When quoting the fourth amendment to the constitution, you should quote the whole thing:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
FISA violates that by being a secret court. It is, in fact, a kind of star chamber and is particularly unAmerican. The whole idea behind the fourth amendment is to protect you from arbitrary or politically motivated violations. Three or four unaccountable people say so is no "reasonable" grounds for a search in a real democracy.
It's an open secret that wiretapping has far exceeded the bounds of FISA charade. The phones of newsmen have been tapped and other intercepts have been made to find "leakers" in the Plame Wilson Scandal.
Actually, any listed company has only one primary responsibility, which is investor return.
A company's responsibility is to all of the people involved. A company that will screw any person will screw every person, including the investors. Every person deserves fair and ethical treatment. This is something that needs to be said over and over until everyone believes it.
The US traveling public who get to keep an artifically low price to travel. Everyone expects to fly $125 one-way, anytime, anyprice.
United is always the most expensive airline and prices are generally high, not low. If ticket prices were taking care of the things they should, this would not be bad but they are not.
The $4 billion new "information system" that will be used to extort money for bagage service that other airlines simply provide, is an example of waste. Other airlines implemented reasonable ticketing when forced by deregulation more than a decade ago. I doubt that it cost them billions of dollars or that real improvements to United's system would either. The difference in costs is a red flag for kickbacks and other corruption that's not serving anyone's interest.
you have it wrong its investor return, customer service, job security.
You can put it in any order you like. I don't see a benefit for any of those involved. Investors have poor returns when money is wasted, employees are demoralized and customers face poor service. The point of all of this is that a CEO who proposes to screw customers for the benefit of employees, to screw employees for the benefit of investors, and so on and so forth is screwing everyone. When you trust someone who thinks it's OK to screw people, you will find yourself screwed.
Sometimes your money vanishes into a CEO's private yacht.
United is a prime example of an unethical company that fails to meet any of it's three primary responsibilities: customer service, job security, and investor return. It does not matter that this "plan" to screw customers is not a fact yet, because United customer service is already the pits. How could it be otherwise when the employees are demoralized by games like this:
In an Oct. 15 letter to United's board, the president of United's flight attendants union questioned why the company is mulling selling assets that it insisted were vital during its three-year stay in bankruptcy. "It has only now become clear that the sale of these assets is not only a viable option, but that a timely sale would have avoided the need for severe concessions and, perhaps, avoided the bankruptcy altogether," wrote Greg Davidowitch, president of the United master executive council of the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents 17,000 United workers.
One of the "concessions" was the elimination of employee pension plans. Bankruptcy, of course, screwed investors. It's little wonder that United is often mentioned when I hear bad travel stories. Please do not talk to me about regulation to protect such scumbags. The kinds of things United is accused of are crimes that should be punished.
The other half of TANSTAAFL is a free market. Without that, there's no such thing as a fairly priced sandwich lunch. Glenn Tilton is lucky there's air on the other side of most doors.
It sounds to me like he loves the idea of open source itself, and just takes issue with a lot of the other ideologies that are lumped in with it these days (anti-capitalism, the "free" software movement, etc)
Lumping things you don't like onto something that treatens you is little more than name calling. The Woz is either misguided or malicious to say things like that. Software Freedom is something he does not understand at all.
Too bad for him because that's where the camaraderie is today. Suck holes, like Apple and M$, are more about denying user freedom than they are about technical progress or excellence. They get to use great free tools like GCC and X but don't get to pass them and other along to their users. Places like that can't be fun to work for.
I won't ever accept NOT being the absolute owner of my own computers
That's good, but at work it's not your computer is it? The level of control you have over your computer at work is proportional to the intelligence of your employer. If you are unfortunate enough to work for a big dumb company, you will be fired for exercising your software freedom in any way. A less stupid company that uses free software will be able to give you the tools you need to get your job done without giving you complete control of your computer. Some workers need more freedom than others. Ultimately, the things the company needs to protect should only be accessible by people and machines that won't leak. Figuring out what really needs to be protected is the tricky part, but all of it should drive every company to free software.
The real problem with "trusted" computing is that it can force use of untrustworthy software and defeat it's original purpose. No company should ever trust it's real secrets with non free software. Control is lost when you have to "trust" a third party that keeps secrets from you. If you are using Windoze, you might as well email the information to Bill Gates.
What kind of secrets does your company actually have? There's customer information, location and movement of valuables, business plans and a host of other information that can be harmful to divulge.
None of this is an excuse to cut into your software freedom at home or even at work. It's just a problem of collective action and responsibility. When you work for a company, there are suddenly a lot of noses at the end of your arm.
Would threatening to expose a security flaw in a server or website unless it was patched open you up to prosecution under cybercrime laws then?
If you ask for money in return for keeping your mouth shut, you are already an extortionist. At the same time, it's hard to see them using the bill to come after an honest disclosure, where you simply published details. Must find bill to know.
M$ licenses are simple because they are a lie. They don't have any intention to do anything but what they've always done: suck up your work and and screw you in court, the market place and public opinion.
The GPL is like good science, no more complicated than it must be for it's purpose. The goal of science is to understand truth. The goal of the GPL it to protect user freedom. If M$'s license is simpler than the GPL it's because they have other purposes for their licenses.
The death of dial up did not have to be the death of AOL. TW had all sorts of content it could have sold as a subscription to it's user base before they lost it all. Now they are scrambling and suing their fans to keep their media empire alive. More savvy competitors are cutting into their sales via the internet with no base at all. They expect the treats to draw customers.
Thanks for the decision tree to reduce graphics display. Do you have a similar five click method to eliminate DRM from checking your permissions 30 times a second while playing "premium" sound files? Can you even run Vista on an older Thinkpad? Is there a reliable wattmeter based power rating for this particular model under XP?
Windoze might spare me some power use but it will never empower anyone. You only get that with freedom.
The other side of the spectrum from MoveOn are fascists. They are a bunch of right wing nutjobs who hate MLK, science, free software and Google. Their hypocrisy is matched only by their ignorance. The sins that Google has committed are all done much larger by the companies they are made familiar with and are told to like by mainstream news. The only thing that's consistent in their arguments is that anything is justified if it's done by a big company to make a buck.
Freedom is a good principle to advocate. Opposing trade with Communists is fine, but ire should also be aimed at M$, Cisco, Yahoo and others who co-operate as much or more than Google. All should be forbidden from trade with China by law and advocates of freedom should also be angry at WalMart for pushing for "normalized" trade. The nut jobs are not. Opposing political censorship is good, but the nut jobs defend big ISPs who have filtered email for political reasons. The "neoconservatives" are not conservative, they are fascists and they believe in greed not freedom.
The dumbest of them will put the interests of government and industry above themselves, their family and friends. They advocate government control when it helps make someone rich. It's sad to talk to them.
Talk about the Vista failure and out causes come the fanboys.
With the lack of any other evidence (save your repeatedly debunked and mostly irrelevant 'list'), Occam's Razor would suggest that people don't complain because there's nothing to complain about.
Wow, presented with a tremendous list of complaints from government officials, industry executives, wintel rag editors, and ordinary people, you conclude that no one is complaining. Denial.
How about a little recent, personal experience? I've actually met two people unfortunate enough to have bought a laptop with Vista. My comment about owning your digital word comes from watching one of them try to load up her camera software. Vista did not let it work, but the built in photo manager worked. So much for user choice and the myth that hardware with the little flag "just works". The other user has a tablet PC and the touch screen is worthless. Despite M$'s hype about multitouch surfaces, the table fails because it reads your palm as input while you try to use a stylus. Brilliant interface! Now I understand why M$ tables are also a failure. I have not watched long enough to see just how buggy it is but both are much slower than you would expect from beautiful new hardware. Neither of these people complained because all they want is text editing, light math, email and web browsing. The industry has let them down by saddling them with Vista.
What is so bad about Vista? I have not used it yet. I've seen it, and I know some people that are using it and they don't complain about it. What's the deal? Is it just that it's new?
Mock surprise! Really, do you live under a rock? People don't complain because they don't know they have easy alternatives that work. They just use what they are given until someone shows them something better. Vista's pains have been documented at length here and you can see them for real if you watch what your Vista using peers have to put up with.
Vista has been out for nearly a year and the consensus opinion is that it sucks in all the usual M$ ways and then some. Lots of the breakage is intentional: M$ wants to own your digital life and is doing it's best to force you onto their media player, their photo managers as well as their crappy productivity software. You don't have to take my word for it because twitter made a nice log of other people's opinions. The M$ PR people really hate it, so you will probably be put on the terrorist no fly list for just looking at it.
They're fixing other applications (Firefox in this case)
Did you really say and believe that? Congratulations, you have outdone M$ themselves. Let's review:
the problem happened if you installed IE7, not before.
M$ has just admitted their mistaken way of dealing with urls in XP and 2003.
How is that Firefox again? Yes, I saw in the recap where "MSRCTEAM" mentions their previous friendly blame cast, I mean "advice", to the Firefox team. Can you tell me how that intersects reality again?
If she is going to go and complain to Ballmer, she probably knew a bit about vista anyways, and i don't understand the kind of parent who goes out and drops 150 on software because of some little feature.
There's a big difference between reading reviews of the Vista failure and experiencing it for yourself. This woman gave M$ a fair chance and was sorely disappointed. That's not surprising to me, but it would be to someone always willing to give M$ the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, repeated deception makes people angry and she let Stevie Wonderboy have it.
b) take her some place to calm down? Sometimes, you can't save people from themselves, no matter how hard you try. That is in no way the police's fault. They were doing what they could to protect EVERYONE.
How about c) forbid her from flying, leaving her stranded far from home and outraged. When she objects, jump on her. Cram your 250lb knee into her 105lb back and wrench her arms out of her socket. Then drag her to the only room in the airport that does not have one of your fucking cameras in it.
We don't know what happened after that, but it's inexcusable. Prisoners are the responsibility of the state, end of story. They are not allowed to hurt themselves or others and they are supposed to be under your complete control. The worst thing that could have happened is one of these airport rent-a-cops decided to shut her up with a choke hold but she did not come out of it, and then the murder's boss decides to cover ass. Any way you go in this story is bad news. People are not supposed to die in custody, especially a 105 lb alleged crazy woman. What kind of incompetent assholes can't keep a 105 lb woman under wraps? Probably the kind of incompetent assholes who'd murder someone, intentionally or out of their inability to do anything right.
Research into computer science, number theory or encryption are not the problems. The problem is a run away agency that's able to tap, transcribe and parse every phone conversation in the world. As the author noted:
Historically the two primary checks on NSA powers have not been Congressional oversight nor even the economic costs of bulk interception, but of costs of bulk transcription and translation.
None of those doing research had the information they needed to prevent the outrageous political misuse of the results of their research. Even if they did know a spy agency was funding their work on speech recognition none knew that it would be secretly applied to US conversations before the ATT whistle blower shouted out. Nor could they have imagined that other fundamental constitutional protections would be abridged.
References to torture are appropriate. That's what they will do to you when you are shuffled off to a room or thrown into jail without trial or charges as an "enemy combatant". How does that happen? Just say something bad about GWB.
Research should continue, but some projects should be avoided until the political structure of the country is set right. It is time to refuse work that can be grossly abused by an evil government because large parts of the government are both evil and out of control.
I've got serious doubts about any statistical return that shows desktop Linux at less than 1%. There are free software desktops all over LSU's IT and basic science departments. It's frequently used enough that you will see it show up on more than 1 in 100 computers at the Union, even though the University rolled out a "secure" wireless network that requires wga_supplicant that requires extra work to get going.
Vista's market share is a dismal failure. If less than 10% of the world's computers had been replaced last year, Vista's alleged market share would look good. It is next to impossible for the average person to get any kind of computer with anything but Vista on it, so the market share should at least be lock step with new sales. A decade ago, people would also go out and buy boxed versions of M$ OS. If M$ had a product people wanted, it would still be that way. That Vista use lags Vista sales is a stinging indictment, worse than dismal PC sales and Vista's zero impact on M$'s bottom line. People are avoiding Vista. They are holding on to their old computers and going out of their way to install other things when they do buy new computers. One of those things is obviously gnu/linux which has doubled it's share of whatever skewed statistics Softpedia is looking at.
According to the article it was "1,702 digital files."
Was it that or 12 copyright violations? Does the number really matter? We are not talking about a commercial publishing operation - perversely enough, it might be safer to run one of those.
Libraries can count on the doctrine of first sale. At the current time, they have nothing to worry about.
Try that with a DVD, CD, or electronic journal. The Library of Congress is timidly thinking about "fair use" rights that will be technologically impossible to enjoy. Of course, the owners of "premium" content will make you chose between participation in your culture and software freedom in order to enforce their insanity. Would you share with your neighbors if it could cost you your house?
Richard Stallman tried to think of all the bad consequences of greed and restriction of knowledge. He predicted many policies that came to be but he remained an optimist because he did not fully explore the personality changes that kind of society can create. His characters remained brave and altruistic, much like people are today. To fully appreciate the corrosive effects of tyranny, you have to look at societies like East Germany, North Korea and the USSR. We know more about them now. The degree of distrust and self interested reporting that existed in East Germany is sickening. Yet, those societies had a small degree of information freedom that came from imperfect control technology and external societies that were free. The society being built by copyright warriors will be worse in many significant ways because technology has made perfect knowledge possible for the oppressors.
Freedom is a matter of principle that must be zealously guarded. The smallest infractions should cause outrage and be defeated. Each right lost makes it that much harder to get back any. A society where your phone can be tapped without a warrant, you can be put in jail without charges or trail, and you can lose your home for sharing a few songs with your friends and neighbors is a long way from free.
This jury of 12 idiots decided to ruin someone's life for 24 songs. Great going, guys.
Remember that one of the purposes of juries is to override corrupt government and bad laws. The defendant was guilty technically but morally innocent. Juries deliberate in private for just this reason - they can agree to return a not guilty verdict when the law outrages them. The law exists to reflect the community's sense of outrage at misconduct. When conduct does not elicit outrage, juries need to be brave enough to do what's right.
Even if you ignore the incompetence of the extortionists, no one in their right mind thinks a $220,000.00 judgment is fitting punishment for sharing a few songs. Extremism of this kind will eliminate public libraries and have anti-social consequences the most far sighted can not imagine. The defendant has been made a homeless slave to some of the world's biggest companies, and so have we all.
when stuff like that goes wrong, windows makes sure it will not let you find out the real reason Bad Stuff is happening
Yes, keeping secrets from the user is bad and that's what non free software is all about. Users should not be exposed to complexity as a matter of course, but the workings of a system should be explained to those who would like to know. Windoze will never come with good diagnostic tools. M$ get's angry when users actually provide something of value to fellow users. They keep users helpless and divided to rob them the same way these hapless bottom feeders do.
This is what happens when you let making a buck be an excuse to screw people. The tone has been set by M$ and the rest of the supply chain has followed along. People don't need to buy new computers every three years, but businesses do and have to replace all of their software at the same time. The intentional waste caused by non free software vendors both dwarfs and drives the equally repulsive behavior of techs at every level. Their excuse can always be, "If I don't take this person's money, someone else will." It's a rip off from the start.
Slashdot Mirror
When quoting the fourth amendment to the constitution, you should quote the whole thing:
FISA violates that by being a secret court. It is, in fact, a kind of star chamber and is particularly unAmerican. The whole idea behind the fourth amendment is to protect you from arbitrary or politically motivated violations. Three or four unaccountable people say so is no "reasonable" grounds for a search in a real democracy.
It's an open secret that wiretapping has far exceeded the bounds of FISA charade. The phones of newsmen have been tapped and other intercepts have been made to find "leakers" in the Plame Wilson Scandal.
Actually, any listed company has only one primary responsibility, which is investor return.
A company's responsibility is to all of the people involved. A company that will screw any person will screw every person, including the investors. Every person deserves fair and ethical treatment. This is something that needs to be said over and over until everyone believes it.
The US traveling public who get to keep an artifically low price to travel. Everyone expects to fly $125 one-way, anytime, anyprice.
United is always the most expensive airline and prices are generally high, not low. If ticket prices were taking care of the things they should, this would not be bad but they are not.
The $4 billion new "information system" that will be used to extort money for bagage service that other airlines simply provide, is an example of waste. Other airlines implemented reasonable ticketing when forced by deregulation more than a decade ago. I doubt that it cost them billions of dollars or that real improvements to United's system would either. The difference in costs is a red flag for kickbacks and other corruption that's not serving anyone's interest.
you have it wrong its investor return, customer service, job security.
You can put it in any order you like. I don't see a benefit for any of those involved. Investors have poor returns when money is wasted, employees are demoralized and customers face poor service. The point of all of this is that a CEO who proposes to screw customers for the benefit of employees, to screw employees for the benefit of investors, and so on and so forth is screwing everyone. When you trust someone who thinks it's OK to screw people, you will find yourself screwed.
Sometimes your money vanishes into a CEO's private yacht.
United is a prime example of an unethical company that fails to meet any of it's three primary responsibilities: customer service, job security, and investor return. It does not matter that this "plan" to screw customers is not a fact yet, because United customer service is already the pits. How could it be otherwise when the employees are demoralized by games like this:
One of the "concessions" was the elimination of employee pension plans. Bankruptcy, of course, screwed investors. It's little wonder that United is often mentioned when I hear bad travel stories. Please do not talk to me about regulation to protect such scumbags. The kinds of things United is accused of are crimes that should be punished.
The other half of TANSTAAFL is a free market. Without that, there's no such thing as a fairly priced sandwich lunch. Glenn Tilton is lucky there's air on the other side of most doors.
It sounds to me like he loves the idea of open source itself, and just takes issue with a lot of the other ideologies that are lumped in with it these days (anti-capitalism, the "free" software movement, etc)
Lumping things you don't like onto something that treatens you is little more than name calling. The Woz is either misguided or malicious to say things like that. Software Freedom is something he does not understand at all.
Too bad for him because that's where the camaraderie is today. Suck holes, like Apple and M$, are more about denying user freedom than they are about technical progress or excellence. They get to use great free tools like GCC and X but don't get to pass them and other along to their users. Places like that can't be fun to work for.
I won't ever accept NOT being the absolute owner of my own computers
That's good, but at work it's not your computer is it? The level of control you have over your computer at work is proportional to the intelligence of your employer. If you are unfortunate enough to work for a big dumb company, you will be fired for exercising your software freedom in any way. A less stupid company that uses free software will be able to give you the tools you need to get your job done without giving you complete control of your computer. Some workers need more freedom than others. Ultimately, the things the company needs to protect should only be accessible by people and machines that won't leak. Figuring out what really needs to be protected is the tricky part, but all of it should drive every company to free software.
The real problem with "trusted" computing is that it can force use of untrustworthy software and defeat it's original purpose. No company should ever trust it's real secrets with non free software. Control is lost when you have to "trust" a third party that keeps secrets from you. If you are using Windoze, you might as well email the information to Bill Gates.
What kind of secrets does your company actually have? There's customer information, location and movement of valuables, business plans and a host of other information that can be harmful to divulge.
None of this is an excuse to cut into your software freedom at home or even at work. It's just a problem of collective action and responsibility. When you work for a company, there are suddenly a lot of noses at the end of your arm.
Would threatening to expose a security flaw in a server or website unless it was patched open you up to prosecution under cybercrime laws then?
If you ask for money in return for keeping your mouth shut, you are already an extortionist. At the same time, it's hard to see them using the bill to come after an honest disclosure, where you simply published details. Must find bill to know.
M$ licenses are simple because they are a lie. They don't have any intention to do anything but what they've always done: suck up your work and and screw you in court, the market place and public opinion.
The GPL is like good science, no more complicated than it must be for it's purpose. The goal of science is to understand truth. The goal of the GPL it to protect user freedom. If M$'s license is simpler than the GPL it's because they have other purposes for their licenses.
The death of dial up did not have to be the death of AOL. TW had all sorts of content it could have sold as a subscription to it's user base before they lost it all. Now they are scrambling and suing their fans to keep their media empire alive. More savvy competitors are cutting into their sales via the internet with no base at all. They expect the treats to draw customers.
That makes you an idiot with too much time and not enough brain.
I'd need to be able actually read the article with Safari on OS/X first.
Run GNU/Linux in a virtual machine and use Konqueror. I don't know why Safari did not render. Can't vouch for what that will do to your power use.
Thanks for the decision tree to reduce graphics display. Do you have a similar five click method to eliminate DRM from checking your permissions 30 times a second while playing "premium" sound files? Can you even run Vista on an older Thinkpad? Is there a reliable wattmeter based power rating for this particular model under XP?
Windoze might spare me some power use but it will never empower anyone. You only get that with freedom.
The other side of the spectrum from MoveOn are fascists. They are a bunch of right wing nutjobs who hate MLK, science, free software and Google. Their hypocrisy is matched only by their ignorance. The sins that Google has committed are all done much larger by the companies they are made familiar with and are told to like by mainstream news. The only thing that's consistent in their arguments is that anything is justified if it's done by a big company to make a buck.
Freedom is a good principle to advocate. Opposing trade with Communists is fine, but ire should also be aimed at M$, Cisco, Yahoo and others who co-operate as much or more than Google. All should be forbidden from trade with China by law and advocates of freedom should also be angry at WalMart for pushing for "normalized" trade. The nut jobs are not. Opposing political censorship is good, but the nut jobs defend big ISPs who have filtered email for political reasons. The "neoconservatives" are not conservative, they are fascists and they believe in greed not freedom.
The dumbest of them will put the interests of government and industry above themselves, their family and friends. They advocate government control when it helps make someone rich. It's sad to talk to them.
Talk about the Vista failure and out causes come the fanboys.
Wow, presented with a tremendous list of complaints from government officials, industry executives, wintel rag editors, and ordinary people, you conclude that no one is complaining. Denial.
How about a little recent, personal experience? I've actually met two people unfortunate enough to have bought a laptop with Vista. My comment about owning your digital word comes from watching one of them try to load up her camera software. Vista did not let it work, but the built in photo manager worked. So much for user choice and the myth that hardware with the little flag "just works". The other user has a tablet PC and the touch screen is worthless. Despite M$'s hype about multitouch surfaces, the table fails because it reads your palm as input while you try to use a stylus. Brilliant interface! Now I understand why M$ tables are also a failure. I have not watched long enough to see just how buggy it is but both are much slower than you would expect from beautiful new hardware. Neither of these people complained because all they want is text editing, light math, email and web browsing. The industry has let them down by saddling them with Vista.
Mock surprise! Really, do you live under a rock? People don't complain because they don't know they have easy alternatives that work. They just use what they are given until someone shows them something better. Vista's pains have been documented at length here and you can see them for real if you watch what your Vista using peers have to put up with.
Vista has been out for nearly a year and the consensus opinion is that it sucks in all the usual M$ ways and then some. Lots of the breakage is intentional: M$ wants to own your digital life and is doing it's best to force you onto their media player, their photo managers as well as their crappy productivity software. You don't have to take my word for it because twitter made a nice log of other people's opinions. The M$ PR people really hate it, so you will probably be put on the terrorist no fly list for just looking at it.
Did you really say and believe that? Congratulations, you have outdone M$ themselves. Let's review:
How is that Firefox again? Yes, I saw in the recap where "MSRCTEAM" mentions their previous friendly blame cast, I mean "advice", to the Firefox team. Can you tell me how that intersects reality again?
There's a big difference between reading reviews of the Vista failure and experiencing it for yourself. This woman gave M$ a fair chance and was sorely disappointed. That's not surprising to me, but it would be to someone always willing to give M$ the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, repeated deception makes people angry and she let Stevie Wonderboy have it.
b) take her some place to calm down? Sometimes, you can't save people from themselves, no matter how hard you try. That is in no way the police's fault. They were doing what they could to protect EVERYONE.
How about c) forbid her from flying, leaving her stranded far from home and outraged. When she objects, jump on her. Cram your 250lb knee into her 105lb back and wrench her arms out of her socket. Then drag her to the only room in the airport that does not have one of your fucking cameras in it.
We don't know what happened after that, but it's inexcusable. Prisoners are the responsibility of the state, end of story. They are not allowed to hurt themselves or others and they are supposed to be under your complete control. The worst thing that could have happened is one of these airport rent-a-cops decided to shut her up with a choke hold but she did not come out of it, and then the murder's boss decides to cover ass. Any way you go in this story is bad news. People are not supposed to die in custody, especially a 105 lb alleged crazy woman. What kind of incompetent assholes can't keep a 105 lb woman under wraps? Probably the kind of incompetent assholes who'd murder someone, intentionally or out of their inability to do anything right.
Research into computer science, number theory or encryption are not the problems. The problem is a run away agency that's able to tap, transcribe and parse every phone conversation in the world. As the author noted:
None of those doing research had the information they needed to prevent the outrageous political misuse of the results of their research. Even if they did know a spy agency was funding their work on speech recognition none knew that it would be secretly applied to US conversations before the ATT whistle blower shouted out. Nor could they have imagined that other fundamental constitutional protections would be abridged.
References to torture are appropriate. That's what they will do to you when you are shuffled off to a room or thrown into jail without trial or charges as an "enemy combatant". How does that happen? Just say something bad about GWB.
Research should continue, but some projects should be avoided until the political structure of the country is set right. It is time to refuse work that can be grossly abused by an evil government because large parts of the government are both evil and out of control.
I've got serious doubts about any statistical return that shows desktop Linux at less than 1%. There are free software desktops all over LSU's IT and basic science departments. It's frequently used enough that you will see it show up on more than 1 in 100 computers at the Union, even though the University rolled out a "secure" wireless network that requires wga_supplicant that requires extra work to get going.
Vista's market share is a dismal failure. If less than 10% of the world's computers had been replaced last year, Vista's alleged market share would look good. It is next to impossible for the average person to get any kind of computer with anything but Vista on it, so the market share should at least be lock step with new sales. A decade ago, people would also go out and buy boxed versions of M$ OS. If M$ had a product people wanted, it would still be that way. That Vista use lags Vista sales is a stinging indictment, worse than dismal PC sales and Vista's zero impact on M$'s bottom line. People are avoiding Vista. They are holding on to their old computers and going out of their way to install other things when they do buy new computers. One of those things is obviously gnu/linux which has doubled it's share of whatever skewed statistics Softpedia is looking at.
Hey, don't believe me. Go read what everyone else has said about it.
Was it that or 12 copyright violations? Does the number really matter? We are not talking about a commercial publishing operation - perversely enough, it might be safer to run one of those.
Libraries can count on the doctrine of first sale. At the current time, they have nothing to worry about.
Try that with a DVD, CD, or electronic journal. The Library of Congress is timidly thinking about "fair use" rights that will be technologically impossible to enjoy. Of course, the owners of "premium" content will make you chose between participation in your culture and software freedom in order to enforce their insanity. Would you share with your neighbors if it could cost you your house?
Richard Stallman tried to think of all the bad consequences of greed and restriction of knowledge. He predicted many policies that came to be but he remained an optimist because he did not fully explore the personality changes that kind of society can create. His characters remained brave and altruistic, much like people are today. To fully appreciate the corrosive effects of tyranny, you have to look at societies like East Germany, North Korea and the USSR. We know more about them now. The degree of distrust and self interested reporting that existed in East Germany is sickening. Yet, those societies had a small degree of information freedom that came from imperfect control technology and external societies that were free. The society being built by copyright warriors will be worse in many significant ways because technology has made perfect knowledge possible for the oppressors.
Freedom is a matter of principle that must be zealously guarded. The smallest infractions should cause outrage and be defeated. Each right lost makes it that much harder to get back any. A society where your phone can be tapped without a warrant, you can be put in jail without charges or trail, and you can lose your home for sharing a few songs with your friends and neighbors is a long way from free.
This jury of 12 idiots decided to ruin someone's life for 24 songs. Great going, guys.
Remember that one of the purposes of juries is to override corrupt government and bad laws. The defendant was guilty technically but morally innocent. Juries deliberate in private for just this reason - they can agree to return a not guilty verdict when the law outrages them. The law exists to reflect the community's sense of outrage at misconduct. When conduct does not elicit outrage, juries need to be brave enough to do what's right.
Even if you ignore the incompetence of the extortionists, no one in their right mind thinks a $220,000.00 judgment is fitting punishment for sharing a few songs. Extremism of this kind will eliminate public libraries and have anti-social consequences the most far sighted can not imagine. The defendant has been made a homeless slave to some of the world's biggest companies, and so have we all.
when stuff like that goes wrong, windows makes sure it will not let you find out the real reason Bad Stuff is happening
Yes, keeping secrets from the user is bad and that's what non free software is all about. Users should not be exposed to complexity as a matter of course, but the workings of a system should be explained to those who would like to know. Windoze will never come with good diagnostic tools. M$ get's angry when users actually provide something of value to fellow users. They keep users helpless and divided to rob them the same way these hapless bottom feeders do.
This is what happens when you let making a buck be an excuse to screw people. The tone has been set by M$ and the rest of the supply chain has followed along. People don't need to buy new computers every three years, but businesses do and have to replace all of their software at the same time. The intentional waste caused by non free software vendors both dwarfs and drives the equally repulsive behavior of techs at every level. Their excuse can always be, "If I don't take this person's money, someone else will." It's a rip off from the start.