
Regardless of whether you think he's guilty or not, don't the DMCA's punishments seem a little harsh? He made a piece of software, nobody died, nobody got hooked on drugs. My main problem is that the penalties are so harsh.
Haven't these guys ever heard the phrase "Let the punishment fit the crime?"
They cheated! There are two Microsoft logos on that flag.
I get the point, and I agree, but it seemed funny to me that they had the Playboy and Apple Computer logos, since when did Playboy become on par with the likes of G.E. and Shell Oil?
Silly goose, they don't build hunting rifles for maximum damage, they build cartridges for maximum damage, and if you're hunting, you can't do too much damage. That's why we don't use RPG's to hunt Elk.
That's not how it works. If you're in a country and violate their laws, you will be arrested, tried and convicted (or not) under their laws. All the US Embassy will do is give you a phone number of a lawyer who speaks English.
I think the DMCA is awful, but realize that traveling to another country makes you subject to their laws.
Actually in that case, it would be just as likely to get busted for it here, too. Last I checked it was illegal to sell submachine guns without a license. Additionally, there may be a law specifically stating that if you're caught trying to sell guns to terrorists in the US, they throw the book at you. The British would probably let us handle it, unless they were caught over in Britain, even the Republic of Ireland would nail you for that.
Since we DO NOT LIVE in democratic society, I honestly can't say.
Doing what Sklyarov did is as much a crime to our estato corprativo as political dissidence was to the former Soviet Union. Which is worse? I guess it's unlikely that anyone will want to execute the guy or send him to a gulag, but hey, there's always room to expand on DMCA.
It's 2001, can we get off the "If you don't like it, go move to Russia", USA all the way rah-rah stuff now? OK, OK, we get it. The Soviet Union failed because socialism is evil, corrupt and wrong, and the US is always and forever on the side of right and justice worldwide.
I agree, and if we're going to do it, we have to nip it in the bud, before it becomes entrenched like the War on Drugs, and then we won't be able to stop it.
But it does. The situation Chomsky is refering to does exist. For instance, regarding the protests of the WTO and FTAA conferences. Now, regardless of how you feel about these protestors, never once have I ever heard on a major media outlet someone actually speaking on behalf of some of the groups interviewed or ever even giving time to voice their concerns. Instead, the coverage nearly always runs like this: show clip of protestors, report on how many people were injured, then bring on 'analyst' who proceeds to explain why they're so ridiculous. Never once are they allowed to even explain their position, they're just dismissed out of hand. That illustrates more clearly what Chomsky was trying to say.
I realize that these people are on the fringe, but if it's big enough to report about, then I think that the people who protest should at least be given the ability to explain what they're doing.
What makes the Internet truly great is the ability to get information out to the masses in a matter of hours when it used to take days, if not weeks.
Or at all. Before the internet what did you have? Zines, public access tv, BBS... Inaccessible to most people by far than the internet. Most people won't choose to make a website, but at least technically everyone can make one.
I think the point of the article, and the "lowest common denominator" argument, is that many people had hoped for more. Is it necessarily bad that 50% on of the (non-porn related) web use happens on site owned by 4 companies? No, it's just sad. I think a lot of people were hoping for something different. It's interesting to note that only one of the big 4 was a company born and bred on the WWW, Yahoo!
It also means that 50% of the traffic doesn't primarily use the big 4. The crucial question is:"Is this number getting bigger or smaller?".
After seeing the improvements that have been made to both KDE and GNOME since their inception, I would have to say that having industry heavyweights backing these projects has been a good thing. From what I saw at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, the two window managers, along with some notable others, have brought the Linux desktop into the position where they can really make a serious argument to businesses with respect to desktop machines.
I do not believe that this would be the case if people like Sun and others hadn't decided to back up these efforts.
Simply because the people you worked for couldn't get it together, that doesn't mean that it can't be done right elsewhere. If these projects were simply left up to individual developers in the traditional style, then Linux would still be was it initially was: a hobby system. There's no reason why Linux should not be both a commercially viable business prospect and a source for democracy, freedom and peace on earth.
Well, you can just 'su', and if it's your machine, if you can't put yourself in the su list, well, I just don't know what to say (try 'info su' or 'man su'). You can always make yourself the equivalent of root as well, this is easily done with GNOME or KDE.
If you want ultimate power, you can just give it to yourself, and not have to log in as root for standard things like installing new applications. I would counsel you to avoid running as root all the time, though.
When I was a kid, a friend of ours brought back a Capsela set from Italy or Germany and I thought they were pretty cool, albeit not as sturdy as Legos or Playmobil sets.
I can't remember what they were called, but I had a set of these sci-fi looking construction pieces that were plastic, and had these tetrahedronal connectors, along with rubber rings and little black plastic connectors. There were these rods of varying sizes, and they could swivel in the connectors, etc.
We used to build cool-looking sci-fi style weapons with them and play with them. Anyone remember what I'm talking about? they were on the US market in the early 80's?
but this is just more "proof" for some people that "you can't make money selling free software."
Excuse me, but simply because one of the founders is leaving does not mean that the company is in trouble. He's been at SuSE since it was started in 1992, so perhaps now's a good time to leave.
The very first Linux distro that I ever used was SuSE 5.2, and even then it was relatively simple to configure and get going. I just had a good long demo of SuSE's latest, and they have made siginificant improvements. SuSE is a good choice if you're not in North America, the I18N and localization stuff is significantly more than an afterthought like it has a tendency to be with US companies. YaST is also probably the best system management and config tool that I've ever used. It's really a nice distro, and it costs bigger bucks, but you get tons of apps and excellent documentation.
Absolutely. I was driving on 101 N just south of Garberville (infamous as the hub of pot growing activity in Humboldt County), and was pulled over for speeding. The sheriff asked if he could take a look inside the trunk, and I complied, as I didn't have anything in there. We got to talking by the side of the road, and I mentioned that he must have been looking for drugs. He said yes, but usually it's cash going north, drugs going south, and that if you've got a lot of cash going north, then they'll definitely get an arrest warrant over the phone with a local judge who issues them automatically, haul you in and try to make you bring down the whole operation. He said that it would be better to have an ounce of pot than $10,000 in cash. The ounce of pot is not even a misdemeanor, but the $10k in cash will buy you at least an overnight stay in the klink, and will result in having people watching your ass for months to come.
Minimum consumer quotas will be set. Consumers who fail to meet their quotas will be sent to re-education camps where they will be gently taught the error of their ways.
They already do this in San Francisco. A young couple was booted out of the San Francisco Center because they looked scraggly and probably just wanted to do drugs in the bathroom. If you don't spend a significant portion of your non-work time being a consumer, then they kick you out and make you live in Oakland where the stores aren't as nice.
Even if HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that doesn't mean that it can't be effectively treated with the drugs that are out there. Most of the drugs that are used with AIDS attempt to bolster the immune system, orotherwise slow the progression of the syndrome. Most of the drugs available don't target the HIV retrovirus anyway, since viruses of all kinds are notoriously hard to treat (the common cold).
At any rate, these treatments are affective, because people with AIDS are living longer, and not getting devastatingly sick at such a rapid clip, and these drugs to tend to stave off the opportunistic infections that eventually kill people who suffer from AIDS.
Then you understand it wrong. Greed is the desire to make as much money as possible, in any way possible, damn the consequences. It is the unscrupulous pursuit of wealth, excessive desire, and capitalism without a conscience. Greed may include wanting someone else's money, although that's probably more adequately expressed as 'avarice'.
Is Merck being outright greedy? Perhaps. More likely they're holding out because if they make an exception for Brazil, then they have to make an exception for everyone.
The pharmaceutical companies make a lot of products that help people. However, in the face of public health crises, they can easily afford to lower their profit margins, or operate at cost for drugs that can ease the suffering of people with illnesses like AIDS, or malaria, or what have you. They can easily make up for it with 'luxury' drugs like Viagra (I know, Pfizer makes that) or Propecia, or something nonessential like that.
A world were you would pay a a little more in taxes
Yeah, right. Considering how much people bitch and moan about paying taxes now.
Whenever a property tax hike is proposed to fund strapped local schools, people scream and shout about it. They want all the services, they just don't feel like paying for them. Don't get me wrong I agree with your statement, but asking people to pay higher taxes, even if it means something cool like universal health care and top flight public schools, is asking for trouble.
Not bloody likely, given the current administration's positions that monopolies don't exist and anything that makes money is holy. If you think Ashcroft's justice department is going to waste one brain cell even thinking about this, you've got another thing coming.
MS has been bolstered by the latest court decision, and their heading in fangs out for the final push. They'll end up owning the internet, and in the end it will be like 1995 all over again, with Micorosoft saying "Who needs the internet? We'll make our own!"
Assuming, of course, that you can afford to set aside the $167.00 dollars a month that such insurance would cost.
If you're in a professional job, generally your employer picks up the tab for long-term disability insurance (if your company is big enough). Even if it doesn't, you can well afford the insurance on your own.
If you're a waiter, or a janitor in a hotel, or some other kind of job which doesn't pay well, and you have a family to support, that $167.00 dollars will certainly go to rent, food and shoes for the kids. It's why we pay state disability insurance, which, if needed, doesn't pay out as much as a private policy might, but at least it's something. (The fact that it doesn't keep up with cost of living is a separate issue.)
This woman is certainly entitled to disability benefits. Her employer obviously attempted to accomodate her, although I can't fathom why VRS was deemed not an option when it probably would have cost as much as one of those ergo chairs. If the court ruled that the employer made reasonalbe accomodations, then they have done what they were required to do. It seems like this woman was totally inflexible on the issue, and ultimately, she had to be let go. I don't see how she'd be entitled to what she was suing for.
Now, of course we see a flack burst of criticism of the ADA by people who show their lack of understanding of how and why it's important through their comments. The goal of the ADA is not to force employers to find work for people who aren't qualified. It's to ensure that people who have the ability and qualifications to work in a particular job aren't prevented from doing so if the limitations of their disability can be addressed. The onus falls on to employers because if they didn't have to accomodate people with disabilities, they wouldn't, and people who are, for example, wheelchair bound aren't relegated to a life of misery because they can't get through the front doors of the offices in which they would otherwise be perfectly capable of working in.
It's the rationale behind having braille in elevators and making wheelchair ramps and lifts part of the building codes as well. Having a disability should not exclude you from participating in society, and that's what the ADA is all about.
I find it so disturbing that there are people out there who feel that because a tiny minority of people decide to abuse social services we should do away with them altogether. It's a barbaric point of view, and I have to wonder if they are a victim of a disability of their own, namely an inability to conceive of a world that does not revolve around them, where looking out for #1 is the only principle that needs to be followed.
I lived in both Belfast and (London)Derry in Northern Ireland for a time, and there are a few things that I remember about everyday life there:
1) Police checkpoints. They're everywhere. Police units with Army backup at all the major points where people travel from one side of town to the other.
2)Surveillance towers. These are especially prevalent in Derry. They contain equipment to spy on people's communications via microwave and movements via cameras. They dominate the skyline, and people hate them.
3)Curfews. Need I say more?
My point is that the British employed all this stuff because they wanted to combat terrorism, the breach of civil rights was extreme, and imposed from the top. I was damn glad to get back to the US, where I thought this kind of thing could never happen.
Crime is such a huge bugbear in the US, and it seems that people would be more than happy to do all this and more in order to 'prevent' crime. It won't, of course, but will happen is that a lot of people who haven't done a damn thing will be inconvienienced, harassed, or worse.
But I guess if it prevents one convienient store robbery, then its worth it right? Never mind that crime has steadily been dropping over the last few years, not because of round-the-clock surveillance on innocent people, but because the economy was doing better. When less people are in desperate times, less people turn to desperate measures.
If the government was really interested in preventing crime, they'd try to make it so less and less people feel the need to commit crimes.
The argument that "If you've done nothing wrong, then you don't have to worry" is actually irrelevant to the issue. The issue is, the Supreme Court has upheld the notion that we have a right to privacy, and the 4th Amendment (attempts) to guarantee that we are protected from unreasonable search and seizure.
Why stop at cameras? Lets have a secret police. Everyone should be required to have an ID card on them at all times, and under penalty of immediate imprisonment for an undertermined amount of time must surrender it to law enforcement for inspection for any reason. That won't prevent crime, but we sure will feel safe at night, won't we?
Slashdot Mirror
I believe it was William Jennings Bryant who stated something like "You shall not hang the nation on a cross of gold", or something like that...
For countries that rely on gold to back up their currencies, this would be a bad thing. Fortunately, in the US, we don't have that problem. There's probably a few others as well.
Regardless of whether you think he's guilty or not, don't the DMCA's punishments seem a little harsh? He made a piece of software, nobody died, nobody got hooked on drugs. My main problem is that the penalties are so harsh.
Haven't these guys ever heard the phrase "Let the punishment fit the crime?"
I get the point, and I agree, but it seemed funny to me that they had the Playboy and Apple Computer logos, since when did Playboy become on par with the likes of G.E. and Shell Oil?
Silly goose, they don't build hunting rifles for maximum damage, they build cartridges for maximum damage, and if you're hunting, you can't do too much damage. That's why we don't use RPG's to hunt Elk.
I think the DMCA is awful, but realize that traveling to another country makes you subject to their laws.
Actually in that case, it would be just as likely to get busted for it here, too. Last I checked it was illegal to sell submachine guns without a license. Additionally, there may be a law specifically stating that if you're caught trying to sell guns to terrorists in the US, they throw the book at you. The British would probably let us handle it, unless they were caught over in Britain, even the Republic of Ireland would nail you for that.
Doing what Sklyarov did is as much a crime to our estato corprativo as political dissidence was to the former Soviet Union. Which is worse? I guess it's unlikely that anyone will want to execute the guy or send him to a gulag, but hey, there's always room to expand on DMCA.
It's 2001, can we get off the "If you don't like it, go move to Russia", USA all the way rah-rah stuff now? OK, OK, we get it. The Soviet Union failed because socialism is evil, corrupt and wrong, and the US is always and forever on the side of right and justice worldwide.
Do yourself a favor, go back to college.
I agree, and if we're going to do it, we have to nip it in the bud, before it becomes entrenched like the War on Drugs, and then we won't be able to stop it.
By that, I take it you're implying that a child would know what to do with a vial of crack.
I realize that these people are on the fringe, but if it's big enough to report about, then I think that the people who protest should at least be given the ability to explain what they're doing.
What makes the Internet truly great is the ability to get information out to the masses in a matter of hours when it used to take days, if not weeks.
Or at all. Before the internet what did you have? Zines, public access tv, BBS... Inaccessible to most people by far than the internet. Most people won't choose to make a website, but at least technically everyone can make one.
I think the point of the article, and the "lowest common denominator" argument, is that many people had hoped for more. Is it necessarily bad that 50% on of the (non-porn related) web use happens on site owned by 4 companies? No, it's just sad. I think a lot of people were hoping for something different. It's interesting to note that only one of the big 4 was a company born and bred on the WWW, Yahoo!
It also means that 50% of the traffic doesn't primarily use the big 4. The crucial question is:"Is this number getting bigger or smaller?".
I do not believe that this would be the case if people like Sun and others hadn't decided to back up these efforts.
Simply because the people you worked for couldn't get it together, that doesn't mean that it can't be done right elsewhere. If these projects were simply left up to individual developers in the traditional style, then Linux would still be was it initially was: a hobby system. There's no reason why Linux should not be both a commercially viable business prospect and a source for democracy, freedom and peace on earth.
If you want ultimate power, you can just give it to yourself, and not have to log in as root for standard things like installing new applications. I would counsel you to avoid running as root all the time, though.
I can't remember what they were called, but I had a set of these sci-fi looking construction pieces that were plastic, and had these tetrahedronal connectors, along with rubber rings and little black plastic connectors. There were these rods of varying sizes, and they could swivel in the connectors, etc.
We used to build cool-looking sci-fi style weapons with them and play with them. Anyone remember what I'm talking about? they were on the US market in the early 80's?
Excuse me, but simply because one of the founders is leaving does not mean that the company is in trouble. He's been at SuSE since it was started in 1992, so perhaps now's a good time to leave.
The very first Linux distro that I ever used was SuSE 5.2, and even then it was relatively simple to configure and get going. I just had a good long demo of SuSE's latest, and they have made siginificant improvements. SuSE is a good choice if you're not in North America, the I18N and localization stuff is significantly more than an afterthought like it has a tendency to be with US companies. YaST is also probably the best system management and config tool that I've ever used. It's really a nice distro, and it costs bigger bucks, but you get tons of apps and excellent documentation.
Absolutely. I was driving on 101 N just south of Garberville (infamous as the hub of pot growing activity in Humboldt County), and was pulled over for speeding. The sheriff asked if he could take a look inside the trunk, and I complied, as I didn't have anything in there. We got to talking by the side of the road, and I mentioned that he must have been looking for drugs. He said yes, but usually it's cash going north, drugs going south, and that if you've got a lot of cash going north, then they'll definitely get an arrest warrant over the phone with a local judge who issues them automatically, haul you in and try to make you bring down the whole operation. He said that it would be better to have an ounce of pot than $10,000 in cash. The ounce of pot is not even a misdemeanor, but the $10k in cash will buy you at least an overnight stay in the klink, and will result in having people watching your ass for months to come.
They already do this in San Francisco. A young couple was booted out of the San Francisco Center because they looked scraggly and probably just wanted to do drugs in the bathroom. If you don't spend a significant portion of your non-work time being a consumer, then they kick you out and make you live in Oakland where the stores aren't as nice.
At any rate, these treatments are affective, because people with AIDS are living longer, and not getting devastatingly sick at such a rapid clip, and these drugs to tend to stave off the opportunistic infections that eventually kill people who suffer from AIDS.
Is Merck being outright greedy? Perhaps. More likely they're holding out because if they make an exception for Brazil, then they have to make an exception for everyone.
The pharmaceutical companies make a lot of products that help people. However, in the face of public health crises, they can easily afford to lower their profit margins, or operate at cost for drugs that can ease the suffering of people with illnesses like AIDS, or malaria, or what have you. They can easily make up for it with 'luxury' drugs like Viagra (I know, Pfizer makes that) or Propecia, or something nonessential like that.
Yeah, right. Considering how much people bitch and moan about paying taxes now.
Whenever a property tax hike is proposed to fund strapped local schools, people scream and shout about it. They want all the services, they just don't feel like paying for them. Don't get me wrong I agree with your statement, but asking people to pay higher taxes, even if it means something cool like universal health care and top flight public schools, is asking for trouble.
MS has been bolstered by the latest court decision, and their heading in fangs out for the final push. They'll end up owning the internet, and in the end it will be like 1995 all over again, with Micorosoft saying "Who needs the internet? We'll make our own!"
If you're in a professional job, generally your employer picks up the tab for long-term disability insurance (if your company is big enough). Even if it doesn't, you can well afford the insurance on your own.
If you're a waiter, or a janitor in a hotel, or some other kind of job which doesn't pay well, and you have a family to support, that $167.00 dollars will certainly go to rent, food and shoes for the kids. It's why we pay state disability insurance, which, if needed, doesn't pay out as much as a private policy might, but at least it's something. (The fact that it doesn't keep up with cost of living is a separate issue.)
This woman is certainly entitled to disability benefits. Her employer obviously attempted to accomodate her, although I can't fathom why VRS was deemed not an option when it probably would have cost as much as one of those ergo chairs. If the court ruled that the employer made reasonalbe accomodations, then they have done what they were required to do. It seems like this woman was totally inflexible on the issue, and ultimately, she had to be let go. I don't see how she'd be entitled to what she was suing for.
Now, of course we see a flack burst of criticism of the ADA by people who show their lack of understanding of how and why it's important through their comments. The goal of the ADA is not to force employers to find work for people who aren't qualified. It's to ensure that people who have the ability and qualifications to work in a particular job aren't prevented from doing so if the limitations of their disability can be addressed. The onus falls on to employers because if they didn't have to accomodate people with disabilities, they wouldn't, and people who are, for example, wheelchair bound aren't relegated to a life of misery because they can't get through the front doors of the offices in which they would otherwise be perfectly capable of working in.
It's the rationale behind having braille in elevators and making wheelchair ramps and lifts part of the building codes as well. Having a disability should not exclude you from participating in society, and that's what the ADA is all about.
I find it so disturbing that there are people out there who feel that because a tiny minority of people decide to abuse social services we should do away with them altogether. It's a barbaric point of view, and I have to wonder if they are a victim of a disability of their own, namely an inability to conceive of a world that does not revolve around them, where looking out for #1 is the only principle that needs to be followed.
fatchicksinpartyhats
1) Police checkpoints. They're everywhere. Police units with Army backup at all the major points where people travel from one side of town to the other.
2)Surveillance towers. These are especially prevalent in Derry. They contain equipment to spy on people's communications via microwave and movements via cameras. They dominate the skyline, and people hate them.
3)Curfews. Need I say more?
My point is that the British employed all this stuff because they wanted to combat terrorism, the breach of civil rights was extreme, and imposed from the top. I was damn glad to get back to the US, where I thought this kind of thing could never happen.
Crime is such a huge bugbear in the US, and it seems that people would be more than happy to do all this and more in order to 'prevent' crime. It won't, of course, but will happen is that a lot of people who haven't done a damn thing will be inconvienienced, harassed, or worse.
But I guess if it prevents one convienient store robbery, then its worth it right? Never mind that crime has steadily been dropping over the last few years, not because of round-the-clock surveillance on innocent people, but because the economy was doing better. When less people are in desperate times, less people turn to desperate measures.
If the government was really interested in preventing crime, they'd try to make it so less and less people feel the need to commit crimes.
The argument that "If you've done nothing wrong, then you don't have to worry" is actually irrelevant to the issue. The issue is, the Supreme Court has upheld the notion that we have a right to privacy, and the 4th Amendment (attempts) to guarantee that we are protected from unreasonable search and seizure.
Why stop at cameras? Lets have a secret police. Everyone should be required to have an ID card on them at all times, and under penalty of immediate imprisonment for an undertermined amount of time must surrender it to law enforcement for inspection for any reason. That won't prevent crime, but we sure will feel safe at night, won't we?