Amtrak is incredibly useful for my occasional trips from Baltimore to Manhattan. I sometimes need to go up there for events at the headquarters (honbu) of my karate school. Often these are in the morning, so I hop on the train at an unghodly hour, grab some sleep en route, and walk less than a mile from Penn Station to my destination.
Flying, beside being more expensive, would take me longer since the airport is not in the heart of Manhattan. Intercity bus is cheaper but less reliable, less comfortable, and the bus terminals on both ends of the trip are less conveniently located. I couldn't sleep on the way up (or read on the way back) if I drove up, and parking in Manhattan is an expensive adventure.
But from now on, I'll be buying tickets with cash. Perhaps under the name Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst.
From
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
80% of all violent crime is committed under the comission of or influence of drugs.
Only if you're including alcohol as a drug. No other drug significantly potetiates violent behavior. (Though if a person with a disposition towards violence is under the influence of drugs, they may be difficult to stop due to inhibited pain response.)
The vast majority of drug related violenece is related to the black market (turf wars between dealers, junkies stealing to afford their fix, and so on), not to the pharacological effects of drugs themselves.
Odds are that pretty much everything you think you know about currently illegal drugs is wrongs.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I completely agree that if the US wants to wipe out or track people that do nothing
more than HARM our society instead of HELP our society, then more power to them. I also have nothing to hide.
It's not about harming or hurting "society", which is a pretty abstract concept anyway. The state is, oddly enough, concerned mainly about you harming or hurting the state.
If my kids can make it to school safe in the morning and come home alive without worrying about some fucked up anti-government
militia pyschopath needing to make a point by blowing something up, then I could give a shit less.
Let me introduce you to the Law of Eristic Escalation: Impostion of Order = Escalation of Chaos. As applied to government and safety, it means this: by imposing a stronger government to make sure your kids are safe, you create the very anti-government sentiment you fear. Consult any Taoist sage for more information.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The truth is, there is no major flaw in our voting proccess. The situation down in Florida had nothing to do with a "broken system" as some would advocate. It has to do with people who are just simply stupid.
Troll, stupidity, or ignorance? I'll assume the latter.
The most disturbing parts of the Florida Fraud had nothing to do with the balloting procedures (as illegal and immoral as those procedures were). Thousands of people with clean criminal records were taken off the voting rolls in a purported purge of "felons" performed by a private company. Police roadblocks harassed blacks on their way to the polls.
Fortunately, the laws of probability say that the inaccurasies will even out in the end.
No. Not in a situation where certain areas are given technology known to undercount (both from usuablilty issues and physical failure), and others are given accurate vote tabulators.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You're forgetting the third--and most likely option: people will use WMA, which does sound better at lower bitrates than MP3.
Not if WMA is hampered by "intellectual property management" bits that make it difficult to copy, move, and share your information
The magic is digital audio, not MPEG-1 Layer 3...
Agreed, but part of what makes digital audio "magic" is that copy/move/share ability, which is exactly what's being targeted here. Digital audio that's locked in place on your harddrive and can only be accessed by certain "blessed" software isn't magic; it's either an almost useless pain in the ass, or a challenge to the Information Liberation Front.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Why not just write a macro and save it either on your network drive (if you have one) or on a floppy.
Better yet, why not spend a little time learning to use LaTeX? If you're a grad student in a technical field, it's worth investing the time in learning a heavier-weight document preparation system.
If you're partial to a GUI front-end, I've had good experiences with Lyx. TeXmacs also looks interesting, but I haven't played with it yet.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
While some roots of property can be found in the behavior of other animals, we've built something new on top of those foundations. (Mixed metaphor, I know...)
Some animals do defend a hunting or ranging territory. However, this territory is usually communal, used by a pack, pride, or tribe. Individual animals may claim their own nest or den, but generally not acres of territory. That's because the territory is actually used by the animal for hunting or foraging, and one single animal can't occupy large amounts of land.
What we've added - and where much of the problem lies - is in what might be called "absentee ownership". The landlord does not use the land, but we call it his property. The stockholder often does not work in any way for the company, yet we call him an owner. The record company writes no songs, yet holds the copyright.
If our notion of property were limited to active involvement, we'd be much better off.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I'm sure I remember discussion about "programmer archaeologists" of the
future - noble beings equipped with trowels and oscilloscopes, who reconstruct long-dead file formats from half-corroded CDs.
There's actually some of this going on today.
I'm a bit fuzzy on details, but a few years ago I heard (from someone who worked in the field) about a project to resurrect old LANDSAT tapes from the 1970s. Someone figured out that the old data would make a great baseline for climate change studies, and the raw data could be processed in ways simply not possible 25 years ago.
The tapes were still around, stuck in a warehouse somewhere., To get them into a readable condition, they had to be slowly baked (in pizza ovens!) to drive out moisture they had absorbed, then scraped with a sapphire blade to...well, I forget why. Scrape off some gunk.
I believe they managed to dig some old recorders out of the scrapheap and get them working with the help of some old hands.
Wish I could recall more details, but that's all I know.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
There is a large difference - which neither the Marxists nor the extreme capitalsists grasp - between saying "Property right should not be the basis of a political philosophy" and saying "Property rights are useless."
Without private property, there can be no private decisions because everything turns into . But equally when private property is taken too far, there can be no private decisions - because it is the nature of property to fall into the control of a few, and then every step you take infringes on someone else's property rights.
Propery is a man-made tool we use to serve higher goals. Those who take property rights for natural rights make a serious error.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You haven't spent much time reading FreeRepublic.com, have you?
Well, about as much as I spend reading Ladies' Home Journal. B-)
Regular posters hold differing opinions on copyright and related issues,
and range from statist GOP types to libertarians and a few stereotypes in-between. Your generalization definitely does not apply here.
Sorry? Are not both statist GOP types and libertarians on the right? Are they not both capitalists, in favor of a system where property rights are primary?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Although the web forum is open to the public, it is hosted on a private server and as such is technically private property.
The server is property. The forum is information, and information is only property through copyright or patent.
What copyright or patent was violated here?
Trespassing isn't the right claim. Maybe fraud would be a better fit; making false representations in order to obtain a service. Or perhaps harassment.
(But of course, a right-leaning group is going to go for a property claim (however wrongheaded) since property rights are central to their philosophy (however wrongheaded).)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
... who approached who first. PGP going to NSA, or vice versa?
A few years ago, Network Associates gobbled up Trusted Information Systems - the folks who brought you the TIS Firewall Toolkit, and brought me my first job out of grad school. TIS was very cozy with the NSA (founder and many employees were ex-NSA), and did several research projects for them (including the one I worked on, Trusted Mach).
I don't know what the current organizational structure of Network Associates is, but I suspect that NAI labs may be the remains of TIS. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA came to Network Associates as the result of this relationship.
(In the interests of full disclosure: I'm a Network Associates stockholder.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
This reminds me of a bit I've come across many times from The Soul of a New Machine (I've never read the book itself, just keep seeing this reference). As the Jargon File puts it:
During one period [of the design of the Data General MV-8000 Eagle], when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter of resignation: "I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
Some days, that seems awfully temping.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
4 cents a mile isn't too bad compared to 3 cents a mile.
I have to wonder about the additional costs, though. Gas costs a lot more than what we pay at the pump - there are environmental costs, military costs to keep foreign oil flowing, and so on. And there are agricultural costs for non-sustainable methods that we don't pay for at the grocery store - topsoil erosion, nutrient run-off, water subsidies, et cetera. I'd guess that the extra costs on biodiesel would be far less than for petroleum.
Some years ago, Volkswagon (IIRC) had a hybrid electric concept car similar to the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight, but with a diesel engine for power the electric motor. I think a design like that coupled with biodiesel would rock.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Technically, biodiesel is Vegetable Oil Methyl Ester. It is formed be removing the triglyceride molecule from vegetable oil in the form of glycerin (soap). Once the glycerin is removed from the oil, the remaining molecules are, to a diesel engine, similar to petroleum diesel fuel. There are some notable differences. The biodiesel molecules are very simple hydrocarbon chains, containing no sulfur, ring molecules or aromatics associated with fossil fuels. Biodiesel is made up of almost 10% oxygen, making it a naturally "oxygenated" fuel.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
This idea that there is almost a conspiracy of scientists who are so involved in the existing paradigm that they deny our wonderful new trailblazers their proper due is a common trope of almost all pseudoscience.
It's true that it's a common argument of pseudoscience apolosgists. However, that doesn't mean it's not true. I think it was Bohr who said something to the effect that new theories largely take hold only because the defenders of old paradigms die off.
I don't mean to imply that such is the case here, just a general observation.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Where's your proof that the vast majority of murderes only comit one single violent crime in their entire life, please?
It's a vaugely remembered factoid from a criminal justice class. A few minutes with Google found this,
Homicide is rarely an offense that is recommitted. See Sellin, The Penalty of Death (1980) at 103-114; see "Prison Homicides, Recidivist Murder, and Life Imprisonment," in The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies Bedau, 1997) at 176-182.
Among capital murderers, even those predicted by jurors to be dangerous, my research has found that less than five percent, and usually only about
one percent, kill again. Marquart, supra at 462. See also Marquart and Sorensen, "A National Study of the Furman-Commuted Inmates: Assessing the Threat to Society from Capital Offenders," 23 Loy. of L.A.L.Rev. 5, 22-28 (1989); Sorensen, et al., "Two Decades After People v. Anderson," 24 Loy. of L.A.L.Rev. 45, 50-55 (1990).
but I don't have any other numbers.
The FACT remains that it was CCTV which lead to the arrest and detention of the evil scum who murdered him.
And the FACT remains that widespread video surveillance is an ideal tool for repression, something that (even if it's not at all the intent of the current government) make you less safe from state oppression, and that putting such a tool into place in return for a negligable - if any - gain in safety against ordinary violent criminals is not wise.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:cameras help prosecutors but DO NOT PREVENT CRI
on
Surveillance Society
·
· Score: 2
the only thing that prevents crime is more policemen walking the streets and being physically present wherever crime is happening to stop it first hand.
You can't put enough cops on the street to make it statistically likely that one will be around when you're being victimized. Increasing police presence has not reduced crime; in fact, the need for more police has resulted lower standards for recruitment and retention and led to increased misconduct.
We need not to create a special class of citizens with a monopoly on the capability to defend us (and thus, the means to oppress us); we need ordinary citizens who are capable and willing to defend themselves and others.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
They're not being put there to watch you, just to look over you. Be thankful.
Their looking over me does me not one whit of good. And the mechanism they use to watch over me turns into a strong mechanism of oppression at the whim of the state. Be afraid.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
This assumes that there is some dark force (a bunch of people) that want to push a 1984-esque society. In countries with functioning
democracy, this won't happen.
Uh, right.
Something like COINTELPRO could never happen in a democratic country.
And a democratic nation would never single out people of certain political beliefs (no matter how unworkable said beleif may be) and drag them before a committee on Un-American activities.
And something like the Holocaust could never be instituted by a democratically-elected government.
(Ok, you may now invoke Godwin's Law...)
Democracy is no guarantee of liberty; and building the infrastructure of oppression under the promise that "we'll never actually use this!" is foolish.
Cameras that help catching criminals make your country - or any other - no less free than the police makes it less free. They are on YOUR SIDE, can't you understand that?
The police are not on "my" side of anything. Police can do very little to directly protect you, and a hell of a lot to destroy your life. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the idea of large full-time professional police forces, at least as we currently structure them, is a failed experiment.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Slashdot Mirror
Flying, beside being more expensive, would take me longer since the airport is not in the heart of Manhattan. Intercity bus is cheaper but less reliable, less comfortable, and the bus terminals on both ends of the trip are less conveniently located. I couldn't sleep on the way up (or read on the way back) if I drove up, and parking in Manhattan is an expensive adventure.
But from now on, I'll be buying tickets with cash. Perhaps under the name Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst.
From
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Only if you're including alcohol as a drug. No other drug significantly potetiates violent behavior. (Though if a person with a disposition towards violence is under the influence of drugs, they may be difficult to stop due to inhibited pain response.)
The vast majority of drug related violenece is related to the black market (turf wars between dealers, junkies stealing to afford their fix, and so on), not to the pharacological effects of drugs themselves.
Odds are that pretty much everything you think you know about currently illegal drugs is wrongs.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's not about harming or hurting "society", which is a pretty abstract concept anyway. The state is, oddly enough, concerned mainly about you harming or hurting the state.
"A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it." - Henry David Thoreau
Let me introduce you to the Law of Eristic Escalation: Impostion of Order = Escalation of Chaos. As applied to government and safety, it means this: by imposing a stronger government to make sure your kids are safe, you create the very anti-government sentiment you fear. Consult any Taoist sage for more information.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Troll, stupidity, or ignorance? I'll assume the latter.
The most disturbing parts of the Florida Fraud had nothing to do with the balloting procedures (as illegal and immoral as those procedures were). Thousands of people with clean criminal records were taken off the voting rolls in a purported purge of "felons" performed by a private company. Police roadblocks harassed blacks on their way to the polls.
No. Not in a situation where certain areas are given technology known to undercount (both from usuablilty issues and physical failure), and others are given accurate vote tabulators.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Agreed, but part of what makes digital audio "magic" is that copy/move/share ability, which is exactly what's being targeted here. Digital audio that's locked in place on your harddrive and can only be accessed by certain "blessed" software isn't magic; it's either an almost useless pain in the ass, or a challenge to the Information Liberation Front.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
For what? For people sharing MP3s? Or for Microsoft's dominance of the home desktop?
Either someone will hack around this limitation and the patch will be as hard to quash as DeCSS, or you'll see this:
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Better yet, why not spend a little time learning to use LaTeX? If you're a grad student in a technical field, it's worth investing the time in learning a heavier-weight document preparation system.
If you're partial to a GUI front-end, I've had good experiences with Lyx. TeXmacs also looks interesting, but I haven't played with it yet.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
While some roots of property can be found in the behavior of other animals, we've built something new on top of those foundations. (Mixed metaphor, I know...)
Some animals do defend a hunting or ranging territory. However, this territory is usually communal, used by a pack, pride, or tribe. Individual animals may claim their own nest or den, but generally not acres of territory. That's because the territory is actually used by the animal for hunting or foraging, and one single animal can't occupy large amounts of land.
What we've added - and where much of the problem lies - is in what might be called "absentee ownership". The landlord does not use the land, but we call it his property. The stockholder often does not work in any way for the company, yet we call him an owner. The record company writes no songs, yet holds the copyright.
If our notion of property were limited to active involvement, we'd be much better off.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
There's actually some of this going on today.
I'm a bit fuzzy on details, but a few years ago I heard (from someone who worked in the field) about a project to resurrect old LANDSAT tapes from the 1970s. Someone figured out that the old data would make a great baseline for climate change studies, and the raw data could be processed in ways simply not possible 25 years ago.
The tapes were still around, stuck in a warehouse somewhere., To get them into a readable condition, they had to be slowly baked (in pizza ovens!) to drive out moisture they had absorbed, then scraped with a sapphire blade to...well, I forget why. Scrape off some gunk.
I believe they managed to dig some old recorders out of the scrapheap and get them working with the help of some old hands.
Wish I could recall more details, but that's all I know.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
There is a large difference - which neither the Marxists nor the extreme capitalsists grasp - between saying "Property right should not be the basis of a political philosophy" and saying "Property rights are useless."
Without private property, there can be no private decisions because everything turns into . But equally when private property is taken too far, there can be no private decisions - because it is the nature of property to fall into the control of a few, and then every step you take infringes on someone else's property rights.
Propery is a man-made tool we use to serve higher goals. Those who take property rights for natural rights make a serious error.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Troll, troll, go away, find a better way to play.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The server is property. The forum is information, and information is only property through copyright or patent.
What copyright or patent was violated here?
Trespassing isn't the right claim. Maybe fraud would be a better fit; making false representations in order to obtain a service. Or perhaps harassment.
(But of course, a right-leaning group is going to go for a property claim (however wrongheaded) since property rights are central to their philosophy (however wrongheaded).)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
A few years ago, Network Associates gobbled up Trusted Information Systems - the folks who brought you the TIS Firewall Toolkit, and brought me my first job out of grad school. TIS was very cozy with the NSA (founder and many employees were ex-NSA), and did several research projects for them (including the one I worked on, Trusted Mach).
I don't know what the current organizational structure of Network Associates is, but I suspect that NAI labs may be the remains of TIS. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA came to Network Associates as the result of this relationship.
(In the interests of full disclosure: I'm a Network Associates stockholder.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Someone want to 'splain the "FTP" thing to me? Please? Thanks.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
This reminds me of a bit I've come across many times from The Soul of a New Machine (I've never read the book itself, just keep seeing this reference). As the Jargon File puts it:
Some days, that seems awfully temping.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I have to wonder about the additional costs, though. Gas costs a lot more than what we pay at the pump - there are environmental costs, military costs to keep foreign oil flowing, and so on. And there are agricultural costs for non-sustainable methods that we don't pay for at the grocery store - topsoil erosion, nutrient run-off, water subsidies, et cetera. I'd guess that the extra costs on biodiesel would be far less than for petroleum.
Some years ago, Volkswagon (IIRC) had a hybrid electric concept car similar to the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight, but with a diesel engine for power the electric motor. I think a design like that coupled with biodiesel would rock.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Making biodiesel fuels usually involves some chemical processing of the oil.
From biodiesel.com, Pacific Biodiesel's website:
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's true that it's a common argument of pseudoscience apolosgists. However, that doesn't mean it's not true. I think it was Bohr who said something to the effect that new theories largely take hold only because the defenders of old paradigms die off.
I don't mean to imply that such is the case here, just a general observation.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's a vaugely remembered factoid from a criminal justice class. A few minutes with Google found this,
but I don't have any other numbers. And the FACT remains that widespread video surveillance is an ideal tool for repression, something that (even if it's not at all the intent of the current government) make you less safe from state oppression, and that putting such a tool into place in return for a negligable - if any - gain in safety against ordinary violent criminals is not wise.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You can't put enough cops on the street to make it statistically likely that one will be around when you're being victimized. Increasing police presence has not reduced crime; in fact, the need for more police has resulted lower standards for recruitment and retention and led to increased misconduct.
We need not to create a special class of citizens with a monopoly on the capability to defend us (and thus, the means to oppress us); we need ordinary citizens who are capable and willing to defend themselves and others.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Uh, right.
Something like COINTELPRO could never happen in a democratic country.
And a democratic nation would never single out people of certain political beliefs (no matter how unworkable said beleif may be) and drag them before a committee on Un-American activities.
And something like the Holocaust could never be instituted by a democratically-elected government. (Ok, you may now invoke Godwin's Law...)
Democracy is no guarantee of liberty; and building the infrastructure of oppression under the promise that "we'll never actually use this!" is foolish.
The police are not on "my" side of anything. Police can do very little to directly protect you, and a hell of a lot to destroy your life. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the idea of large full-time professional police forces, at least as we currently structure them, is a failed experiment.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/