but in truth it is precisely because the terrorists don't care that we must be prepared so that our safety and continued survival does not depend in any way upon any level of cooperation from them or lack of care on the part of the terrorists so that *when* they decide to strike again we will be ready for them. They caught us unprepared on 9/11 yes, but it is a testament to the vigilance and professionalism of our security forces that we have not been hit again. I do not subscribe to the theory that we have merely been lucky since 9/11, especially in light of the fact that we are fighting a drawn out conflict against a ruthless, clever, and stubborn enemy (religious fanatics are the worst kind)...if they *could* have hit us again then they certainly would have done so already.
The WTC, the symbol of everything the US means: Money.
Better that than religious fanaticism and Taliban-style theocracy. The Freedom Tower will take its place at the WTC complex as a fitting tribute to the fallen and a testament to our will to survive into the future in spite of our enemies.
A president of yours said even said "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself".
and he was wrong, those were different times, simpler and more innocent, but the world has changed and those who fail to change along with it will be among the first to fall when the crap really hits the fan.
As for your comments about fear and paranoia you picked the wrong case to back your argument and pitched it to the wrong audience. Do we want to live in a police state? No, but on the other hand she was either *very* stupid (in a common sense sort of way) or *remarkably* naive in her choice of dress and conduct in the airport. Frankly, the world probably would have got along just fine without her and there is some value in letting the terrorists know that we are bringing our 'A' game when it comes to security. The crowd here on Slashdot, including myself, is by nature paranoid as evidenced by our extensive collective fascination with the minutiae of security, encryption, surveillance, and other related topics...situational awareness...its not just for the "other guy" anymore.
Who are also, with high probability, among the most insulated, sheltered, and introverted young people that you are likely to find living anywhere in the United States today. This seems to be a common flaw among the highly intelligent individuals who are attracted to institutions of higher learning. I should know because I used to be among them before I graduated and began living in a world populated by my street smart peers from highschool with less formal education, but a five year head start in the street smarts department. Fortunately, I quickly developed some good sense before anything terrible happened, but as this incident at the airport proves it is sometimes better to be lucky than smart...book smart that is.
The fact that she had something in her hand only increases the level of suspicion, especially when combined with all of the other elements which you have outlined, in my mind. It turned out to be putty, but if you were a security guard then how would you know *what* exactly she was holding in her hand (remember that you get only a brief glance at her entire person before you must react)? It could have just as well been the detonator switch for the "device" integrated into her sweatshirt. The silly girl certainly is fortunate that she was in the United States and not in for example, Israel or near the El-Al terminal when she was confronted. The Israeli security guards would have shot her on sight if she approached them wearing a sweatshirt with flashing LEDs and appeared to be holding something in her hand. The post 9/11 world is no place for the security naive person.
Refusing to rubber-stamp US wars of aggression doesn't make them corrupt or incompetent.
Perhaps not, but do not completely discount the use of force. If there is a line in the sand that your enemies *know* you won't cross then they can always back you down for the price of some sanctions that will further oppress the people that they are already crushing under the heels of their boots while doing nothing to curb the luxuries that your enemies continue to enjoy. The UN is just about worthless at maintaining the peace, because they have no credible military power and no will to use it even if they did have it. All they can do is provide a forum for pacifists to wring their hats in their hands, purse their lips, and beg the Sudanese government to please stop the Janjaweed militias...pretty please? Please, the UN talks and the African Union and UN "peacekeepers" sit in their barracks while the Janjaweed loot, pillage, rape, and kill with impunity. Diplomacy without the ultimate and credible threat of violence to back it up is useless in the real world that we actually live in.
He could have just as well used his laptop or went to the nearest public computer terminal with internet access and looked up the same information on any number of free online databases (Amazon perhaps?). It is almost certain that just about *any* source other than the campus bookstore will be cheaper or at least no more expensive. The textbook racket is really annoying and while some profs are cool about it and publish notes and exercises on the course website, others, especially profs who have written their own book and insist upon using the "latest edition" in the course, can really be jerks because they are getting payola from the publishers for sales of their book. If all else fails then there is always the local copy store to copy the problems or book specific portions when needed.
I mean why is it they can afford me calling my friends after 6pm which uses roughly 9.6kbit/sec for FREE
I could be wrong, being that I am not a telecommunications engineer, but I seem to remember that SMS and text messaging was treated differently from voice by the GSM and CDMA technologies. It has to do with bandwidth allocated for different types of uses by the network whereby voice receives the largest portion of the bandwidth while SMS and text operates on the "command" channel which is more limited in bandwidth and therefore commands (pun intended) a higher price per use than one minute of voice conversation. It would seem that such concerns would be largely eliminated in a VOIP digital network (since data is data after all...voice, video, or text) so this may be a holdover from the days when cell phones were using analog networks? Perhaps someone with greater knowledge of the cell networks could better answer this question in detail, but I believe that the crux of the matter lies in the separate treatment of voice, data, and text by the network providers resulting in asymmetric usage pricing.
As an engineer I am primarily concerned with the anticircumvention part of the DMCA (section 1201) which states that the circumvention of "access mechanisms" is illegal, with only a few narrow statutory exemptions. The problem is that the narrow statutory exemptions which are too narrow to cover the wide range of technologies and scientific research which *could* be quashed under the DMCA because it is not automatically covered by an exemption, thus allowing copyright holders and their attorneys to use litigation or threat thereof against any new technology, no matter what it is designed to do, which might potentially be used to infringe their copyright. This is *tremendously* harmful to society in that our current economic growth and increased living standards have come about in no small part because of the explosion of new technologies which appeared after the Betamax decision. No doubt the entertainment cartel would love to outlaw the digital to analog converter, the magnetic storage device, and any number of other general use technologies which they deem to be "inconvenient" or a "nuisance" to their obsolete business models, but we engineers object to the notion that reverse engineering, a time honored tradition in our field, is illegal or wrong without any regard whatsoever for intent (as you said) which is essentially what the DMCA says. The DMCA was written by and for the entertainment industry and their lawyers and passed by lawmakers who did not appreciate the level of harm that was inherent in that one little anticircumvention clause. Why should the maker of general purpose DAC chips that are used in everything from automobiles to satellites have to deal with the entertainment lobby and their lawyers for a technology which has been widely and reliably used for decades over some "cop chip" bullcrap? They can take their Britney Spears craptastic "entertainment" and shove it up their collective asses for all I care, but I draw the line when they begin interfering with the development of fundamental new technologies that will be used in countless devices collectively worth trillions of dollars to "protect" a measly few billion dollars of entertainment revenue.
I think that's a really important part of our copyright owners' quiver of arrows to defend themselves.
Yes, and they have been using those arrows to shoot consumers and researchers full of holes. Look at how the DMCA has been used in practice since its inception: suing makers of compatible garage door openers, suing manufacturers of printer ink cartridge refills, suing university researchers, and basically causing substantial legal hassles for anyone that the copyright holder doesn't like (most of the cases are eventually thrown out). Meanwhile there are still 1-2 dollar DVDs available at flea markets, bazaars, and on street corners just about everywhere, downloads are still going full tilt, and legitimate customers are being harassed while the commercial pirates are not even inconvenienced. The bottom line is that we, as a society, have paid a high cost for this DMCA without achieving any noticeable progress towards the goals that it was designed to address. The DMCA clauses which make reverse engineering illegal under any circumstance which is not specifically granted an exemption for fair use need to be repealed. The burden should be upon the copyright holder to prove that the specific instance of reverse engineering is being used to infringe their copyright, not upon the reverse engineer to prove that whatever they are doing is not infringement.
While it is only my personal opinion, I would surmise that it has something to do with the relative lack of a strong cultural imperative against failure here in the United States, or at least no to the extent or consequence that it exists in Asian cultures. In fact, we in the United States idealize and lionize the risk takers and entrepreneurs, even when they fail, for their rugged individualism, freedom, and willingness to go their own way rather than conform to what the system expects of the average person. This cultural imperative is deeply seeded into the American psyche, especially among males (but females as well), as part of a long tradition of pioneers and risk takers who drove themselves to succeed in spite of failures and setbacks encountered along the way.
Now contrast this with the Asian cultural imperative to succeed but also to regard failure as shameful in that it causes one to lose face in the eyes of ones peers or social equals and, perhaps even worse, in the eyes of ones' subordinates or underlings. I have heard that it said that young men in Asian cultures, particularly the first born sons, are constantly and relentlessly pressured to succeed without failing or losing face along the way when in fact it is this very fear of failure that prevents many of them from achieving the successes to which they aspire. Is it any wonder then that some of them, finding the real world to difficult to deal with or success, whether that be academic, social, or monetary, seemingly impossible to attain, retreat excessively into the realm of fantasy where they can succeed and fail without being identified or stigmatized by those failures which they experienced along the way to their virtual success?
Perhaps it is just me, but I have noticed this same dichotomy again and again in my dealings with foreign workers, especially those from the "face saving" cultures (India, Korea, and Japan).
As you so aptly pointed out, most users (and managers) just approach IT with a demand to "please install this" only it is really an order and not a request. The users have needs yes, but often times that have already decided that a particular piece of software is "ideal" for their needs based upon the word of a salesman without even asking IT. You say that you are tired of IT thinking that they know more about your job than you do, but really that is exactly what you are doing to IT when you have already selected whatever software that you are going to use lock stock and barrel without consulting IT first about what it is that you are trying to do or asking for suggestions or an opinion on the software or possible alternatives. Remember that IT has to be concerned with what is best for all of the users and the network, not just your immediate needs. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to dissuade a user from a poor software selection merely because they heard a good sales pitch at their last conference where the salesman told them to "just ignore IT objections, because they don't know what they are talking about"...yeah and that salesman doesn't have a horse in the game either way right? wrong.
The problem is responsibility. The IT department doesn't want to be responsible for a poor software choice that they had absolutely no input on and for which there were any number of superior alternatives. You might say that everyone wants to go to the party, but nobody wants to hang around afterwards to clean up the mess and it is always the IT department that is left without a chair when the music stops (even if IT did not champion the culprit software and was ordered to "just install it").
If your current IT environment isn't capable of supporting my needs then fix it.
It is often the case that this requires money which nobody ever wants to provide for more "expensive IT toys" and so problems go on until they become so notorious that somebody higher up actually approves a last minute purchase or budgets staff time to research and fix the problem.
The USB thumb drive issue is more of an issue when autorun is enabled. I don't know about you, but I disable Autorun on all drives with group policy on all of my computers. I suppose that it is still possible that a virus could exploit the mounting procedure in Windows to execute code, but disabling autorun substantially raises the bar of difficulty for a potential attacker. The other problem is removal of sensitive data off site, but realistically an employee who is out to get you could just as well burn a CD or print sensitive documents and leave the laying around so that will always be a risk no matter what type of removable storage or printing policy is configured.
I think that the real problem is responsibility. If 'power users' want these types of privileges then they should have to sign off on a statement absolving the IT department of responsibility for the consequences (i.e. we may help you if this fails provided that we have some spare time and we are feeling nice, but don't count on it...otherwise we are just going to restore an image on your machine and be done with it when you ask us to 'just make it work'). The problem, as it stands now, with most users is that they don't care because its 'not their problem' when things go down.
So essentially you agree with parent, since governments of the world mostly behave as big capital lapdogs.
The difference is that he blames the corporations for intelligent play while I blame the governments for the bad policies which allow the exploitation in the first place. This is why it is important to educate our children in economics so that they, and by extension their governments, will have the ability to make better economic policy and financial judgments at both the personal (i.e. not taking out a home mortgage with bad terms and then begging the government to bail them out) and national level (i.e. no more spending on socialist and populist programs that do not produce economic growth and fuel inflation and foreign debt).
It's like being the stockholder. Every unpleasant thing happening to the big company is done "Because the stockholder wants the money for his investment back". But when did they ask me if I wanted to finance wars to get more money from my investment? I'd think something like that would at least require a signature or at least checking a small square somewhere in the contract for buying the shares?
Do you actually own any shares (directly, not through mutual funds) in a publicly traded company? If you don't like the policies of the board, for whatever reason, then there are number of different things that you, the shareholder, can do. First, withhold your votes for reelection of board members with whom you disagree (assuming that you hold voting class shares). Second, lobby for provisions on the proxy ballots that would change corporate policies to prohibit the undesirable corporate behavior so that the voting shareholders (possibly including yourself) can vote on them. Finally, show up at the company meeting and talk in person with the executives and the board members (a lot of shareholders don't actually show up to most shareholder meetings so you may find a receptive audience even if your relative holding in the company is small).
As for your points on trade, whose fault is it if the government does not provide law and order or doesn't spend its tax and trade revenue in the ways that the people of the nations want? People tend to want to kill trade instead of blaming their government for the mistakes that it is making with regard to trade.
There is no reason we should not set some minimal standards for wages, environment, worker protection, etc,, in our trade agreements.
How about less goods and services from China? I would bet that most Americans, when asked if they prefer higher prices at Walmart in exchange for better wages, worker protection, and environmental protections in China would probably tell you they want lower prices and more American jobs (workers in China be damned as far as they are concerned).
If China wants to sell to the USA then it has to offer something other than slave wages and a willingness to wreck the environment beyond what anyone in a democratic country would tolerate.
Says who? China is a sovereign country and they will run their afairs how they choose. You will never win with "forcing" China to comply. Did you know that companies that have tried to "enforce" standards end up with wiley Chinese factory managers keeping multiple sets of books (one "real" set and one "fake" set for the foreign inspectors), coach workers on how to respond to inspector questions, and generally do whatever it takes to get around such restrictions?
So now what? When one sovereign country tells another one to "shove it" (i.e. negotiations have failed or broken down) then there are really only two basic options: (1) Trade / economic sanctions (i.e. I am taking my ball and going home) OR (2) War (i.e. do what we want or we will kick your butt)
We don't have to eliminate all of China's competetive advantage, but let's set some standards below which no one is allowed to sink.
And what if the Chinese say, "No" to your standards?
For starters, how about some real regulation of industry so they don't ship toys with lead paint on them?
There is no need to "regulate" it per se so long imported products are inspected for safety and the information is passed on to consumers, the market will take care of the problem itself. Would you as a parent allow your child to touch any of those toys on the recal list with a ten foot pole? I think not and so those companies either clean up their act or go out of business. Companies pay attention when sales drop from millions of dollars to zero in the space of a day.
During the Cold War, many people bought into this propaganda that Capitalism == Goodness and Light and any interference with the market == Stalinism. But now we're seeing how that really isn't the case.
The reason people bought into this "propaganda" is because it is mostly correct (not the Stalinism part mind you) in that markets work and governments don't. The market and the government both have roles to play, but generally speaking interference in the marketplace is counterproductive although it is *sometimes* required to maintain competition (i.e. private players and rent seekers are always looking for ways to "corner" markets and sometimes the government has to nip cheating in the bud before the consequences damage the markets).
Multinationals use international trade regulations to their advantage.
They play the game according to the rules that the governments of the world set. If you dont like the rules then blame some of those governments for allowing themselves to be duped. In the case of those governments that are totalitarian the people are going to screwed in any case so what is the difference? There are some countries that we the United States won't do business with after all for that reason, although certain European nations are not so particular (especially when they think that nobody is watching).
By aligning with lending groups like the IMF, multinationals use national debt recovery to force laws through that require full employment and cuts to social welfare systems so that taxes can be levied and surplus budgets can be made to repay international debt.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. If those countries choose to borrow from the IMF and or its member nations and by extension us (they are essentially borrowing from European and American taxpayers) then is it unreasonable for us their creditors to insist upon the adoption or abandonment of certain policies which caused the borrows to be in a position where a loan was needed in the first place?
The result: the poor are forced into indentured servitude because they can no longer get social services and those that had higher wages and supported the poor through their taxes end up with reduced pay because the employer is "forced" to employ more people with the same amount of money (which is the actual multinational goal).
That doesn't make any sense. For example, suppose that the high wage earner "paid" for social services for three other people who were unemployed through taxes. How is it any different for him if he is paid less, but pays less tax, and thos three unemployed people now work along side him. The money is redistributed either way but the end result of the distribution in everyone's pocket would be roughly the same. As for the social services, the government probably could not afford to provide those services in the first place, that is why they went seeking the IMF loan to avoid an economic meltdown (you cannot consume what you do not have after all, no matter how much paper money you print).
Since they have more work for the same investment in labor they have a higher output and greater profit margin as a result. This is widespread and systematic and replaces American jobs with foreign servitude, and the trend goes all the way to the top of management - labor goes overseas and the management eventually does too.
Please re-read the chapter on trade in you economics textbook, trade is a good thing, it alows all of us to produce and consume more then we could have otherwise without the trade. Do you want everyone to share equally in their misery or do you want to distribute wealth? Protectionism gives you the former while trade delivers the later.
Why is it that Liberals are always so against the IMF and the World Bank? These organizations exist to help end poverty and provide emergency loans to governments so that economic chaos doesn't result in a general breakdown of civilized society with wars, violence, mass migrations, looting, etc. The world would be a much more "interesting" place (in the ancient Chinese curse sort of way, "may you live in interesting times") without the IMF, World Bank, and indeed the United States. Be careful what you wish for.
They would never pay that wage to locals in any case. If they were somehow forced to pay that level of wage then they would probably prefer to hire Americans and other western educated peoples instead. This is the same reason why unions *always* support minimum wages and high labor standards and it is not out of the goodness of their hearts or their concern for foreign workers (although they would like you to think so). No, they know that if employers are forced to pay a high minimum wage for workers then the employers will prefered the skilled or union labor over the labor of lesser educated or untrained workers in foreign countries. The minimum wage laws hurt all workers who are not in the unions and new workers (i.e. workers who are just starting out) and foreign workers in second and third world countries especially. If you required Nike to pay $7.25 per hour then not only would you pay more for shoes, but the people in those foreign countries would all lose their jobs and I don't think that they would thank you for that ($7.25 per hour mandatory minimum wage is meaningless if nobody will actually hire you for that amount). I really wish that Liberals would pick up and read their economics textbooks before making such silly assertions and suggestions concerning wages, prices, globalization, etc. Are there problems? Yes, but offering solutions which every econ 101 student knows to be flawed doesn't really help either.
The spectrum is not sold, it is leased under contract. The only difference here is that the price of the lease is determined by auction and not simply set ahead of time by the seller. If the winner of the leasehold does not meet the terms of the contract then the FCC should turn around and re-auction the lease to somebody else. However, the scheme that you suggest would result in a very serious case of Tragedy of the Commons as every device fought for spectrum and interfered with everything else. Have you every tried using your WiFi, cordless phone, baby monitor, and the microwave all at the same time? The 2.4 ghz and other unregulated bands are full of noise and interference and the entire spectrum, or at least the really desirable parts like 700 mhz, would be just as bad if the government did not regulate access to the common resource (i.e. EM spectrum).
Apparently, the Lunokhod 1 and the Luna 17 lander were sold by auction for $68500 in 1993 at Sotheby's in New York. The auction catalog listing described the spacecraft as "resting on the surface of the moon". Given that the rover and lander have been on the Moon in the Sea of Rains since November 17, 1970 at 03:47 UTC does this mean that the current owner can collect the bounty?
I think of these things any time a libertarian says, "Business can do things more efficiently!"
In defense of libertarians: the nice thing about business is that they go out of business (i.e. bankruptcy) whereas governments are much harder to get rid off once they are entrenched into an inefficient position (i.e. governments cannot go bankrupt, at lest not in the traditional sense that the entity is dissolved). Businesses come and go and that is fine as the market weeds out the less efficient players, but governments are always there and can be very difficult to remove or replace once they get into a spending program funded by taxes and backed up by police power to collect.
It is ironic that they very objectives that municipalities set for programs of Smart Growth very often result in precisely the opposite effects, increasing or exacerbating the undesirable elements that they seek to control. For example, in Portland Oregon they have filled in left turn pockets with planter boxes, installed "speed tables" and other "traffic calming" obstacle courses (if you were in a hurry would you be happy about having to slow down to navigate an obstacle course in your vehicle? Would that make you calmer once you exited the course or would you romp on the gas in anger and frustration to make up for lost time as you entered the freeway or the main traffic corridor?), removed parking spaces, provided too few parking spaces, and done many other misguided things in pursuit of the goal of "getting people out of their cars". After 15+ years what has been the result of these policies? Snarled traffic, increased traffic, traffic idling in slow speed stop and go driving, increased smog from more vehicles operating in the most inefficient speed and rpm range for the internal combustion engine. Basically every problem that they hopped to solve with their "Smart Growth" has in fact been made worse or even created new problems (i.e. dramatically increased smog) on top of the old ones. Portland is *worse* off because of Smart Growth and it would have been better off if they simply done nothing or at least abstained from some of the more no sense recommendations of the "Smart Growth" activists and consultants.
It all boils down to basic economics. People will do what they want and live how they want and you cannot tell them, "The elite smart growth planners are going to tell you what it is that you *really* want (i.e. less parking) and then enforce it upon you against your will." That type of centrally planned, command and control economic or social policy has not worked and will never work. It is the height of hubris and arrogance to presume that you can change other people's lives and preferences through mandates, laws, and enforcement actions. If people cannot work within the system then they find ways around it and the economic results of the workarounds are often *highly* suboptimal resulting in a Dead Weight Loss to the economy.
no one can predict how a jury will vote. it's a 50/50 shot.
That is one of the best parts about them. They have the potential to be a great equalizer in a dispute between powerful organizations and average citizens. What do you figure your chances would be in the absence of such an accommodation? Slim to none perhaps?
they will move to voluntarily dismiss their own case, as they did in Capitol v. Foster, Interscope v. Leadbetter, Priority Records v. Candy Chan, Elektra v. Santangelo, and others.
They should not be able to escape paying the attorney fees of the defendant, particularly if the case is dismissed by the judge with prejudice and the defendant should definitely make the case to the judge that the entire action brought by the RIAA was frivolous and deserves to be punished with an award of attorney fees. The RIAA should not be able to jerk people around for no cost other than their own attorney and court filing fees, especially not when their case is frivolous, and moving to dismiss your own action when you feel that the tide is turning against you should definitely be taken as strong evidence of frivolousness (i.e. the burden should be upon the plaintiff to prove that his withdrawal by moving for dismissal of his own case is not frivolous and that should be a heavy burden in order to deter frivolous actions which waste the court's time).
Although I do use AdBlock and NoScript I have to say that this publisher is right on in his analysis. If I were a publisher and the advertisers wanted to pay me based soley upon "impressions" then I would tell them to get lost. The other server operators and publishers should pay attention to this guy. If his content is good and there are lots of good comments then not only am I going to spend more time on his site, possibly leaving a comment or two and further enhancing his Google search rank, but I *might* actually add him to my whitelist in AdBlock and NoScript (and believe me...that is a *very* elite group of sites on my client). I say more power to him for adroit handling of his advertising contracts and smart approach to building readership and community on his web properties. He will reap the rewards of his winning strategy.
Issue a 403 Forbidden, say your server will not talk to Adblock users and call it a day.
There are probably many server operators out there who would like nothing better, but as it stands right now the appearance of advanced client side tools like AdBlock and NoScript has caught the server operators unprepared to filter based upon whether certain content was delivered or not and good remote detection of add-ons or plugins is either spotty or easily circumvented by the client or just not generally possible. Think of it this way...for many years the web masters and the advertisers had the upper hand with their popup, popunder, flashing banners, and finally (the last insult) rich media ads. Now the users have been given some powerful tools with which to fight back and will enjoy some period of payback until the server side tools catch up. You might complain that you are an honest web master who is caught up in the collateral damage of a larger war going on right now between aggressive advertisers and site operators and informed and fed up users who own a compiler and aren't afraid to use it and there have been casualties on both sides since this war began (I know people who had "given up" on the Internet under the crushing load of spam and ads prior to AdBlock, NoScript, and SpamBayes), but as for the site operators, to quote Winston Churchill, "They sowed the wind and now they shall reap the whirlwind." Welcome to the jungle.
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Well, you obviously don't have an axe to grind...
but in truth it is precisely because the terrorists don't care that we must be prepared so that our safety and continued survival does not depend in any way upon any level of cooperation from them or lack of care on the part of the terrorists so that *when* they decide to strike again we will be ready for them. They caught us unprepared on 9/11 yes, but it is a testament to the vigilance and professionalism of our security forces that we have not been hit again. I do not subscribe to the theory that we have merely been lucky since 9/11, especially in light of the fact that we are fighting a drawn out conflict against a ruthless, clever, and stubborn enemy (religious fanatics are the worst kind)...if they *could* have hit us again then they certainly would have done so already.
The WTC, the symbol of everything the US means: Money.
Better that than religious fanaticism and Taliban-style theocracy. The Freedom Tower will take its place at the WTC complex as a fitting tribute to the fallen and a testament to our will to survive into the future in spite of our enemies.
A president of yours said even said "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself".
and he was wrong, those were different times, simpler and more innocent, but the world has changed and those who fail to change along with it will be among the first to fall when the crap really hits the fan.
As for your comments about fear and paranoia you picked the wrong case to back your argument and pitched it to the wrong audience. Do we want to live in a police state? No, but on the other hand she was either *very* stupid (in a common sense sort of way) or *remarkably* naive in her choice of dress and conduct in the airport. Frankly, the world probably would have got along just fine without her and there is some value in letting the terrorists know that we are bringing our 'A' game when it comes to security. The crowd here on Slashdot, including myself, is by nature paranoid as evidenced by our extensive collective fascination with the minutiae of security, encryption, surveillance, and other related topics...situational awareness...its not just for the "other guy" anymore.
MIT pumping out the best and brightest I see.
Who are also, with high probability, among the most insulated, sheltered, and introverted young people that you are likely to find living anywhere in the United States today. This seems to be a common flaw among the highly intelligent individuals who are attracted to institutions of higher learning. I should know because I used to be among them before I graduated and began living in a world populated by my street smart peers from highschool with less formal education, but a five year head start in the street smarts department. Fortunately, I quickly developed some good sense before anything terrible happened, but as this incident at the airport proves it is sometimes better to be lucky than smart...book smart that is.
The fact that she had something in her hand only increases the level of suspicion, especially when combined with all of the other elements which you have outlined, in my mind. It turned out to be putty, but if you were a security guard then how would you know *what* exactly she was holding in her hand (remember that you get only a brief glance at her entire person before you must react)? It could have just as well been the detonator switch for the "device" integrated into her sweatshirt. The silly girl certainly is fortunate that she was in the United States and not in for example, Israel or near the El-Al terminal when she was confronted. The Israeli security guards would have shot her on sight if she approached them wearing a sweatshirt with flashing LEDs and appeared to be holding something in her hand. The post 9/11 world is no place for the security naive person.
Refusing to rubber-stamp US wars of aggression doesn't make them corrupt or incompetent.
Perhaps not, but do not completely discount the use of force. If there is a line in the sand that your enemies *know* you won't cross then they can always back you down for the price of some sanctions that will further oppress the people that they are already crushing under the heels of their boots while doing nothing to curb the luxuries that your enemies continue to enjoy. The UN is just about worthless at maintaining the peace, because they have no credible military power and no will to use it even if they did have it. All they can do is provide a forum for pacifists to wring their hats in their hands, purse their lips, and beg the Sudanese government to please stop the Janjaweed militias...pretty please? Please, the UN talks and the African Union and UN "peacekeepers" sit in their barracks while the Janjaweed loot, pillage, rape, and kill with impunity. Diplomacy without the ultimate and credible threat of violence to back it up is useless in the real world that we actually live in.
He could have just as well used his laptop or went to the nearest public computer terminal with internet access and looked up the same information on any number of free online databases (Amazon perhaps?). It is almost certain that just about *any* source other than the campus bookstore will be cheaper or at least no more expensive. The textbook racket is really annoying and while some profs are cool about it and publish notes and exercises on the course website, others, especially profs who have written their own book and insist upon using the "latest edition" in the course, can really be jerks because they are getting payola from the publishers for sales of their book. If all else fails then there is always the local copy store to copy the problems or book specific portions when needed.
I mean why is it they can afford me calling my friends after 6pm which uses roughly 9.6kbit/sec for FREE
I could be wrong, being that I am not a telecommunications engineer, but I seem to remember that SMS and text messaging was treated differently from voice by the GSM and CDMA technologies. It has to do with bandwidth allocated for different types of uses by the network whereby voice receives the largest portion of the bandwidth while SMS and text operates on the "command" channel which is more limited in bandwidth and therefore commands (pun intended) a higher price per use than one minute of voice conversation. It would seem that such concerns would be largely eliminated in a VOIP digital network (since data is data after all...voice, video, or text) so this may be a holdover from the days when cell phones were using analog networks? Perhaps someone with greater knowledge of the cell networks could better answer this question in detail, but I believe that the crux of the matter lies in the separate treatment of voice, data, and text by the network providers resulting in asymmetric usage pricing.
As an engineer I am primarily concerned with the anticircumvention part of the DMCA (section 1201) which states that the circumvention of "access mechanisms" is illegal, with only a few narrow statutory exemptions. The problem is that the narrow statutory exemptions which are too narrow to cover the wide range of technologies and scientific research which *could* be quashed under the DMCA because it is not automatically covered by an exemption, thus allowing copyright holders and their attorneys to use litigation or threat thereof against any new technology, no matter what it is designed to do, which might potentially be used to infringe their copyright. This is *tremendously* harmful to society in that our current economic growth and increased living standards have come about in no small part because of the explosion of new technologies which appeared after the Betamax decision. No doubt the entertainment cartel would love to outlaw the digital to analog converter, the magnetic storage device, and any number of other general use technologies which they deem to be "inconvenient" or a "nuisance" to their obsolete business models, but we engineers object to the notion that reverse engineering, a time honored tradition in our field, is illegal or wrong without any regard whatsoever for intent (as you said) which is essentially what the DMCA says. The DMCA was written by and for the entertainment industry and their lawyers and passed by lawmakers who did not appreciate the level of harm that was inherent in that one little anticircumvention clause. Why should the maker of general purpose DAC chips that are used in everything from automobiles to satellites have to deal with the entertainment lobby and their lawyers for a technology which has been widely and reliably used for decades over some "cop chip" bullcrap? They can take their Britney Spears craptastic "entertainment" and shove it up their collective asses for all I care, but I draw the line when they begin interfering with the development of fundamental new technologies that will be used in countless devices collectively worth trillions of dollars to "protect" a measly few billion dollars of entertainment revenue.
I think that's a really important part of our copyright owners' quiver of arrows to defend themselves.
Yes, and they have been using those arrows to shoot consumers and researchers full of holes. Look at how the DMCA has been used in practice since its inception: suing makers of compatible garage door openers, suing manufacturers of printer ink cartridge refills, suing university researchers, and basically causing substantial legal hassles for anyone that the copyright holder doesn't like (most of the cases are eventually thrown out). Meanwhile there are still 1-2 dollar DVDs available at flea markets, bazaars, and on street corners just about everywhere, downloads are still going full tilt, and legitimate customers are being harassed while the commercial pirates are not even inconvenienced. The bottom line is that we, as a society, have paid a high cost for this DMCA without achieving any noticeable progress towards the goals that it was designed to address. The DMCA clauses which make reverse engineering illegal under any circumstance which is not specifically granted an exemption for fair use need to be repealed. The burden should be upon the copyright holder to prove that the specific instance of reverse engineering is being used to infringe their copyright, not upon the reverse engineer to prove that whatever they are doing is not infringement.
While it is only my personal opinion, I would surmise that it has something to do with the relative lack of a strong cultural imperative against failure here in the United States, or at least no to the extent or consequence that it exists in Asian cultures. In fact, we in the United States idealize and lionize the risk takers and entrepreneurs, even when they fail, for their rugged individualism, freedom, and willingness to go their own way rather than conform to what the system expects of the average person. This cultural imperative is deeply seeded into the American psyche, especially among males (but females as well), as part of a long tradition of pioneers and risk takers who drove themselves to succeed in spite of failures and setbacks encountered along the way.
Now contrast this with the Asian cultural imperative to succeed but also to regard failure as shameful in that it causes one to lose face in the eyes of ones peers or social equals and, perhaps even worse, in the eyes of ones' subordinates or underlings. I have heard that it said that young men in Asian cultures, particularly the first born sons, are constantly and relentlessly pressured to succeed without failing or losing face along the way when in fact it is this very fear of failure that prevents many of them from achieving the successes to which they aspire. Is it any wonder then that some of them, finding the real world to difficult to deal with or success, whether that be academic, social, or monetary, seemingly impossible to attain, retreat excessively into the realm of fantasy where they can succeed and fail without being identified or stigmatized by those failures which they experienced along the way to their virtual success?
Perhaps it is just me, but I have noticed this same dichotomy again and again in my dealings with foreign workers, especially those from the "face saving" cultures (India, Korea, and Japan).
As you so aptly pointed out, most users (and managers) just approach IT with a demand to "please install this" only it is really an order and not a request. The users have needs yes, but often times that have already decided that a particular piece of software is "ideal" for their needs based upon the word of a salesman without even asking IT. You say that you are tired of IT thinking that they know more about your job than you do, but really that is exactly what you are doing to IT when you have already selected whatever software that you are going to use lock stock and barrel without consulting IT first about what it is that you are trying to do or asking for suggestions or an opinion on the software or possible alternatives. Remember that IT has to be concerned with what is best for all of the users and the network, not just your immediate needs. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to dissuade a user from a poor software selection merely because they heard a good sales pitch at their last conference where the salesman told them to "just ignore IT objections, because they don't know what they are talking about"...yeah and that salesman doesn't have a horse in the game either way right? wrong.
The problem is responsibility. The IT department doesn't want to be responsible for a poor software choice that they had absolutely no input on and for which there were any number of superior alternatives. You might say that everyone wants to go to the party, but nobody wants to hang around afterwards to clean up the mess and it is always the IT department that is left without a chair when the music stops (even if IT did not champion the culprit software and was ordered to "just install it").
If your current IT environment isn't capable of supporting my needs then fix it.
It is often the case that this requires money which nobody ever wants to provide for more "expensive IT toys" and so problems go on until they become so notorious that somebody higher up actually approves a last minute purchase or budgets staff time to research and fix the problem.
The USB thumb drive issue is more of an issue when autorun is enabled. I don't know about you, but I disable Autorun on all drives with group policy on all of my computers. I suppose that it is still possible that a virus could exploit the mounting procedure in Windows to execute code, but disabling autorun substantially raises the bar of difficulty for a potential attacker. The other problem is removal of sensitive data off site, but realistically an employee who is out to get you could just as well burn a CD or print sensitive documents and leave the laying around so that will always be a risk no matter what type of removable storage or printing policy is configured.
I think that the real problem is responsibility. If 'power users' want these types of privileges then they should have to sign off on a statement absolving the IT department of responsibility for the consequences (i.e. we may help you if this fails provided that we have some spare time and we are feeling nice, but don't count on it...otherwise we are just going to restore an image on your machine and be done with it when you ask us to 'just make it work'). The problem, as it stands now, with most users is that they don't care because its 'not their problem' when things go down.
So essentially you agree with parent, since governments of the world mostly behave as big capital lapdogs.
The difference is that he blames the corporations for intelligent play while I blame the governments for the bad policies which allow the exploitation in the first place. This is why it is important to educate our children in economics so that they, and by extension their governments, will have the ability to make better economic policy and financial judgments at both the personal (i.e. not taking out a home mortgage with bad terms and then begging the government to bail them out) and national level (i.e. no more spending on socialist and populist programs that do not produce economic growth and fuel inflation and foreign debt).
It's like being the stockholder. Every unpleasant thing happening to the big company is done "Because the stockholder wants the money for his investment back". But when did they ask me if I wanted to finance wars to get more money from my investment? I'd think something like that would at least require a signature or at least checking a small square somewhere in the contract for buying the shares?
Do you actually own any shares (directly, not through mutual funds) in a publicly traded company? If you don't like the policies of the board, for whatever reason, then there are number of different things that you, the shareholder, can do. First, withhold your votes for reelection of board members with whom you disagree (assuming that you hold voting class shares). Second, lobby for provisions on the proxy ballots that would change corporate policies to prohibit the undesirable corporate behavior so that the voting shareholders (possibly including yourself) can vote on them. Finally, show up at the company meeting and talk in person with the executives and the board members (a lot of shareholders don't actually show up to most shareholder meetings so you may find a receptive audience even if your relative holding in the company is small).
As for your points on trade, whose fault is it if the government does not provide law and order or doesn't spend its tax and trade revenue in the ways that the people of the nations want? People tend to want to kill trade instead of blaming their government for the mistakes that it is making with regard to trade.
There is no reason we should not set some minimal standards for wages, environment, worker protection, etc,, in our trade agreements.
How about less goods and services from China? I would bet that most Americans, when asked if they prefer higher prices at Walmart in exchange for better wages, worker protection, and environmental protections in China would probably tell you they want lower prices and more American jobs (workers in China be damned as far as they are concerned).
If China wants to sell to the USA then it has to offer something other than slave wages and a willingness to wreck the environment beyond what anyone in a democratic country would tolerate.
Says who? China is a sovereign country and they will run their afairs how they choose. You will never win with "forcing" China to comply. Did you know that companies that have tried to "enforce" standards end up with wiley Chinese factory managers keeping multiple sets of books (one "real" set and one "fake" set for the foreign inspectors), coach workers on how to respond to inspector questions, and generally do whatever it takes to get around such restrictions?
So now what? When one sovereign country tells another one to "shove it" (i.e. negotiations have failed or broken down) then there are really only two basic options: (1) Trade / economic sanctions (i.e. I am taking my ball and going home) OR (2) War (i.e. do what we want or we will kick your butt)
We don't have to eliminate all of China's competetive advantage, but let's set some standards below which no one is allowed to sink.
And what if the Chinese say, "No" to your standards?
For starters, how about some real regulation of industry so they don't ship toys with lead paint on them?
There is no need to "regulate" it per se so long imported products are inspected for safety and the information is passed on to consumers, the market will take care of the problem itself. Would you as a parent allow your child to touch any of those toys on the recal list with a ten foot pole? I think not and so those companies either clean up their act or go out of business. Companies pay attention when sales drop from millions of dollars to zero in the space of a day.
During the Cold War, many people bought into this propaganda that Capitalism == Goodness and Light and any interference with the market == Stalinism. But now we're seeing how that really isn't the case.
The reason people bought into this "propaganda" is because it is mostly correct (not the Stalinism part mind you) in that markets work and governments don't. The market and the government both have roles to play, but generally speaking interference in the marketplace is counterproductive although it is *sometimes* required to maintain competition (i.e. private players and rent seekers are always looking for ways to "corner" markets and sometimes the government has to nip cheating in the bud before the consequences damage the markets).
Multinationals use international trade regulations to their advantage.
They play the game according to the rules that the governments of the world set. If you dont like the rules then blame some of those governments for allowing themselves to be duped. In the case of those governments that are totalitarian the people are going to screwed in any case so what is the difference? There are some countries that we the United States won't do business with after all for that reason, although certain European nations are not so particular (especially when they think that nobody is watching).
By aligning with lending groups like the IMF, multinationals use national debt recovery to force laws through that require full employment and cuts to social welfare systems so that taxes can be levied and surplus budgets can be made to repay international debt.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. If those countries choose to borrow from the IMF and or its member nations and by extension us (they are essentially borrowing from European and American taxpayers) then is it unreasonable for us their creditors to insist upon the adoption or abandonment of certain policies which caused the borrows to be in a position where a loan was needed in the first place?
The result: the poor are forced into indentured servitude because they can no longer get social services and those that had higher wages and supported the poor through their taxes end up with reduced pay because the employer is "forced" to employ more people with the same amount of money (which is the actual multinational goal).
That doesn't make any sense. For example, suppose that the high wage earner "paid" for social services for three other people who were unemployed through taxes. How is it any different for him if he is paid less, but pays less tax, and thos three unemployed people now work along side him. The money is redistributed either way but the end result of the distribution in everyone's pocket would be roughly the same. As for the social services, the government probably could not afford to provide those services in the first place, that is why they went seeking the IMF loan to avoid an economic meltdown (you cannot consume what you do not have after all, no matter how much paper money you print).
Since they have more work for the same investment in labor they have a higher output and greater profit margin as a result. This is widespread and systematic and replaces American jobs with foreign servitude, and the trend goes all the way to the top of management - labor goes overseas and the management eventually does too.
Please re-read the chapter on trade in you economics textbook, trade is a good thing, it alows all of us to produce and consume more then we could have otherwise without the trade. Do you want everyone to share equally in their misery or do you want to distribute wealth? Protectionism gives you the former while trade delivers the later.
Why is it that Liberals are always so against the IMF and the World Bank? These organizations exist to help end poverty and provide emergency loans to governments so that economic chaos doesn't result in a general breakdown of civilized society with wars, violence, mass migrations, looting, etc. The world would be a much more "interesting" place (in the ancient Chinese curse sort of way, "may you live in interesting times") without the IMF, World Bank, and indeed the United States. Be careful what you wish for.
They would never pay that wage to locals in any case. If they were somehow forced to pay that level of wage then they would probably prefer to hire Americans and other western educated peoples instead. This is the same reason why unions *always* support minimum wages and high labor standards and it is not out of the goodness of their hearts or their concern for foreign workers (although they would like you to think so). No, they know that if employers are forced to pay a high minimum wage for workers then the employers will prefered the skilled or union labor over the labor of lesser educated or untrained workers in foreign countries. The minimum wage laws hurt all workers who are not in the unions and new workers (i.e. workers who are just starting out) and foreign workers in second and third world countries especially. If you required Nike to pay $7.25 per hour then not only would you pay more for shoes, but the people in those foreign countries would all lose their jobs and I don't think that they would thank you for that ($7.25 per hour mandatory minimum wage is meaningless if nobody will actually hire you for that amount). I really wish that Liberals would pick up and read their economics textbooks before making such silly assertions and suggestions concerning wages, prices, globalization, etc. Are there problems? Yes, but offering solutions which every econ 101 student knows to be flawed doesn't really help either.
We need to stop selling spectrum NOW!
The spectrum is not sold, it is leased under contract. The only difference here is that the price of the lease is determined by auction and not simply set ahead of time by the seller. If the winner of the leasehold does not meet the terms of the contract then the FCC should turn around and re-auction the lease to somebody else. However, the scheme that you suggest would result in a very serious case of Tragedy of the Commons as every device fought for spectrum and interfered with everything else. Have you every tried using your WiFi, cordless phone, baby monitor, and the microwave all at the same time? The 2.4 ghz and other unregulated bands are full of noise and interference and the entire spectrum, or at least the really desirable parts like 700 mhz, would be just as bad if the government did not regulate access to the common resource (i.e. EM spectrum).
Apparently, the Lunokhod 1 and the Luna 17 lander were sold by auction for $68500 in 1993 at Sotheby's in New York. The auction catalog listing described the spacecraft as "resting on the surface of the moon". Given that the rover and lander have been on the Moon in the Sea of Rains since November 17, 1970 at 03:47 UTC does this mean that the current owner can collect the bounty?
I think of these things any time a libertarian says, "Business can do things more efficiently!"
In defense of libertarians: the nice thing about business is that they go out of business (i.e. bankruptcy) whereas governments are much harder to get rid off once they are entrenched into an inefficient position (i.e. governments cannot go bankrupt, at lest not in the traditional sense that the entity is dissolved). Businesses come and go and that is fine as the market weeds out the less efficient players, but governments are always there and can be very difficult to remove or replace once they get into a spending program funded by taxes and backed up by police power to collect.
It is ironic that they very objectives that municipalities set for programs of Smart Growth very often result in precisely the opposite effects, increasing or exacerbating the undesirable elements that they seek to control. For example, in Portland Oregon they have filled in left turn pockets with planter boxes, installed "speed tables" and other "traffic calming" obstacle courses (if you were in a hurry would you be happy about having to slow down to navigate an obstacle course in your vehicle? Would that make you calmer once you exited the course or would you romp on the gas in anger and frustration to make up for lost time as you entered the freeway or the main traffic corridor?), removed parking spaces, provided too few parking spaces, and done many other misguided things in pursuit of the goal of "getting people out of their cars". After 15+ years what has been the result of these policies? Snarled traffic, increased traffic, traffic idling in slow speed stop and go driving, increased smog from more vehicles operating in the most inefficient speed and rpm range for the internal combustion engine. Basically every problem that they hopped to solve with their "Smart Growth" has in fact been made worse or even created new problems (i.e. dramatically increased smog) on top of the old ones. Portland is *worse* off because of Smart Growth and it would have been better off if they simply done nothing or at least abstained from some of the more no sense recommendations of the "Smart Growth" activists and consultants.
It all boils down to basic economics. People will do what they want and live how they want and you cannot tell them, "The elite smart growth planners are going to tell you what it is that you *really* want (i.e. less parking) and then enforce it upon you against your will." That type of centrally planned, command and control economic or social policy has not worked and will never work. It is the height of hubris and arrogance to presume that you can change other people's lives and preferences through mandates, laws, and enforcement actions. If people cannot work within the system then they find ways around it and the economic results of the workarounds are often *highly* suboptimal resulting in a Dead Weight Loss to the economy.
no one can predict how a jury will vote. it's a 50/50 shot.
That is one of the best parts about them. They have the potential to be a great equalizer in a dispute between powerful organizations and average citizens. What do you figure your chances would be in the absence of such an accommodation? Slim to none perhaps?
they will move to voluntarily dismiss their own case, as they did in Capitol v. Foster, Interscope v. Leadbetter, Priority Records v. Candy Chan, Elektra v. Santangelo, and others.
They should not be able to escape paying the attorney fees of the defendant, particularly if the case is dismissed by the judge with prejudice and the defendant should definitely make the case to the judge that the entire action brought by the RIAA was frivolous and deserves to be punished with an award of attorney fees. The RIAA should not be able to jerk people around for no cost other than their own attorney and court filing fees, especially not when their case is frivolous, and moving to dismiss your own action when you feel that the tide is turning against you should definitely be taken as strong evidence of frivolousness (i.e. the burden should be upon the plaintiff to prove that his withdrawal by moving for dismissal of his own case is not frivolous and that should be a heavy burden in order to deter frivolous actions which waste the court's time).
to paraphrase Charlton Heston, "They can snatch the compiler from my cold dead hands."
Although I do use AdBlock and NoScript I have to say that this publisher is right on in his analysis. If I were a publisher and the advertisers wanted to pay me based soley upon "impressions" then I would tell them to get lost. The other server operators and publishers should pay attention to this guy. If his content is good and there are lots of good comments then not only am I going to spend more time on his site, possibly leaving a comment or two and further enhancing his Google search rank, but I *might* actually add him to my whitelist in AdBlock and NoScript (and believe me...that is a *very* elite group of sites on my client). I say more power to him for adroit handling of his advertising contracts and smart approach to building readership and community on his web properties. He will reap the rewards of his winning strategy.
Issue a 403 Forbidden, say your server will not talk to Adblock users and call it a day.
There are probably many server operators out there who would like nothing better, but as it stands right now the appearance of advanced client side tools like AdBlock and NoScript has caught the server operators unprepared to filter based upon whether certain content was delivered or not and good remote detection of add-ons or plugins is either spotty or easily circumvented by the client or just not generally possible. Think of it this way...for many years the web masters and the advertisers had the upper hand with their popup, popunder, flashing banners, and finally (the last insult) rich media ads. Now the users have been given some powerful tools with which to fight back and will enjoy some period of payback until the server side tools catch up. You might complain that you are an honest web master who is caught up in the collateral damage of a larger war going on right now between aggressive advertisers and site operators and informed and fed up users who own a compiler and aren't afraid to use it and there have been casualties on both sides since this war began (I know people who had "given up" on the Internet under the crushing load of spam and ads prior to AdBlock, NoScript, and SpamBayes), but as for the site operators, to quote Winston Churchill, "They sowed the wind and now they shall reap the whirlwind." Welcome to the jungle.