One of my Senator's senior staff once said, and I paraphrase, 'Congress sees how the Internet has become so important to this country, and is frustrated that they had next to nothing to do with it. Most Congressmens' egos are too large to let that kind of thing exist without them having control over it.'
I think that's why you see all of these laws all of a sudden that attempt to regulate the Internet. All of these politicians jumping on the "protect our children" bandwagon is one example of what happens when large egos and small CQs (Cluefulness Quotients) are added to the mix.
As legislation focuses on the Internet, people with an interest in that legislation either way SHOULD involve themselves in the democratic process.
What's news here (whether or not the Economist thinks so) isn't that geeks are getting politically involved, but that
the involvement of geeks in the political process is leading to the infusion of cluons where they are needed on issues of importance, and
the fact that geeks are a force in politics at last will eventually lead to more clueful politicians and to the clueful consideration of issues that matter to geeks.
As geeks, we're past the point where we can ignore and subvert the idiots in politics and just reroute our online selves around the points of idiocy that exist on the Net. Eventually, the G-men will come to take us away (a la Mitnick, et al) if we don't take charge ASAP. _____
They lost me with the advent of Community Preferences, or whatever the hell that was that let everyone see the most popular purchases of my "group."
My point is, it's not like Amazon hasn't done (and won't eventually do) something to piss everyone off (for good) at least once. And so will Barnes and Noble. As far as the lawsuit goes, noone's worthy of our sympathy here. They're each mega-congloms looking to profit from my literature jones. Nothing says I have to let them. So I don't shop at Barnes and Noble anymore, either. And I hope they litigate each other to death - maybe some small bookstores will thrive in their absence. _____
I suggest that the stupid people(like the author of the article) be loocked away on a small island(or make that a very large one) specially designated for the stupid people.
I nominate Australia. It's its own continent, and they've already passed an Internet censorship law, and elected an open racist to Parliament. _____
And since you're contesting the validity of these statements, I take it you're saying it's necessary to know the exact facts and figures you described to "prove" or "substantiate" the statement in question.
Are you a public educator? I've noticed a lot of them subscribe to the "assignation of homework as an argumentative defense mechanism" school of debate, as well. Anyway, here's it right back at you: Read it again.
Now for your test questions:
Would you agree or disagree that US politicians collectively receive more than $2 million dollars in campaign contributions?
Would you agree or disagree that at least 2000 charities and non-profit organizations survive on subsistence budgets or less (i.e., "go scraping for money")?
The answer to the first question is an obvious Yes.
The answer to the second question is a little tougher, but here's some help: The US Census Bureau (as reported by CNN) estimates that some 12 to 16% of Americans are living below the poverty level, i.e., earning less than $16,000 a year. Since charities and other non-profits are in large part set up to help the poor and disenfranchised, how successful would you suspect they are at eradicating poverty?
First, the usual disclaimers: IANAL, NDIPOOTV. I'm contemplating law school, but thoughts and feelings change, as I and the FEC are about to show you.
I am a web developer by trade, and more politically-active/conscious than most by patriotic duty.
I generally agree with the ACLU on civil liberties, except on their contention that "money == speech." (Briefly, money has transitive, permanent worth, and is unevenly distributed among citizens - speech does not have the same transitive, permanent worth, and is a basic right to all citizens.) Obviously, I think they're smoking crack in this instance, and thus I actively support McCain-Feingold with long-winded posts such as these, among my other patriotic efforts.
That being said, I followed the link from ACLU to the copy of the letter the FEC sent to Smith. It has got to be one of the most asinine "rulings" I've seen since Antonin Scalia last rendered a majority opinion.
First, when Mr. Smith cites a Supreme Court decision on an Ohio statute as argument for his position, the FEC felt that
"Generally, Federal administrative agencies are without power or expertise to pass upon the constitutionality of legislative action."
Even though the argument at hand was the Supreme Court decision, and not just the Ohio law, the FEC's mood toward interpreting law swung at the end of their letter, where they cite AND THEN INTERPRET for Mr. Smith the Buckley opinion.
In a nutshell, the FEC claims that the Buckley opinion claims that every act of speech has a documentable expense, and thus supports their requirement that Mr. Smith register and report expenses.
Never mind that:
Buckley also says petitioners in Colorado don't have to identify themselves with name badges, which would seem to dovetail with Smith's right as a virtual petitioner for the Dems in Connecticut not to have to identify himself with an HTML name badge, contrary to the FEC;
The examples itemized in Buckley seem to ignore the existence of the World Wide Web, where most of us could contend that it costs virtually nothing but volunteer time to add two more pages to a web that WAS ALREADY SERVING a non-political purpose, much like driving a paid-for car to a political meeting would not cost anything but gas, or like saying two political sentences in a conversation would require nothing but air;
This is why I'm considering law school, BTW; I geek for this stuff, and I'm already much better at it than Scott E. Thomas, Acting (and soon to be former, if there is a brain among the Administration) Chairman of the FEC. _____
Let me open by apologizing in advance for what I'm about to post:
Your Chess Online: Kasparov vs. Slashdot
Today, we'll be taking suggestions for move 19; as always, the best suggestions (as selected by Slashdot's random moderators) will be submitted to the board.
CmdrTaco: I wish to apologize for the crashing of the server at move 12; thanks to everyone who alerted me to this emergency...
JonKatz: "Slashdot's King Pawn opening at Move 1 was an epiphany of chess awareness for geeks and a singular triumph of the Open Source Software (OSS) movement." _____
I'm just wondering if Mr. Kasparov would agree to a rematch held outside of the bounds of the Microsoft Network, i.e., fully held on the World Team Strategy BBS. From the transcript, it seems like the consensus (such as it was w/o Microsoft forcing the vote) was giving him a pretty good game.
I also feel sorry for Kasparov. It seems like he's being forced to do "stunts" just so he can get a decent game. Playing the world, playing Deep Blue, etc. If there aren't any grandmasters on the verge of genius, I might humbly suggest Ms. Krush be the next opponent for Mr. Kasparov.
It almost makes me want to get my board out again... _____
Actually, on quepasa.com, even if you couldn't speak a word of Spanish, you'd be able to click the button at the top that read, "in English," and as soon as you could say, "Put down the Chalupa", up would come a useable page with the content translated into perfect English. Problem solved. Commune away with your Latin sobrinos y sobrinas.
It looks like I'm shilling for quepasa, but I'm not. They've just got a better site, and they're DEFINITELY getting screwed. _____
First things first: quepasa.com is not a cybersquat. It is a robust site, with interviews and other useful information of apparent interest targeted at the Latino community, offered in two languages. As such, it is a domain put to use, and not just a placeholder for someone waiting to make a buck; i.e., a cybersquatter.
Secondly, as an American, I'm deeply ashamed of such sue-happy corporations in my country who feel that they own not only their domain name, but every connotation from it, and its equivalent in any other language. Domain names often contain words that convey concepts in English. Since other languages contain words that express similar concepts, conflict is inevitable. Hell, even English has synonyms, many of which exist as domain names at the same time. If you were allowed to sue someone for having a domain just because it came close to yours, there'd be about as many separate domain names as there are class A address ranges.
That ain't the way it's supposed to work, folks. The lawyers and the other corporate assholes at whatshappenin.com are trying to fuck it up for the rest of us, and we can't let them.
The bottom line is this: unless you've trademarked your name and its translations, you don't own the idea expressed by that name -- just the name. That's been proven over millions of domain name registrations.
English isn't the only language of record in the world or on the Internet, and whatshappenin.com isn't the only repository of "current events." _____
The point is, the DOJ knows exactly what it's doing; there's nothing blind about it. They're only doing what the corporations paid their President for them to do, which is protect corporations (including government) from the technically intelligent citizen. The Young Pioneers-type indoctrination for Kids (bonus points for use of the Web) is but one arm of the strategy - busting crackers is another.
The DOJ (and most American law) is looking to protect corporations (in this case, software companies) from individual. That's why a *lot* of computer companies put out buggy software and then sell security and patches, as you put it, while conversely, there's a lot of things you legally cannot do to software that you buy or systems that you hack.
Across the board, our law is set up that way, and has been ever since the ultra-rich of this country needed enough support (from what middle class there ever was) to continue to repress the poor without a major rebellion. Which is to say, it's been happening since the dawn of this country.
Corporations get all the protection they can buy in the political process, and individuals get all the protection they can scrounge or otherwise scream down the government into giving them. CEOs will never get busted the way you describe; they pay (bribe) the government, so personal law doesn't generally apply to them and their companies. That's why corporate law is in a whole other classroom at the law school, and why CEOs of corporations who defraud us don't get tossed into the slam for years and years of prison love like you and I know they deserve.
The DOJ is merely a part of this process. They're on point (Kiddie page, Mitnick task force and all) in the war against hackers, admittedly, but the real problem goes way, WAY back before them. _____
As a person still capable of the occasional flame, I'm willing to spot people their sincere feelings; that is, sometimes it's OK (even necessary) to abuse someone in ASCII. [In fact, right now I can think of several people on the CNN.com discussion forums, let alone Jon Katz, who sometimes need a good broiling.]
What would seem to matter more (with regard to posts that a person had reason to delete later) is the context in which a flame was posted, for one, but also inherent questions like why, and to what end one flamed, was one logical and pissed off or just pissed off, and what does it say about the person other than that they were pissed off?
That being said, unless the deleted posts were something like "I harbor secret fantasies of monopolizing DNS service in a way that is hostile to the Internet," or "One day, I will put the wood to that shrew Esther Dyson like she deserves," I don't see the point in this guy trying to erase his past posts -- you can never be sure there isn't an archive SOMEWHERE. _____
My point is, its only redeeming value is the "oh cool, it's on the rocket" factor. Other than that, it's an image just like every other logo they put on TV, so it enters into my conscience with the same impact as say, a Union Carbide ad, i.e., hardly at all.
Of course, you could paint the Pizza Hut logo on my neighbor's house and car, and I still wouldn't eat there. Take n' Bake til I die, I guess I am.
So if they want to throw $1.25 mil at the Russian space program, I'm OK with it. That's certainly a better place for it to go than your friendly neighborhood Congressman.
...without some kind of edge-detection algorithm, and even then, the edges it detects would have to be skin-based.
As such, changes in body weight would change the edges to be detected, as would temporary swelling, broken nose/jaw, and to a lesser extent, facial blemishes such as recently-earned scars, pimples, or even blowing off shaving for a few days would make the edges different enough to defeat the algorithm.
Yet, they're saying it would beat disguises. Again, I don't see how unless they're going straight into the eye to do retinal scan.
No, it's because private schools aren't mandated BY LAW to take in anyone who shows up at the door needing schooling. That's what makes them "private."
In this case, not wanting to pay for incompetent government services IS a selfish and poor attitude.
Schools are as important a government service as roads, especially if you're not rich enough to afford the private school. You might be upset at having to pay gas tax for bad roads, but most moral people would agree that the solution to bad roads is to improve them, not to make them all toll roads, or to do away with roads altogether.
Thus it is with schools. Most people who criticize "government" schools have never done anything to make them better.
Poor kids deserve a chance at an education as much as the rich kids, and their income in many cases automatically disqualifies them from the private system you rave about so glowingly.
Selfish, immoral, and evil seem to sum up perfectly the "let them eat cake" side of the school argument.
_____
IPv6 Consultants: the Next Growth Industry
on
CNN On IPv6
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· Score: 0
It occurs to me that if I was to be at least an early learner of the subtle nuances of IPv6, I could make a buttload more money than I do right now, slinging web for the BLM.
Just don't steal my idea and beat me to it, OK?:)
Of course it's not censorship...
on
Three on Munich
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· Score: 2
...it's merely the precursor, or the "enabler" to censorship.
To use an analogy, if I load a gun, cock the lever, and place it on the table, I'm not killing anything; I'm merely making it really, really easy for someone else to.
By the same token, if I'm subject to a system whereby all content must be rated in several ways with regard to subjects of interest to censors, it won't take much more than the flip of a switch for someone in power to censor my content.
Side Note: There's a glitch in Slashdot, such that all of the topics come up as posted 0 times, at any rating.
It would seem that the Internet community needs an appropriate channel for its hate; therefore, I introduce to it an idea I'd, uh, "heard somewhere":
Distributed contract assassinations (and other malicious acts) through the Internet - it'd be called "eBounty."
Take, for example, Jens Bertelsmann. There are a significant number of people who love the Internet, who love freedom, and who wouldn't mind seeing this evil man die horribly, if only to delay Ze Master Plan by a decade or two.
Through the eBounty distributed contract assassination system, each of us would be able to anonymously contribute $.02, three-fitty, or a euro or two, whatever one felt necessary, to the acceleration of UberSturmFuhrer Bertelsmann's demise.
Persons of noted evil would have their own sections, so that acts short of a complete whacking could be subsidized on eBounty as well. For example, Bill Gates|Pieing|Lemon Custard would be its own topic.
Following the system popularized on eBay, when a significant collection had been taken up to make it worth the time and notoriety involved with the hit, an anonymous er, "buyer" would accept the contract, and perform the hit. Upon significant evidence that the person in question had been hit, the buyer would tap his collection fund from the anonymous eBounty Hong Kong chop account, and go on his/her merry way.
eBounty would, bien sur, run on the latest Red Hat distro, on a Beowulf cluster formed from PCjrs and XTs networked together in Peace Corp countries.
...or, just how many RSAC gifs do I need to put on each of my pages?
As if our world wasn't already spiraling at warp speeds toward total oppression of the other-than-rich, now we've got the idea that multiple groups of censors should rate pages on the Internet.
That's fine with me, but the censors can keep their ratings to themselves and their subjugant minions. I will add ratings to my pages when and only when the jack-booted content thugs pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers.
I will especially not weigh down my pages with one RSAC gif for each and every one of the groups that is interested in foisting their ill-conceived, narrow-minded ratings system upon my content. In fact, that list of censors is likely to grow so big that a ratings system is useless, and so granular that the content itself does a better job of describing "whether it's worth viewing."
And that, finally, is my point. People who surf the Internet, even children, should be smart enough to know what a page is about WITHOUT a little sticker on it to categorize it for them, and wise enough to make their OWN judgements as to whether or not a page is worth viewing, and brave enough to act on their own judgements without assistance from their mommies and daddies.
A company called RealNames is trying to do what you're describing. What's stunting RealNames is acceptance; obviously, companies have to pay them extra to sign up, and that doesn't sit well with them sometimes (they thought they took care of that in trademark registration).
The problem with InterNIC/RSI "impartially" (i.e, non-commercially) administering something like this (besides the fact that it's RSI) is the enormous overhead, plus it's what DNS was supposed to do. They didn't policy-build to account for cybersquatters and the like, and now it's coming back to bite them in the butt.
OTOH, Yahoo lists net presences by category; you could find your category, and then look for Clue (Entertainment:games:board:Hasbro) or Clue Computing (Companies:California:etc.).
I think the current DNS resolution policy would work, if it had more serious teeth. That's likely to be the best solution we'd get.
As if there weren't half a bajillion of the Slashdot Hezbollah lying in wait for his next article, he had to go and pick something as esoteric and subjective as web design with which to incite the masses. He couldn't have set himself up more easily if he'd titled it "Cool Websites - and why Linux sucks."
I learned one thing right away when I first started doing web design for a living: You can never please everyone.
If you invite criticism of a website (like Flamebait J. Katz has certainly done here), you will get it. What often gets overlooked is that this is still better than being ignored.
Either it looks boring, and no one will visit, or your use of tables and color will offend Jakob Nielsen und his crowd of usability Luddites because your site doesn't load in five seconds at Bell protocol speeds on AOL 2.0 for the Blind.
For myself and for most web designers of repute that I know, I tend to enjoy not cheating the people who bought the good equipment. It's called progress, and you can't make any if you don't push the envelope once in a while.
This is the website for a Major League Baseball team, and one of the most storied ones ever, at that. They want to sell tickets and generate hype amongst those myopic homers they call fans. Does it occur to anyone that they might actually *want* to look a little busy?
When those are considerations, and for yankees.com it's perfectly understandable that they are, sometimes it's OK to make the pages a little fat, or implement PHP (even, as my Katz-hating, Spanky-loving New Yorker friend says, badly).
That being said, yankees.com isn't bad. The font size complaint is valid, but no website is perfect. It certainly doesn't suck as horribly as indians.com, or my team's website, dodgers.com.
Of all the war movies I've seen - and as an ex-professional soldier, I've seen a LOT of war movies - only SPR captured what it's like to be one of us. You'd have to serve to understand, I guess.
Your guess is incorrect - I served, too, and in the U.S. Army, which sees (unfortunately) and prepares for much more conflict than the Canadian Army. It's also the army they were talking about in both movies. Obviously, I didn't serve in the 'Nam, but my Dad did. You'd have to be at least 50 to make that same claim for WWII (the subject of SPR). I've also probably seen as many war movies as you have. And I disagree with your assessment.
I liked them both - they were different, but that doesn't mean that one was truer to character than the other, except in your mind.
Excuse me, but how do you know Vietnam (the war upon which FMJ was based) wasn't itself cartoonlike or otherwise weird in that way?
Full Metal Jacket certainly does capture what it's like to be a soldier - I refer you to a couple of scenes in particular: what happens when they screw with the washout in boot camp (instead of just tossing him out) until he snaps, and the disorder that ensues when three squad leaders in a row get capped by what turns out to be a 12-year-old girl.
Just because Kubrick doesn't show you the moment of bullet-meets-chest impact doesn't mean it's any less "true to combat" than was Saving Private Ryan.
If that's how people feel (need a more conservative tone, the "OS issue"), why don't they just buy Intel boxen?
They can install Linux on it, run strictly from the command prompt, and treat themselves to a stimulus-free computing environment, devoid of any color whatsoever.
Of course, they'll have to get rid of any pictures on the wall, any figurines at their desk, and put paper over the windows (small w), but what's a little work when you can keep the rods in your eyes from ever firing?
If a hole such as this exists, in this day and age, IT WILL BE FOUND, and possibly exploited.
Does anyone remember who cracked 32-bit RSA encoding the first time? I don't, but I'll bet some of you do remember that it took the combined resources of the Internet something like 9 months to crack one simple text blurb with 32-bit encryption. That's why it's effective, and the larger the encryption, the more effective it becomes.
By comparison, how long did Hotmail even exist before they rolled out this "feature", what, two years tops? Furthermore, how long after they rolled out the unsecure "feature" did it get jacked? Not long at all. Are people going to ditch Hotmail? Hell, yes. Why? Because they can't trust it.
What I'm getting at is that tracing the person who found this hole (I can't even call it a crack with a straight face) is less productive to the community at large than is 1) fixing the problem and/or 2) not letting it happen in the first place. If you're running a mail service, for God's sake, leaving a hole in it like that is inexcusable.
Free is a very good price, as they're fond of saying here in Portland, but it's probably not a good price for mail services.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that's why you see all of these laws all of a sudden that attempt to regulate the Internet. All of these politicians jumping on the "protect our children" bandwagon is one example of what happens when large egos and small CQs (Cluefulness Quotients) are added to the mix.
As legislation focuses on the Internet, people with an interest in that legislation either way SHOULD involve themselves in the democratic process.
What's news here (whether or not the Economist thinks so) isn't that geeks are getting politically involved, but that
- the involvement of geeks in the political process is leading to the infusion of cluons where they are needed on issues of importance, and
- the fact that geeks are a force in politics at last will eventually lead to more clueful politicians and to the clueful consideration of issues that matter to geeks.
As geeks, we're past the point where we can ignore and subvert the idiots in politics and just reroute our online selves around the points of idiocy that exist on the Net. Eventually, the G-men will come to take us away (a la Mitnick, et al) if we don't take charge ASAP._____
1. Stanford Wallace
2. Canter
3. Siegel
4. Ronald Reagan
5. Bob Hope, etc.,
_____
They lost me with the advent of Community Preferences, or whatever the hell that was that let everyone see the most popular purchases of my "group."
My point is, it's not like Amazon hasn't done (and won't eventually do) something to piss everyone off (for good) at least once. And so will Barnes and Noble. As far as the lawsuit goes, noone's worthy of our sympathy here. They're each mega-congloms looking to profit from my literature jones. Nothing says I have to let them. So I don't shop at Barnes and Noble anymore, either. And I hope they litigate each other to death - maybe some small bookstores will thrive in their absence.
_____
I suggest that the stupid people(like the author of the article) be loocked away on a small island(or make that a very large one) specially designated for the stupid people.
I nominate Australia. It's its own continent, and they've already passed an Internet censorship law, and elected an open racist to Parliament.
_____
Are you a public educator? I've noticed a lot of them subscribe to the "assignation of homework as an argumentative defense mechanism" school of debate, as well. Anyway, here's it right back at you: Read it again.
Now for your test questions:
- Would you agree or disagree that US politicians collectively receive more than $2 million dollars in campaign contributions?
- Would you agree or disagree that at least 2000 charities and non-profit organizations survive on subsistence budgets or less (i.e., "go scraping for money")?
The answer to the first question is an obvious Yes.The answer to the second question is a little tougher, but here's some help: The US Census Bureau (as reported by CNN) estimates that some 12 to 16% of Americans are living below the poverty level, i.e., earning less than $16,000 a year. Since charities and other non-profits are in large part set up to help the poor and disenfranchised, how successful would you suspect they are at eradicating poverty?
Thank you.
_____
I am a web developer by trade, and more politically-active/conscious than most by patriotic duty.
I generally agree with the ACLU on civil liberties, except on their contention that "money == speech." (Briefly, money has transitive, permanent worth, and is unevenly distributed among citizens - speech does not have the same transitive, permanent worth, and is a basic right to all citizens.) Obviously, I think they're smoking crack in this instance, and thus I actively support McCain-Feingold with long-winded posts such as these, among my other patriotic efforts.
That being said, I followed the link from ACLU to the copy of the letter the FEC sent to Smith. It has got to be one of the most asinine "rulings" I've seen since Antonin Scalia last rendered a majority opinion.
First, when Mr. Smith cites a Supreme Court decision on an Ohio statute as argument for his position, the FEC felt that Even though the argument at hand was the Supreme Court decision, and not just the Ohio law, the FEC's mood toward interpreting law swung at the end of their letter, where they cite AND THEN INTERPRET for Mr. Smith the Buckley opinion.
In a nutshell, the FEC claims that the Buckley opinion claims that every act of speech has a documentable expense, and thus supports their requirement that Mr. Smith register and report expenses.
Never mind that:
- Buckley also says petitioners in Colorado don't have to identify themselves with name badges, which would seem to dovetail with Smith's right as a virtual petitioner for the Dems in Connecticut not to have to identify himself with an HTML name badge, contrary to the FEC;
- The examples itemized in Buckley seem to ignore the existence of the World Wide Web, where most of us could contend that it costs virtually nothing but volunteer time to add two more pages to a web that WAS ALREADY SERVING a non-political purpose, much like driving a paid-for car to a political meeting would not cost anything but gas, or like saying two political sentences in a conversation would require nothing but air;
This is why I'm considering law school, BTW; I geek for this stuff, and I'm already much better at it than Scott E. Thomas, Acting (and soon to be former, if there is a brain among the Administration) Chairman of the FEC._____
Let me open by apologizing in advance for what I'm about to post:
Your Chess Online: Kasparov vs. Slashdot
Today, we'll be taking suggestions for move 19; as always, the best suggestions (as selected by Slashdot's random moderators) will be submitted to the board.
CmdrTaco: I wish to apologize for the crashing of the server at move 12; thanks to everyone who alerted me to this emergency...
JonKatz: "Slashdot's King Pawn opening at Move 1 was an epiphany of chess awareness for geeks and a singular triumph of the Open Source Software (OSS) movement."
_____
I'm just wondering if Mr. Kasparov would agree to a rematch held outside of the bounds of the Microsoft Network, i.e., fully held on the World Team Strategy BBS. From the transcript, it seems like the consensus (such as it was w/o Microsoft forcing the vote) was giving him a pretty good game.
I also feel sorry for Kasparov. It seems like he's being forced to do "stunts" just so he can get a decent game. Playing the world, playing Deep Blue, etc. If there aren't any grandmasters on the verge of genius, I might humbly suggest Ms. Krush be the next opponent for Mr. Kasparov.
It almost makes me want to get my board out again...
_____
Actually, on quepasa.com, even if you couldn't speak a word of Spanish, you'd be able to click the button at the top that read, "in English," and as soon as you could say, "Put down the Chalupa", up would come a useable page with the content translated into perfect English. Problem solved. Commune away with your Latin sobrinos y sobrinas.
It looks like I'm shilling for quepasa, but I'm not. They've just got a better site, and they're DEFINITELY getting screwed.
_____
First things first: quepasa.com is not a cybersquat. It is a robust site, with interviews and other useful information of apparent interest targeted at the Latino community, offered in two languages. As such, it is a domain put to use, and not just a placeholder for someone waiting to make a buck; i.e., a cybersquatter.
Secondly, as an American, I'm deeply ashamed of such sue-happy corporations in my country who feel that they own not only their domain name, but every connotation from it, and its equivalent in any other language. Domain names often contain words that convey concepts in English. Since other languages contain words that express similar concepts, conflict is inevitable. Hell, even English has synonyms, many of which exist as domain names at the same time. If you were allowed to sue someone for having a domain just because it came close to yours, there'd be about as many separate domain names as there are class A address ranges.
That ain't the way it's supposed to work, folks. The lawyers and the other corporate assholes at whatshappenin.com are trying to fuck it up for the rest of us, and we can't let them.
The bottom line is this: unless you've trademarked your name and its translations, you don't own the idea expressed by that name -- just the name. That's been proven over millions of domain name registrations.
English isn't the only language of record in the world or on the Internet, and whatshappenin.com isn't the only repository of "current events."
_____
The point is, the DOJ knows exactly what it's doing; there's nothing blind about it. They're only doing what the corporations paid their President for them to do, which is protect corporations (including government) from the technically intelligent citizen. The Young Pioneers-type indoctrination for Kids (bonus points for use of the Web) is but one arm of the strategy - busting crackers is another.
The DOJ (and most American law) is looking to protect corporations (in this case, software companies) from individual. That's why a *lot* of computer companies put out buggy software and then sell security and patches, as you put it, while conversely, there's a lot of things you legally cannot do to software that you buy or systems that you hack.
Across the board, our law is set up that way, and has been ever since the ultra-rich of this country needed enough support (from what middle class there ever was) to continue to repress the poor without a major rebellion. Which is to say, it's been happening since the dawn of this country.
Corporations get all the protection they can buy in the political process, and individuals get all the protection they can scrounge or otherwise scream down the government into giving them. CEOs will never get busted the way you describe; they pay (bribe) the government, so personal law doesn't generally apply to them and their companies. That's why corporate law is in a whole other classroom at the law school, and why CEOs of corporations who defraud us don't get tossed into the slam for years and years of prison love like you and I know they deserve.
The DOJ is merely a part of this process. They're on point (Kiddie page, Mitnick task force and all) in the war against hackers, admittedly, but the real problem goes way, WAY back before them.
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As a person still capable of the occasional flame, I'm willing to spot people their sincere feelings; that is, sometimes it's OK (even necessary) to abuse someone in ASCII. [In fact, right now I can think of several people on the CNN.com discussion forums, let alone Jon Katz, who sometimes need a good broiling.]
What would seem to matter more (with regard to posts that a person had reason to delete later) is the context in which a flame was posted, for one, but also inherent questions like why, and to what end one flamed, was one logical and pissed off or just pissed off, and what does it say about the person other than that they were pissed off?
That being said, unless the deleted posts were something like "I harbor secret fantasies of monopolizing DNS service in a way that is hostile to the Internet," or "One day, I will put the wood to that shrew Esther Dyson like she deserves," I don't see the point in this guy trying to erase his past posts -- you can never be sure there isn't an archive SOMEWHERE.
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That wouldn't have seen it on TV?
My point is, its only redeeming value is the "oh cool, it's on the rocket" factor. Other than that, it's an image just like every other logo they put on TV, so it enters into my conscience with the same impact as say, a Union Carbide ad, i.e., hardly at all.
Of course, you could paint the Pizza Hut logo on my neighbor's house and car, and I still wouldn't eat there. Take n' Bake til I die, I guess I am.
So if they want to throw $1.25 mil at the Russian space program, I'm OK with it. That's certainly a better place for it to go than your friendly neighborhood Congressman.
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...without some kind of edge-detection algorithm, and even then, the edges it detects would have to be skin-based.
As such, changes in body weight would change the edges to be detected, as would temporary swelling, broken nose/jaw, and to a lesser extent, facial blemishes such as recently-earned scars, pimples, or even blowing off shaving for a few days would make the edges different enough to defeat the algorithm.
Yet, they're saying it would beat disguises. Again, I don't see how unless they're going straight into the eye to do retinal scan.
I'd be interested to find out...
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No, it's because private schools aren't mandated BY LAW to take in anyone who shows up at the door needing schooling. That's what makes them "private."
In this case, not wanting to pay for incompetent government services IS a selfish and poor attitude.
Schools are as important a government service as roads, especially if you're not rich enough to afford the private school. You might be upset at having to pay gas tax for bad roads, but most moral people would agree that the solution to bad roads is to improve them, not to make them all toll roads, or to do away with roads altogether.
Thus it is with schools. Most people who criticize "government" schools have never done anything to make them better.
Poor kids deserve a chance at an education as much as the rich kids, and their income in many cases automatically disqualifies them from the private system you rave about so glowingly.
Selfish, immoral, and evil seem to sum up perfectly the "let them eat cake" side of the school argument.
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It occurs to me that if I was to be at least an early learner of the subtle nuances of IPv6, I could make a buttload more money than I do right now, slinging web for the BLM.
:)
Just don't steal my idea and beat me to it, OK?
...it's merely the precursor, or the "enabler" to censorship.
To use an analogy, if I load a gun, cock the lever, and place it on the table, I'm not killing anything; I'm merely making it really, really easy for someone else to.
By the same token, if I'm subject to a system whereby all content must be rated in several ways with regard to subjects of interest to censors, it won't take much more than the flip of a switch for someone in power to censor my content.
Side Note: There's a glitch in Slashdot, such that all of the topics come up as posted 0 times, at any rating.
It would seem that the Internet community needs an appropriate channel for its hate; therefore, I introduce to it an idea I'd, uh, "heard somewhere":
Distributed contract assassinations (and other malicious acts) through the Internet - it'd be called "eBounty."
Take, for example, Jens Bertelsmann. There are a significant number of people who love the Internet, who love freedom, and who wouldn't mind seeing this evil man die horribly, if only to delay Ze Master Plan by a decade or two.
Through the eBounty distributed contract assassination system, each of us would be able to anonymously contribute $.02, three-fitty, or a euro or two, whatever one felt necessary, to the acceleration of UberSturmFuhrer Bertelsmann's demise.
Persons of noted evil would have their own sections, so that acts short of a complete whacking could be subsidized on eBounty as well. For example, Bill Gates|Pieing|Lemon Custard would be its own topic.
Following the system popularized on eBay, when a significant collection had been taken up to make it worth the time and notoriety involved with the hit, an anonymous er, "buyer" would accept the contract, and perform the hit. Upon significant evidence that the person in question had been hit, the buyer would tap his collection fund from the anonymous eBounty Hong Kong chop account, and go on his/her merry way.
eBounty would, bien sur, run on the latest Red Hat distro, on a Beowulf cluster formed from PCjrs and XTs networked together in Peace Corp countries.
...or, just how many RSAC gifs do I need to put on each of my pages?
As if our world wasn't already spiraling at warp speeds toward total oppression of the other-than-rich, now we've got the idea that multiple groups of censors should rate pages on the Internet.
That's fine with me, but the censors can keep their ratings to themselves and their subjugant minions. I will add ratings to my pages when and only when the jack-booted content thugs pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers.
I will especially not weigh down my pages with one RSAC gif for each and every one of the groups that is interested in foisting their ill-conceived, narrow-minded ratings system upon my content. In fact, that list of censors is likely to grow so big that a ratings system is useless, and so granular that the content itself does a better job of describing "whether it's worth viewing."
And that, finally, is my point. People who surf the Internet, even children, should be smart enough to know what a page is about WITHOUT a little sticker on it to categorize it for them, and wise enough to make their OWN judgements as to whether or not a page is worth viewing, and brave enough to act on their own judgements without assistance from their mommies and daddies.
META name="ratings" content="BLOW ME"
A company called RealNames is trying to do what you're describing. What's stunting RealNames is acceptance; obviously, companies have to pay them extra to sign up, and that doesn't sit well with them sometimes (they thought they took care of that in trademark registration).
The problem with InterNIC/RSI "impartially" (i.e, non-commercially) administering something like this (besides the fact that it's RSI) is the enormous overhead, plus it's what DNS was supposed to do. They didn't policy-build to account for cybersquatters and the like, and now it's coming back to bite them in the butt.
OTOH, Yahoo lists net presences by category; you could find your category, and then look for Clue (Entertainment:games:board:Hasbro) or Clue Computing (Companies:California:etc.).
I think the current DNS resolution policy would work, if it had more serious teeth. That's likely to be the best solution we'd get.
Katz is just asking for trouble.
As if there weren't half a bajillion of the Slashdot Hezbollah lying in wait for his next article, he had to go and pick something as esoteric and subjective as web design with which to incite the masses. He couldn't have set himself up more easily if he'd titled it "Cool Websites - and why Linux sucks."
I learned one thing right away when I first started doing web design for a living: You can never please everyone.
If you invite criticism of a website (like Flamebait J. Katz has certainly done here), you will get it. What often gets overlooked is that this is still better than being ignored.
Either it looks boring, and no one will visit, or your use of tables and color will offend Jakob Nielsen und his crowd of usability Luddites because your site doesn't load in five seconds at Bell protocol speeds on AOL 2.0 for the Blind.
For myself and for most web designers of repute that I know, I tend to enjoy not cheating the people who bought the good equipment. It's called progress, and you can't make any if you don't push the envelope once in a while.
This is the website for a Major League Baseball team, and one of the most storied ones ever, at that. They want to sell tickets and generate hype amongst those myopic homers they call fans. Does it occur to anyone that they might actually *want* to look a little busy?
When those are considerations, and for yankees.com it's perfectly understandable that they are, sometimes it's OK to make the pages a little fat, or implement PHP (even, as my Katz-hating, Spanky-loving New Yorker friend says, badly).
That being said, yankees.com isn't bad. The font size complaint is valid, but no website is perfect. It certainly doesn't suck as horribly as indians.com, or my team's website, dodgers.com.
I liked them both - they were different, but that doesn't mean that one was truer to character than the other, except in your mind.
Excuse me, but how do you know Vietnam (the war upon which FMJ was based) wasn't itself cartoonlike or otherwise weird in that way?
Full Metal Jacket certainly does capture what it's like to be a soldier - I refer you to a couple of scenes in particular: what happens when they screw with the washout in boot camp (instead of just tossing him out) until he snaps, and the disorder that ensues when three squad leaders in a row get capped by what turns out to be a 12-year-old girl.
Just because Kubrick doesn't show you the moment of bullet-meets-chest impact doesn't mean it's any less "true to combat" than was Saving Private Ryan.
If that's how people feel (need a more conservative tone, the "OS issue"), why don't they just buy Intel boxen?
They can install Linux on it, run strictly from the command prompt, and treat themselves to a stimulus-free computing environment, devoid of any color whatsoever.
Of course, they'll have to get rid of any pictures on the wall, any figurines at their desk, and put paper over the windows (small w), but what's a little work when you can keep the rods in your eyes from ever firing?
If a hole such as this exists, in this day and age, IT WILL BE FOUND, and possibly exploited.
Does anyone remember who cracked 32-bit RSA encoding the first time? I don't, but I'll bet some of you do remember that it took the combined resources of the Internet something like 9 months to crack one simple text blurb with 32-bit encryption. That's why it's effective, and the larger the encryption, the more effective it becomes.
By comparison, how long did Hotmail even exist before they rolled out this "feature", what, two years tops? Furthermore, how long after they rolled out the unsecure "feature" did it get jacked? Not long at all. Are people going to ditch Hotmail? Hell, yes. Why? Because they can't trust it.
What I'm getting at is that tracing the person who found this hole (I can't even call it a crack with a straight face) is less productive to the community at large than is 1) fixing the problem and/or 2) not letting it happen in the first place. If you're running a mail service, for God's sake, leaving a hole in it like that is inexcusable.
Free is a very good price, as they're fond of saying here in Portland, but it's probably not a good price for mail services.