The FISA court is slow and hardly secret since people seem to find out when a warrant has been issued by the FISA court.
The problem is the idiots like those at democraticunderground.org want the government to know about future terrorist attacks, but don't want us to do any intelligence gathering to find out. This is a new war. People aren't trying to invade our country with tanks while wearing uniforms. They are entering the country posing as normal people and then hijacking planes to blow up buildings. You can't find these people without spying on their phone calls back to their terrorist overlord.
You can't have it both ways. We either risk another huge terrorist attack on our soil or we spy on international phone calls.
BTW, thanks to everyone who modded the grandparent troll. Your intellectual dishonesty has shown why "mob rule" is a bad idea.
So, the government was listening to international phone calls between a lawyer representing a Saudi "charity" with ties to radical Islam and people in Saudi Arabia?
You'll have to excuse me, because I don't see a problem with this at all.
Sure there's no warrant, but if there were a warrant, it would jeopardize the secrecy of the tap and the effectiveness of our intelligence. And in this case, there was every reason to listen in. The program was properly applied to help find terrorists.
Would you all be so mad about this program if Clinton did it? Oh wait, he did--it just wasn't so public. The program applies only to international phone calls, which have tapped by the NSA for decades.
Is there anyone else here who thinks this is an indication that we need more Visas?
While millions of unskilled illegals flood our borders every year, stressing our social safety net, the people we want in this country can't get in. We need more skilled workers who want to work within the system and work here legally and fewer unskilled workers who end up with a free ride at taxpayer's--mine and your--expense.
How about putting a "may not be safe for work" warning on that link? It's borderline, but I'm at work and I don't need the boss seeing me looking at a bunch of busty women, even if they are technically clothed.
Slashdot is becoming more and more like http://www.democraticunderground.com/ every day. Too bad, too. It just makes it too annoying to visit. I still come for the tech news, but more and more of the topics are political instead of technology oriented. Even the technology stories get politicized by the time the second comment is posted. All it takes to get modded up is to post something
A lot of the comments in this thread show a clear misunderstanding of the wire tapping program, but arguing with them won't change anything. Minds around here are too closed to other ideas, and too paranoid to believe that anyone with an R after their name might actually be doing the right thing. It disappoints me as an independent with conservative and libertarian leanings to see such blatant partisanship overriding the real issues.
Actually, stores where you pay a membership fee (Costco, Sams Club, etc) have an agreement you sign when you get a membership. One of the stipulations is that you must show your receipt to the person at the door. If you don't want to do that, don't become a member.
If a door nazi at a normal store does the same thing, you have no obligation to stop, and they have no reason to hold you unless they actually suspect you've stolen something.
So, to refute my 2002 reference, you argue back with a survey that is more than 10 years old? A lot has changed since 1988-1993.
You provide two links. One whose second sentence admits there is debate on income inequality (and references your 10 year old survey). The second at a web site called "leftbusinessobserver.com" I think an opinion piece on The Communist Party USA web page would have more credibility than the Left Business Observer.
I found something from Hong Kong via Google that I thought looked pretty unbiased, and you send me to links with multiple and severe flaws in credibility.
"Economic freedom has been gaining ground around the world," Walker said. "This has spurred a worldwide increase in wealth, unprecedented poverty reduction, and an impressive lowering in inequality, as numerous peer-reviewed, fact-based research papers have shown."
Econimies with a high degree of freedom are Capitalist. Economies with low freedom are generally Communist. Those in the middle are Socialist.
So, Capitalism increases wealth, decreases the disparity between rich a poor, and reduces poverty. Sounds pretty good to me.
"Economic freedom has been gaining ground around the world," Walker said. "This has spurred a worldwide increase in wealth, unprecedented poverty reduction, and an impressive lowering in inequality, as numerous peer-reviewed, fact-based research papers have shown."
Econimies with a high degree of freedom are Capitalist. Economies with low freedom are generally Communist. Those in the middle are Socialist.
So, Capitalism increases wealth, decreases the disparity between rich a poor, and reduces poverty. Sounds pretty good to me.
Not if Google keeps enough shares with the original owners to control the company. When a company goes public, it does not have to sell every share of the company they are issuing. A good example is Ford. The Ford family still owns almost 100% of the voting shares of Ford Motor Company. At no point in the future will there be a hostile takover of Ford without a lot of family members participating in the takover.
Google could easily either hold a bunch of shares with the original owners (preferably more than 50%) or make the shares they sell non-voting shares. I seriously doubt they will be selling enough voting shares for a hostile takeover.
A hidden section of this bill re-introduces the "fairness doctrine." Sounds good, we're all for fairness, right?
What the "fairness doctrine" actually means is that if anyone disagrees with anything said on the radio, they can call in and demand to be put on the air to refute what they disagree with. The station manager will have to put them on and give them time to speak their mind.
The fairness doctrine existed until 1983, when there were about 5 talk radio stations nationwide. Now, there are well over 1000 (less than 20% owned by any one company) talk radio stations. If this law goes into effect--and Bush will likely veto it--it will mean the end of talk radio.
Just imagine if someone said on the air, "SCO owns UNIX" and everyone on slashdot called up and demanded to be put on the air to refute the point. It would take days. What's going to happen is no more controversial topics will ever be discussed over the radio. Eventually, all talk radio will shut down because no one wants constant vanilla talk.
BTW, it's freedom OF speech, not freedom TO speak, which means under the constitution, no one is required to allow someone to access to their licensed airwaves. Congress can make laws requiring it, but doing so limits the free speech of the station owners and their hosts.
Will robots continue to replace some jobs? Yes. However, as we've seen in the past, people will find other jobs. If there are no more jobs at McDonalds, then we'll have more people designing and building robots or some other higher-level pursuit.
Robots may replace half of current jobs in the country in 50 years, but we will always find other jobs for us to do with our time.
The reality is that all the "mindless" jobs may dissappear in my lifetime, but that just means we all need more education to be able to take on real thinking jobs. Would I be too sad that the bitch behind the McDonald's counter is replaced by a polite robot that can count change? No.
I really don't understand why everyone is so anti-Clear Channel. They have such a small market share (yes, I said SMALL) that they are inconsequential compared to the 5 companies that control nearly all of the TV broadcast media, movies and cable.
Everyone is so worried about Clear Channel when the FCC's ruling clearly still promotes competition. There are rules that depend on market size to ensure that no one company gains control of the broadcast and print media in one area.
Clear Channel is nowhere near a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination. For instance, where I live, they own 6 of the 36 or so stations broadcasting here. This is a typical ratio. Since when is a one sixth market share a monopoly? And there would be no reason for them to suddenly own more of the stations. They pretty much hit every genera of radio with the six stations.
All the FCC is doing is purging antiquated rules from a bygone era when one person could control an entire market by owning two radio stations, a TV station and the local newspaper. With the expansion of TV and radio beyond the 1950s FCC's dreams and the advent of the Internet, there is no longer any issue with one company owning 8-15 of the media outlets in most markets.
Actually, I take it back, I do understand. Clear Channel is successful, and other media outlets are jealous and are pushing the anti-Clear Channel movement. They area also pissed that talk radio (most lucrative shows are owned by Premiere Radio Networks, NOT Clear Channel) has so much more market share than any TV news show.
The fact that this kind of slanted, alarmist, pedantic tripe made the front page of Slashdot makes me wonder if anyone here is interested in facts instead of raw emotional response.
Carpool lanes were a great experiment, but a failed experiment. Trying to force people to carpool by opening up carpool only lanes only works if people are willing to share their car in the first place. Many people are not and would rather spend hours in traffic than share what is likely their only time alone in the car with other people.
Carpool lanes only serve to remove a viable lane for traffic and restrict it to 5-10% of drivers, much like special lanes in Soviet Moscow for the communist party leaders who were âoemore equalâ than their workers.
If Seattle were to just open all lanes to all traffic, traffic congestion would improve dramatically. It wouldnâ(TM)t completely disappear, the problem is to severe, but it would be a step in the right direction. Many of the roads with carpool lanes around Seattle are just 3-4 lanes in each direction to begin with. Cutting that down to 2-3 lanes causes severe problems and the obvious desparation illustrated by this scheme.
IMNAL, but I have taken classes on IP, and this is a clear cut case of Marvel not taking the opportunity to protect their IP ten years ago when skinning started. Even if they have just started as little as 5 years ago, they would have had an argument, but with the prevelance of skinning now, I doubt they would win a case against anybody for skinning.
They are just trying to use FUD to get essentially broke website operators to stop "infringing" on their property.
Yes, MS owns the playing field, but that is a completely different issue from this proposal.
Government's roll in leveling the playing field needs to be limited to breaking up companies, limiting companies' behavior, and fining companies that violate anti-trust rules. Government should never take from one company with the express purpose to fund a competitor. That's not leveling the playing field, that's changing the entire game.
You're right, MS is flouting the rules and the DOJ is doing nothing about it, but that's been fought many times over on/. and it not not relevant to this proposal in South Africa.
This is not the way to handle funding open source. As much as I would love to take Microsoft down a notch or two, robbing from software companies to pay for the development of competitor's products is the worst idea since communism. Oh, wait, it is pretty much communism, isn't it?
Let market forces decide who lives and who dies. If that is Microsoft, so be it. It is not government's place to support open source at the cost of other legitimate businesses.
In fact, this could be about the worst thing that could possibly happen to the software industry. With this 10% tax on closed source software, there would be reduced incentive to produce software for profit. Without profit, developers would not get paid as well. Innovation would shrivel and eventually die, even among open source developers. Developer skills to atrophy and before long the only software produced would be paid for directly by government. We all know how efficient government is, donâ(TM)t we?
This might sound alarmist, but I am a big believer in the free market determining the survival of products and companies. That is the only surefire way to ensure quality products at a reasonable price (or free).
I use their POP3 servers, and I have yet to get any ads in my inbox from them. I agreed to receive the advertising, I've just never seen it.
I also use their webpages on occasion, so I see their ads then, but now that I would have to pay for my yahoo.com addresses (I'm not a fan of Webmail), I'm probably not going to use it anymore, which means that I won't be visiting their pages either. Especially since the only thing tying me to them was the e-mail service.
Slashdot Mirror
The FISA court is slow and hardly secret since people seem to find out when a warrant has been issued by the FISA court.
The problem is the idiots like those at democraticunderground.org want the government to know about future terrorist attacks, but don't want us to do any intelligence gathering to find out. This is a new war. People aren't trying to invade our country with tanks while wearing uniforms. They are entering the country posing as normal people and then hijacking planes to blow up buildings. You can't find these people without spying on their phone calls back to their terrorist overlord.
You can't have it both ways. We either risk another huge terrorist attack on our soil or we spy on international phone calls.
BTW, thanks to everyone who modded the grandparent troll. Your intellectual dishonesty has shown why "mob rule" is a bad idea.
So, the government was listening to international phone calls between a lawyer representing a Saudi "charity" with ties to radical Islam and people in Saudi Arabia?
You'll have to excuse me, because I don't see a problem with this at all.
Sure there's no warrant, but if there were a warrant, it would jeopardize the secrecy of the tap and the effectiveness of our intelligence. And in this case, there was every reason to listen in. The program was properly applied to help find terrorists.
Would you all be so mad about this program if Clinton did it? Oh wait, he did--it just wasn't so public. The program applies only to international phone calls, which have tapped by the NSA for decades.
Is there anyone else here who thinks this is an indication that we need more Visas?
While millions of unskilled illegals flood our borders every year, stressing our social safety net, the people we want in this country can't get in. We need more skilled workers who want to work within the system and work here legally and fewer unskilled workers who end up with a free ride at taxpayer's--mine and your--expense.
How about putting a "may not be safe for work" warning on that link? It's borderline, but I'm at work and I don't need the boss seeing me looking at a bunch of busty women, even if they are technically clothed.
"I swear, I was reading the article!"
Slashdot is becoming more and more like http://www.democraticunderground.com/ every day. Too bad, too. It just makes it too annoying to visit. I still come for the tech news, but more and more of the topics are political instead of technology oriented. Even the technology stories get politicized by the time the second comment is posted. All it takes to get modded up is to post something
A lot of the comments in this thread show a clear misunderstanding of the wire tapping program, but arguing with them won't change anything. Minds around here are too closed to other ideas, and too paranoid to believe that anyone with an R after their name might actually be doing the right thing. It disappoints me as an independent with conservative and libertarian leanings to see such blatant partisanship overriding the real issues.
Actually, stores where you pay a membership fee (Costco, Sams Club, etc) have an agreement you sign when you get a membership. One of the stipulations is that you must show your receipt to the person at the door. If you don't want to do that, don't become a member.
If a door nazi at a normal store does the same thing, you have no obligation to stop, and they have no reason to hold you unless they actually suspect you've stolen something.
So, to refute my 2002 reference, you argue back with a survey that is more than 10 years old? A lot has changed since 1988-1993.
You provide two links. One whose second sentence admits there is debate on income inequality (and references your 10 year old survey). The second at a web site called "leftbusinessobserver.com" I think an opinion piece on The Communist Party USA web page would have more credibility than the Left Business Observer.
I found something from Hong Kong via Google that I thought looked pretty unbiased, and you send me to links with multiple and severe flaws in credibility.
I'll try again since you apparently didn't see it the first time:
----
Capitalism works every time it's tried, thank you very much.
From this page:
"Economic freedom has been gaining ground around the world," Walker said. "This has spurred a worldwide increase in wealth, unprecedented poverty reduction, and an impressive lowering in inequality, as numerous peer-reviewed, fact-based research papers have shown."
Econimies with a high degree of freedom are Capitalist. Economies with low freedom are generally Communist. Those in the middle are Socialist.
So, Capitalism increases wealth, decreases the disparity between rich a poor, and reduces poverty. Sounds pretty good to me.
Capitalism works every time it's tried, thank you very much.
From this page:
"Economic freedom has been gaining ground around the world," Walker said. "This has spurred a worldwide increase in wealth, unprecedented poverty reduction, and an impressive lowering in inequality, as numerous peer-reviewed, fact-based research papers have shown."
Econimies with a high degree of freedom are Capitalist. Economies with low freedom are generally Communist. Those in the middle are Socialist.
So, Capitalism increases wealth, decreases the disparity between rich a poor, and reduces poverty. Sounds pretty good to me.
You do mean majority of the vote, right? 51% of the popular vote is a majority.
In other news, students around the country rejoice. Now, they can use US Governement official font to turn a two page paper into three pages.
Not if Google keeps enough shares with the original owners to control the company. When a company goes public, it does not have to sell every share of the company they are issuing. A good example is Ford. The Ford family still owns almost 100% of the voting shares of Ford Motor Company. At no point in the future will there be a hostile takover of Ford without a lot of family members participating in the takover.
Google could easily either hold a bunch of shares with the original owners (preferably more than 50%) or make the shares they sell non-voting shares. I seriously doubt they will be selling enough voting shares for a hostile takeover.
A hidden section of this bill re-introduces the "fairness doctrine." Sounds good, we're all for fairness, right?
What the "fairness doctrine" actually means is that if anyone disagrees with anything said on the radio, they can call in and demand to be put on the air to refute what they disagree with. The station manager will have to put them on and give them time to speak their mind.
The fairness doctrine existed until 1983, when there were about 5 talk radio stations nationwide. Now, there are well over 1000 (less than 20% owned by any one company) talk radio stations. If this law goes into effect--and Bush will likely veto it--it will mean the end of talk radio.
Just imagine if someone said on the air, "SCO owns UNIX" and everyone on slashdot called up and demanded to be put on the air to refute the point. It would take days. What's going to happen is no more controversial topics will ever be discussed over the radio. Eventually, all talk radio will shut down because no one wants constant vanilla talk.
BTW, it's freedom OF speech, not freedom TO speak, which means under the constitution, no one is required to allow someone to access to their licensed airwaves. Congress can make laws requiring it, but doing so limits the free speech of the station owners and their hosts.
Unfortunately, computerworld.com may take longer to recover from the ./ effect.
Will robots continue to replace some jobs? Yes. However, as we've seen in the past, people will find other jobs. If there are no more jobs at McDonalds, then we'll have more people designing and building robots or some other higher-level pursuit.
Robots may replace half of current jobs in the country in 50 years, but we will always find other jobs for us to do with our time.
The reality is that all the "mindless" jobs may dissappear in my lifetime, but that just means we all need more education to be able to take on real thinking jobs. Would I be too sad that the bitch behind the McDonald's counter is replaced by a polite robot that can count change? No.
I really don't understand why everyone is so anti-Clear Channel. They have such a small market share (yes, I said SMALL) that they are inconsequential compared to the 5 companies that control nearly all of the TV broadcast media, movies and cable.
Everyone is so worried about Clear Channel when the FCC's ruling clearly still promotes competition. There are rules that depend on market size to ensure that no one company gains control of the broadcast and print media in one area.
Clear Channel is nowhere near a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination. For instance, where I live, they own 6 of the 36 or so stations broadcasting here. This is a typical ratio. Since when is a one sixth market share a monopoly? And there would be no reason for them to suddenly own more of the stations. They pretty much hit every genera of radio with the six stations.
All the FCC is doing is purging antiquated rules from a bygone era when one person could control an entire market by owning two radio stations, a TV station and the local newspaper. With the expansion of TV and radio beyond the 1950s FCC's dreams and the advent of the Internet, there is no longer any issue with one company owning 8-15 of the media outlets in most markets.
Actually, I take it back, I do understand. Clear Channel is successful, and other media outlets are jealous and are pushing the anti-Clear Channel movement. They area also pissed that talk radio (most lucrative shows are owned by Premiere Radio Networks, NOT Clear Channel) has so much more market share than any TV news show.
The fact that this kind of slanted, alarmist, pedantic tripe made the front page of Slashdot makes me wonder if anyone here is interested in facts instead of raw emotional response.
Carpool lanes were a great experiment, but a failed experiment. Trying to force people to carpool by opening up carpool only lanes only works if people are willing to share their car in the first place. Many people are not and would rather spend hours in traffic than share what is likely their only time alone in the car with other people.
Carpool lanes only serve to remove a viable lane for traffic and restrict it to 5-10% of drivers, much like special lanes in Soviet Moscow for the communist party leaders who were âoemore equalâ than their workers.
If Seattle were to just open all lanes to all traffic, traffic congestion would improve dramatically. It wouldnâ(TM)t completely disappear, the problem is to severe, but it would be a step in the right direction. Many of the roads with carpool lanes around Seattle are just 3-4 lanes in each direction to begin with. Cutting that down to 2-3 lanes causes severe problems and the obvious desparation illustrated by this scheme.
IMNAL, but I have taken classes on IP, and this is a clear cut case of Marvel not taking the opportunity to protect their IP ten years ago when skinning started. Even if they have just started as little as 5 years ago, they would have had an argument, but with the prevelance of skinning now, I doubt they would win a case against anybody for skinning.
They are just trying to use FUD to get essentially broke website operators to stop "infringing" on their property.
Phathead
Yes, MS owns the playing field, but that is a completely different issue from this proposal.
/. and it not not relevant to this proposal in South Africa.
Government's roll in leveling the playing field needs to be limited to breaking up companies, limiting companies' behavior, and fining companies that violate anti-trust rules. Government should never take from one company with the express purpose to fund a competitor. That's not leveling the playing field, that's changing the entire game.
You're right, MS is flouting the rules and the DOJ is doing nothing about it, but that's been fought many times over on
Phathead
This is not the way to handle funding open source. As much as I would love to take Microsoft down a notch or two, robbing from software companies to pay for the development of competitor's products is the worst idea since communism. Oh, wait, it is pretty much communism, isn't it?
Let market forces decide who lives and who dies. If that is Microsoft, so be it. It is not government's place to support open source at the cost of other legitimate businesses.
In fact, this could be about the worst thing that could possibly happen to the software industry. With this 10% tax on closed source software, there would be reduced incentive to produce software for profit. Without profit, developers would not get paid as well. Innovation would shrivel and eventually die, even among open source developers. Developer skills to atrophy and before long the only software produced would be paid for directly by government. We all know how efficient government is, donâ(TM)t we?
This might sound alarmist, but I am a big believer in the free market determining the survival of products and companies. That is the only surefire way to ensure quality products at a reasonable price (or free).
Phathead
IBM's stock is up over 2% today while SCO's stock (SCOX) is down over 2%.
Nice to see Wall Street react appropriately to this news.
I was seriously starting to think the 2.4 series was dead in preparation for 2.6.0. The ChangeLog is impressive though.
Phathead
I use their POP3 servers, and I have yet to get any ads in my inbox from them. I agreed to receive the advertising, I've just never seen it.
I also use their webpages on occasion, so I see their ads then, but now that I would have to pay for my yahoo.com addresses (I'm not a fan of Webmail), I'm probably not going to use it anymore, which means that I won't be visiting their pages either. Especially since the only thing tying me to them was the e-mail service.
There loss, and someone elses gain, I suppose.
Phathead
Me too.
I got that exact same reply to my letter. It just shows that there is nothing we can do to change Sen. Hollings' feelings on the subject.
It's up to other senators to kill this, so we need to forget about Hollings and move on to other senators and house members.
That means everyone who lives in the US, so get on it everyone.
Phathead
$2.75? I assume that's AUS$. I can walk down the street to Hollywood Video and pay US$5 for a DVD rental.
:P)
I guess pricing in Australia isn't like it is here. Lucky Australians......
I'll have to visit someday..(not because of the DVD rentals