Agreed, its interesting how they are disqualifying upfront all the students who are politically aware and curious about canvassing alternate viewpoints and sources and ultimately who develop their own opinions and make their own informed decisions based on a far broader and less USA-centric pool of data. People that would be valuable in roles that need critical thinking and analysis.
Whereas the wilfully ignorant, insular and stupid people are welcomed with open arms because they are the only viable candidates for the state dept positions on offer.
How will this benefit the state department or the country in a wider sense - to staff critical agencies with idiots and only idiots? Damning signs that things can only get worse.
Your view sounds like an extremist view to me. Essentially all other niches of society takes a stance that agrees with Richard Stallman, that openness and honestly and transparency are paramount for freedoms and safety. It isnt just done for no reason either, its done because the posistion you advocate has been used and is being used to inflict harm.
Take Food labelling laws and regulations for example. How happy would you be to eat or feed to your family "Brand X mysterious substance, now in convienient snack size packs!". Do you think the public good is served by concealing what people are ingesting, or that any effort to hide this information from consumers is probably not intended to help them or their health? There have been lobbying efforts recently trying to prevent companies from testing and labelling their food as GM free, or mad cow disease-free. Do you think this is good?
Look at legislation, in particular bills that are kept secret and have to be rushed through the confirmation process without reading or debate - there have been many of these recently done in the name of security or counter-terrorism. How healthy do you think this is to democractic government and what motive do you think is attitributable to trying to keep details like this secret? It only takes a stealthy one liner inserted somewhere into a 400 page bill that noone notices to re-introduce gas chambers or to crush the rights of citizens or to carry out some other harmful act.
Or finance and banking regulation. How much harm has been caused by the secretive credit default swap 'financial innovation' products that leverage against the realestate markets in Europe and the US? When credit rating agencies lie and claim A+++ ratings on securities that at their base level, after navigating through the layers of intentional concealment and obfuscation.. are based on cash-strapped heavily indebted people who are missing mortgage payments routinely, charging everything up on their credit cards, and in a suffering jobs market where sudden unemployment is both likely and catastrophic. Do you think it would be as much of a problem if the multi-trillions of dollars in junk assets were accurately labelled as junk before all those investors were scammed out of their cash?
The stance of secrecy and obfucation and attacks against transparency and openness is almost always bad, and almost always motivated by desire to do harm or commit crime. What is really in corexit, and could it possibly be a problem that thousands of litres of the stuff are being pumped into a ecologically and commerically important area off the US gulf coast? 'Trust us!' say BP, just like Tony Blair said before invading Iraq, and didnt that turn out to be wonderful for all involved.
In software terms, wouldnt you like to know whats happening to your systems and your data every time you use a particular program? That it isnt secretly scanning your RAM and swap space looking for website passwords and pin numbers for the online banks you use? Software companies have been caught doing this incidentally, and harvesting and uploading all this data to 3rd party sites without the permissions of users. Its naive to the point of carelessness and incompetance to blindly trust random programs and hope some faceless CEO in some office somewhere doesnt decide to screw you for profit on any given day.
As a first step to fixing the mess of criminal scams and fraud and mutual bribes and lobbying that the legal system is devolving into, I'd be happy for actual _property_ to be treated as property again! This business of selling people stuff like DVD players then calling them criminals for modifying it is insane.. where have the rights of property owners gone?
If Intel doesnt want me to have ownership of things, with all that implies - in being able to exert all the control and authority I damn well want in modifying or reselling or destroying or using it in any way I want, then they shouldnt have sold it to me in the first place.
Hundreds of years of established property law and now somehow we have serfdom and have to beg and grovel for permission to use stuff thats ours with threat of jail if the powers that be are displeased.. this is disgraceful.
Its fairly chilling how casually you mention that government agencies are already employed and engaged in systematic, premeditated organized crimes against citizens.. and that this law papers over this inconvenient fact with a facade of lawfulness. As thought this was simply nothing out of the ordinary.
Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned with my do-the-crime/do-the-time attitude, but surely these 'security services' people ought all be in jail along with the police chiefs or ministers or MPs or lords or whoever it is that funds this sort of thing.
I mean, can a rapist stick a big 'Security Services' badge on and go about attacking women at night in a legally protected way? Why spend money on laws and services designed to identify criminals when there is a entire criminal subclass already identified and busy breaking the law in plain sight? Lock the bastards up already!
Its a repeat of the same scam they got away with over Bnetd. A 100% purely open source developed tool that doesn't even run on windows and somehow Blizzard convinced the courts that they owned this code ( despite having no evidence of ownership, no history of contributing code, no statements from the authors assigning copyright to Blizzard, etc ) and therefore its distribution infringed their copyright. It was pure theatre and fiction, just the same as if you or I decided to claim ownership over Windows ( with no proof ) and demand Microsoft be permanently shut down and its executives arrested.
One of the more openly criminal of all software development companies, the notion that they have the right to control all aspects of your computer ( and other running software that they don't like, firewalls, packet analyzers etc all are magically illegal just because they say so ) is another great scam.
It seems to me that as a homeowner whose property is being broken into as part of an illegal 'raid', you would be empowered to subdue, arrest and detain the federal police who are committing the crimes of destruction of property, breaking and entering, trespassing, assault, etc against you. Furthermore, you could call on the local police to assist you and cart these felons off to jail cells to await trials.
Why should any citizen have to endure crimes against them for acts that are perfectly legal? Hell, merely the threat of raids is conspiracy to commit assault, I'd report that to the local police as well, and warn all my neighbors that armed gangs seem to be targeting the area and to remain armed and vigilant.
On the other hand, there will be a certain malicious delight in seeing this proto-fascist slimeball force this law through backed by hefty bribes from media companies, only to watch Frances economy shut down. When all DNS records become illegal to serve up for access, when all index.htmls and the servers they live on become illegal, and essentially the internet in France is switched off over night.
Its nearly as silly as mandating CPUs lacking CPY or MOV, or operating systems that cannot open or copy files. Staggeringly retarded, yet so typical of politicans in general who know their own precious snowflakes will never be arrested for modded playstations or burned cdrs full of music regardless of how illegal its made.
Obviously this is fraud and the company should be prosecuted for claiming ownership of technology that pre-dates their company by at least a decade.
The offensive thing is not this case specifically, but that this type of extortion and organized crime goes on every day, even in the US. Of all the hype and hysteria over Intellectual Property that is used to attack actual people ( It helps fund terrorism, its as much of a threat as the Boston Strangler to a woman alone, those pirates are STEALING $billions from us every year *sob* oh woe is us the poor victims !), not a single bit of scrutiny or political will is applied to holding corporate criminals accountable.
The double standard is vile, and the government and USPTO which is solidly bribed by these groups is entirely happy to ignore them to the detriment of all. The corporate charter has essentially become a letter of marque in this day and age, these groups given unlimited license to extort and rob just like the real pirates of yesteryear.
And thats why I couldn't care less about "IP rights" and all of the pro-extortion DRM propaganda from these assholes. Being so criminal and choosing to exist outside the law, they also lose any moral authority to benefit from the law, or have the law stand up for them.
The same goes for abuse and misuse of copyright as for patent fraud. In refusing to take on the legal obligations of copyright holders ( to make their works public domain after a reasonable time ), its reasonable they also lose copyright protection of their works. Why should they benefit from or be protected by an agreement that they refuse to abide by?
Not only are the schools in a poor state, there is active coercing and lobbying to turn whatever effective teaching institutions are still clinging to life into madrassas - centers of religious indoctrination where reality and truth and the sciences are shunned in favor of fairy tales and christian invisible friend stories. Thank the so-called "intelligent design" proponents!
Its every nightmare scenario all acting out in parallel, simultaneous attacks against every civilized institution - law and order, education, health, economy, freedom of the press, the environment, all done at the behest of a handful of unelected thieves and killers.
The only way would be to auto-reject all encrypted communications
How difficult is this in the wonderful brave new world of DRM? Own a DVD? Thats encrypted, to jail with you, you damn scofflaw! Ever bought iTunes music? You terrorist, 2 years in the slammer! Own a new TV, or set top box, or PVR, or Xbox360? Encrypted, go directly to jail!
And the thing is.. objections along these lines were bought up when the law was being debated. Objections ignored by the fascist government of course. Now they have even more ability to jail anyone they like at any time for no plausible reason.
Perhaps if every politician who answered 'I dont recall' to any given question ( odd how politicians have such selective memories when it comes to themselves committing treason, perjury, ordering torture, bribes, murder and the like... ) gained an automatic jail sentence these laws might have some plausibility. Until then, fuck the swine and their laws that make it illegal not to know stuff.
They did. When the big controversy blew up they quietly changed the Hotmail EULA to exempt North American users from the "we own everything you see and do through hotmail" policy as it was blatantly illegal and was likely to provoke more anti-trust issues. As far as I know it _still_ applies to all other countries.. use Hotmail to develop software and Microsoft say they own the software you author or collaborate on.. heartwarming.
I guess it was either that, or invade some helpless nation, massacre a million citizens of that nation, torture dozens of them of them to death, loot everything that isnt nailed down, and claim that the nation is grateful for being invaded. So right now I'm calling the FOAB the lesser of two evils.
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.
How can a philosophy like FOSS violate a patent on software? Philosophical concepts are not patentable. Software patents cover specific constructs and implementations in specific lines of code, not entire computer ecosystems.
The statement is nonsense, and it comes straight from Microsoft, so one can only conclude its a continuation of the propaganda that saw SCO extort hundreds of millions of dollars from gullible investors - stock that became worth less than the paper that represents them once the truth about the scam got out.
And this can only be a scam. If I write a GPL'ed 'hello world' how in the hell can that violate 235 microsoft patents? It certainly is FOSS code. What about the claim that an infinitely intangible and undefinable code-base such as 'FOSS' can violate a specific number of patents? Ballmer might well say 'The official 2.6.19 linux kernel violates X patents', but the lack of specificity hes given is proof that hes is talking out his ass.
Its as farcical as saying 'Peruvian capybaras violate 37.2 of our trademarks!'. Gibberish, and the sign of a company turning to crime as a means of profit now they can no longer compete or earn lawfully and fairly.
Beats the hell out of me. I read the headline and assumed that a sysadmin had wandered into the office on a bright, fresh, monday morning and discovered that their datacentre had been mysteriously populated with Vista and SCO unix.
Don't worry, there doesn't need to be any safeguards because we promise to use our powers wisely and justly, and besides, don't you hate Terrorists?!
The FBI seems to love terrorists, because they have bought about a regime in which anyone merely claiming to be an FBI agent can ask for and receive any confidential or private information on any US citizen. The terrorists will surely be posing as agents NOW, and because there is no validation of authority, paper trail or any safeguards at all, they will be able to find out everything they want to know.
Robert Mueller and the rest of his complicit conspirators need to be in jail.
Dont forget the Jury Box - one thats increasingly getting utilised what with DeLay, and now Libby being sent where they can do no further harm to the country and its citizens.
In this case, enforcement arms - police, ICE, and the like - should instill a little fear... Often times the threat of action by the authorities will halt criminal activities.
From dictionary.com:
terrorism noun 1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes. 2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
So defeat terrorism, there is a necessity for governments and affiliated agencies (like law enforcement) to become terrorists. Thats the point you're trying to make? I guess thats why the CCTV cameras everywhere (for your protection!) were not able to protect a Brazilian from being murdered in cold blood by police in 2005. The same police who fabricated evidence, made false statements of fact regarding the clothing and behavior of their victim, destroyed CCTV camera footage of their deeds, and refused to testify before courts. You know what, they really do sound like terrorists.
If its a choice between living under state terrorism, or living in constant threat of religious extremist terrorism, then I chose the later. The threat from the state is multiple orders of magnitude more dangerous, and their terrorist minions far more numerous and widespread.
Is Linux is "Open"? How can anything be "Open" if honest discussion isn't allowed?
Yeah, me and Bob were about to start an earnest discussion of Linux around the coffee machine at work the other day, when a bunch of dreadlocked hippies in penguin suits burst into the office, waved around AK-47s, and demanded that we remain silent, or else. After 'they' left, we darkly concluded that Linux cant possibly be open, since honest discussion isnt allowed.
Is Linux a Myth?
Little do my superiors realise, all these servers running Linux that handle all the companies file-storage, backups, email, dns, and other vital functions dont really exist! They are all delusions bought on by me pumping hallucinogens into the air-conditioning, ahaha! Now when the voices in my head urging me to kill my enemies and devour their flesh have died down sufficiently, I'm going to fly my trained wyvern to the flat-earth conference, where we will spend all weekend lounging around smoking crack and laughing at those poor fools who believe in the holocaust, the moon-landing, or evolution.
That article was up there with TimeCube and the paranoid delusional rants from SCO, I expected to see the Pythonesque Foot icon attached to this story instead of Tux.
The Olympics is a crime syndicate - every country they infest they commit the same crimes against the population. How can they legally appropriate trademark rights ( since copyright & patents sure dont cover individual words one assumes Trademark Law is how they are doing this ) owned by the public domain ( that is, terms that can be used by anyone without restriction ) without the consent of all public-domain co-owners? They cant, its just not possible. But they get away with this bullshit every time.
For the same reason that trademark infringers have their counterfeit-branded stuff seized and confiscated ( and can face criminal charges for large quantities of stuff ), the Olympics needs to face the music and the law too. Being about the spirit of equal and fair competition originally, its crazy that they are now an extortion powerhouse who can operate with legal impunity.
The U.S. copyright lobby exists for one purpose: to give distributors sole custody of intellectual property "rights."
The term "intellectual property" needs to die as it is most often used in an inherently meaningless and contradictory way. Copyright, Trademarks and Patents all exist for different reasons and empower producers and consumers in different ways. Co-opting the emotional rhetoric of the civil/black/womens rights movements 'Give us our rights, our intellectual property rights!!' is a means of obfucation and extortion as it intentionally clouds the issue with hysteria which obstructs reasoned analysis.
Looking at the demands of the media cartels in the cold light of day, one can only conclude they are demanding enslavement and mandatory serfdom. They demand a fascist, feudal world where the all property is owned by a single entity ( the media companies ), and people own nothing - not the devices they buy ( thanks to the DMCA 'circumvention technology' agenda ), nor the original content they produce ( thanks to the guilty-till-proven-innocent part of the DMCA that allows any website/content to be taken down, how can an independent artist afford to prove they own their content in court when facing down the MPAA/RIAA/BSA? ).
The current copyright regime in the US is illegal and unconstitutional - how does 'for limited times' mesh with DMCA/DRM that makes 'copy-protected' content illegal to access forever? ).
The current patent regime in the US is so riddled with blatant fraud that it is also broken. Patents taken out when prior art clearly exists, or when 'obviousness' of the invention is unquestionable is common fraud.
The current trademark regime in the US is also pretty busted. In a court of law we have seen the 'Lindash' trademark ruled to be 'confusingly similar' to the 'Microsoft Windows' trademark. Its subject to all the bribes and corruption of patents and copyright, and is broken for the same reasons by the same groups of felons - Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA and others.
Its a state of anarchy, looting and pillaging by corporates & conglomerates who will not follow the law.
A sentence that equates to life in prison ( she will be what, 65 - 70 by the time she gets out? Better odds that she would die in prison during that time.. ) for being in the same room as a malfunctioning PC.. that the vast majority of people in the US would be utterly unable to understand, much less have any hope in hell of cleaning viruses and spyware off it unaided.
So are we going to see state executions for Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, the entire Microsoft board, and all majority shareholders too, as enablers and trafficers of child endangerment? What about senators and congressmen that forward pornographic emails, perhaps we should send them to the gallows due to the risk that they might damage children?
I cant see that any crime has even taken place at all.. and death sentences are being handed down as a result? It sounds like the terrorists havent just won, but have taken over the country in its entirety.
Or you could try taking a leaf out of Richard Stallmans book - use the system to fight the system, with the ultimate aim of the destruction of said system.
Get a cheapass silkscreened t-shirt made up with a poem or arty image that you have made yourself. Walk into a foyer of the building of a large MPAA/RIAA affiliated media corporation ( which is pretty much all of them ), count the number of surveillance cameras all busily engaged in the crime of infringing your valuable intellectual property, threaten the receptionist with years in prison, and call the police and report a heinous crime against yourself. Under the new laws these companies are liable.
Do the same thing with your car. The next redlight or speed camera you pass, call the Roads and Traffic authority and announce that you will report them to the federal police, those damn pirates with their filthy stealing ways! Make random comments comparing them to the Boston Strangler. Call up the minister for roads and threaten him with jail too.
Take a walk to Parliment house, pausing only to threaten the arrest of the entire government for criminal infringement after being caught on yet more surveillance cameras.
And so on and so forth. Yes, these laws are a new low for one of the most openly malicious and dictatorial governments the nation has ever seen. Laws enabling abductions without jury, crime or changes being laid, laws that remove civil liberties and presumption of innocence, laws that give police 'strong new powers', including shoot-to-kill authority, retroactive laws passed to allow attacking whatever group is the popular recipient of the 5 minutes of hate at the time ( asylum seekers, detainees, australians abducted and suspected of being tortured abroad ).. its a litany of disgrace and horror.
It seems to me that the TSA ought to be investigated into supporting and encouraging terrorism.
Deliberately keeping flawed airport security systems in place ( for over a year ) even though you know that it provides no safety to people? Lying to the people who you are charged with protecting about how safe they really are, and attempting to silence all criticism that may actually result in these systems being scrutinised so that security improves?
Doesnt it look like the TSA is trying to help terrorists? And when there is another terrorist attack conducted via an airport, what happens? The TSA will ask for and receive even more power! They (incredibly, how on earth did this conflict of interest happen?!) have a motive to help terrorists, and now this security reseacher has uncovered evidence that supports this viewpoint - that they are deliberately endangering people by keeping this flawed system in place.
Pacifist civil disobiedience Ghandi-style only works if your opponent is sufficiently good & civilised to not order the massacre of unarmed civilians, as the British arguably were at the time. If there is one thing that observing the antics of the Bush regime over the last 6 years has taught me, its that Bush lusts to kill, torture, humiliate and terrorise innocents. He makes up excuses for doing it. He helps others do it. Initiatives which serve to actually reduce suffering, like stem-cell research he opposes in all forms, even when the research can utilise stem cells with no ethical dilemmas - like those taken from placentas.
So I'm thinking that it wont work this time, he Rumsfield and Cheney would order the military to make strikes on civilian towns and cities inside the US in a heartbeat, we have seen evidence of this mindset in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now there are thousands of US troops who are used to waging war against civilian populations, who are trained to see anyone not in US battle fatigues as a terrorist and an enemy.
If the US population had sufficient will, they could sieze their nation within 24 hours, occupying all government buildings, courthouses, and police stations. 200 million people armed with guns and the resolve to use them spread throughout the nation and in every city, town and rural area. You cant beat that with a conventional military force. Or do you think the insurgents in Iraq are in their last throes, ready to give up, lay down and die any day now?
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Agreed, its interesting how they are disqualifying upfront all the students who are politically aware and curious about canvassing alternate viewpoints and sources and ultimately who develop their own opinions and make their own informed decisions based on a far broader and less USA-centric pool of data. People that would be valuable in roles that need critical thinking and analysis.
Whereas the wilfully ignorant, insular and stupid people are welcomed with open arms because they are the only viable candidates for the state dept positions on offer.
How will this benefit the state department or the country in a wider sense - to staff critical agencies with idiots and only idiots? Damning signs that things can only get worse.
Your view sounds like an extremist view to me. Essentially all other niches of society takes a stance that agrees with Richard Stallman, that openness and honestly and transparency are paramount for freedoms and safety. It isnt just done for no reason either, its done because the posistion you advocate has been used and is being used to inflict harm.
Take Food labelling laws and regulations for example. How happy would you be to eat or feed to your family "Brand X mysterious substance, now in convienient snack size packs!". Do you think the public good is served by concealing what people are ingesting, or that any effort to hide this information from consumers is probably not intended to help them or their health? There have been lobbying efforts recently trying to prevent companies from testing and labelling their food as GM free, or mad cow disease-free. Do you think this is good?
Look at legislation, in particular bills that are kept secret and have to be rushed through the confirmation process without reading or debate - there have been many of these recently done in the name of security or counter-terrorism. How healthy do you think this is to democractic government and what motive do you think is attitributable to trying to keep details like this secret? It only takes a stealthy one liner inserted somewhere into a 400 page bill that noone notices to re-introduce gas chambers or to crush the rights of citizens or to carry out some other harmful act.
Or finance and banking regulation. How much harm has been caused by the secretive credit default swap 'financial innovation' products that leverage against the realestate markets in Europe and the US? When credit rating agencies lie and claim A+++ ratings on securities that at their base level, after navigating through the layers of intentional concealment and obfuscation.. are based on cash-strapped heavily indebted people who are missing mortgage payments routinely, charging everything up on their credit cards, and in a suffering jobs market where sudden unemployment is both likely and catastrophic. Do you think it would be as much of a problem if the multi-trillions of dollars in junk assets were accurately labelled as junk before all those investors were scammed out of their cash?
The stance of secrecy and obfucation and attacks against transparency and openness is almost always bad, and almost always motivated by desire to do harm or commit crime. What is really in corexit, and could it possibly be a problem that thousands of litres of the stuff are being pumped into a ecologically and commerically important area off the US gulf coast? 'Trust us!' say BP, just like Tony Blair said before invading Iraq, and didnt that turn out to be wonderful for all involved.
In software terms, wouldnt you like to know whats happening to your systems and your data every time you use a particular program? That it isnt secretly scanning your RAM and swap space looking for website passwords and pin numbers for the online banks you use? Software companies have been caught doing this incidentally, and harvesting and uploading all this data to 3rd party sites without the permissions of users. Its naive to the point of carelessness and incompetance to blindly trust random programs and hope some faceless CEO in some office somewhere doesnt decide to screw you for profit on any given day.
Not so with Free Software thank you very much.
As a first step to fixing the mess of criminal scams and fraud and mutual bribes and lobbying that the legal system is devolving into, I'd be happy for actual _property_ to be treated as property again! This business of selling people stuff like DVD players then calling them criminals for modifying it is insane.. where have the rights of property owners gone?
If Intel doesnt want me to have ownership of things, with all that implies - in being able to exert all the control and authority I damn well want in modifying or reselling or destroying or using it in any way I want, then they shouldnt have sold it to me in the first place.
Hundreds of years of established property law and now somehow we have serfdom and have to beg and grovel for permission to use stuff thats ours with threat of jail if the powers that be are displeased.. this is disgraceful.
Its fairly chilling how casually you mention that government agencies are already employed and engaged in systematic, premeditated organized crimes against citizens.. and that this law papers over this inconvenient fact with a facade of lawfulness. As thought this was simply nothing out of the ordinary.
Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned with my do-the-crime/do-the-time attitude, but surely these 'security services' people ought all be in jail along with the police chiefs or ministers or MPs or lords or whoever it is that funds this sort of thing.
I mean, can a rapist stick a big 'Security Services' badge on and go about attacking women at night in a legally protected way? Why spend money on laws and services designed to identify criminals when there is a entire criminal subclass already identified and busy breaking the law in plain sight? Lock the bastards up already!
Its a repeat of the same scam they got away with over Bnetd. A 100% purely open source developed tool that doesn't even run on windows and somehow Blizzard convinced the courts that they owned this code ( despite having no evidence of ownership, no history of contributing code, no statements from the authors assigning copyright to Blizzard, etc ) and therefore its distribution infringed their copyright. It was pure theatre and fiction, just the same as if you or I decided to claim ownership over Windows ( with no proof ) and demand Microsoft be permanently shut down and its executives arrested.
One of the more openly criminal of all software development companies, the notion that they have the right to control all aspects of your computer ( and other running software that they don't like, firewalls, packet analyzers etc all are magically illegal just because they say so ) is another great scam.
It seems to me that as a homeowner whose property is being broken into as part of an illegal 'raid', you would be empowered to subdue, arrest and detain the federal police who are committing the crimes of destruction of property, breaking and entering, trespassing, assault, etc against you. Furthermore, you could call on the local police to assist you and cart these felons off to jail cells to await trials.
Why should any citizen have to endure crimes against them for acts that are perfectly legal? Hell, merely the threat of raids is conspiracy to commit assault, I'd report that to the local police as well, and warn all my neighbors that armed gangs seem to be targeting the area and to remain armed and vigilant.
On the other hand, there will be a certain malicious delight in seeing this proto-fascist slimeball force this law through backed by hefty bribes from media companies, only to watch Frances economy shut down. When all DNS records become illegal to serve up for access, when all index.htmls and the servers they live on become illegal, and essentially the internet in France is switched off over night.
Its nearly as silly as mandating CPUs lacking CPY or MOV, or operating systems that cannot open or copy files. Staggeringly retarded, yet so typical of politicans in general who know their own precious snowflakes will never be arrested for modded playstations or burned cdrs full of music regardless of how illegal its made.
Obviously this is fraud and the company should be prosecuted for claiming ownership of technology that pre-dates their company by at least a decade.
The offensive thing is not this case specifically, but that this type of extortion and organized crime goes on every day, even in the US. Of all the hype and hysteria over Intellectual Property that is used to attack actual people ( It helps fund terrorism, its as much of a threat as the Boston Strangler to a woman alone, those pirates are STEALING $billions from us every year *sob* oh woe is us the poor victims !), not a single bit of scrutiny or political will is applied to holding corporate criminals accountable.
The double standard is vile, and the government and USPTO which is solidly bribed by these groups is entirely happy to ignore them to the detriment of all. The corporate charter has essentially become a letter of marque in this day and age, these groups given unlimited license to extort and rob just like the real pirates of yesteryear.
And thats why I couldn't care less about "IP rights" and all of the pro-extortion DRM propaganda from these assholes. Being so criminal and choosing to exist outside the law, they also lose any moral authority to benefit from the law, or have the law stand up for them.
The same goes for abuse and misuse of copyright as for patent fraud. In refusing to take on the legal obligations of copyright holders ( to make their works public domain after a reasonable time ), its reasonable they also lose copyright protection of their works. Why should they benefit from or be protected by an agreement that they refuse to abide by?
Not only are the schools in a poor state, there is active coercing and lobbying to turn whatever effective teaching institutions are still clinging to life into madrassas - centers of religious indoctrination where reality and truth and the sciences are shunned in favor of fairy tales and christian invisible friend stories. Thank the so-called "intelligent design" proponents!
Its every nightmare scenario all acting out in parallel, simultaneous attacks against every civilized institution - law and order, education, health, economy, freedom of the press, the environment, all done at the behest of a handful of unelected thieves and killers.
The only way would be to auto-reject all encrypted communications
How difficult is this in the wonderful brave new world of DRM? Own a DVD? Thats encrypted, to jail with you, you damn scofflaw! Ever bought iTunes music? You terrorist, 2 years in the slammer! Own a new TV, or set top box, or PVR, or Xbox360? Encrypted, go directly to jail!
And the thing is.. objections along these lines were bought up when the law was being debated. Objections ignored by the fascist government of course. Now they have even more ability to jail anyone they like at any time for no plausible reason.
Perhaps if every politician who answered 'I dont recall' to any given question ( odd how politicians have such selective memories when it comes to themselves committing treason, perjury, ordering torture, bribes, murder and the like... ) gained an automatic jail sentence these laws might have some plausibility. Until then, fuck the swine and their laws that make it illegal not to know stuff.
"Surely you jest!" you say. And how I wish it were so:
http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M010512.html#rights
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/03/30/all_your_data_and_biz/
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/03/1535244
They did. When the big controversy blew up they quietly changed the Hotmail EULA to exempt North American users from the "we own everything you see and do through hotmail" policy as it was blatantly illegal and was likely to provoke more anti-trust issues. As far as I know it _still_ applies to all other countries.. use Hotmail to develop software and Microsoft say they own the software you author or collaborate on.. heartwarming.
I guess it was either that, or invade some helpless nation, massacre a million citizens of that nation, torture dozens of them of them to death, loot everything that isnt nailed down, and claim that the nation is grateful for being invaded. So right now I'm calling the FOAB the lesser of two evils.
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.
How can a philosophy like FOSS violate a patent on software? Philosophical concepts are not patentable. Software patents cover specific constructs and implementations in specific lines of code, not entire computer ecosystems.
The statement is nonsense, and it comes straight from Microsoft, so one can only conclude its a continuation of the propaganda that saw SCO extort hundreds of millions of dollars from gullible investors - stock that became worth less than the paper that represents them once the truth about the scam got out.
And this can only be a scam. If I write a GPL'ed 'hello world' how in the hell can that violate 235 microsoft patents? It certainly is FOSS code. What about the claim that an infinitely intangible and undefinable code-base such as 'FOSS' can violate a specific number of patents? Ballmer might well say 'The official 2.6.19 linux kernel violates X patents', but the lack of specificity hes given is proof that hes is talking out his ass.
Its as farcical as saying 'Peruvian capybaras violate 37.2 of our trademarks!'. Gibberish, and the sign of a company turning to crime as a means of profit now they can no longer compete or earn lawfully and fairly.
Why is terrorism "the worst" now?
Beats the hell out of me. I read the headline and assumed that a sysadmin had wandered into the office on a bright, fresh, monday morning and discovered that their datacentre had been mysteriously populated with Vista and SCO unix.
Don't worry, there doesn't need to be any safeguards because we promise to use our powers wisely and justly, and besides, don't you hate Terrorists?!
The FBI seems to love terrorists, because they have bought about a regime in which anyone merely claiming to be an FBI agent can ask for and receive any confidential or private information on any US citizen. The terrorists will surely be posing as agents NOW, and because there is no validation of authority, paper trail or any safeguards at all, they will be able to find out everything they want to know.
Robert Mueller and the rest of his complicit conspirators need to be in jail.
Dont forget the Jury Box - one thats increasingly getting utilised what with DeLay, and now Libby being sent where they can do no further harm to the country and its citizens.
In this case, enforcement arms - police, ICE, and the like - should instill a little fear... Often times the threat of action by the authorities will halt criminal activities.
From dictionary.com:
terrorism
noun
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
So defeat terrorism, there is a necessity for governments and affiliated agencies (like law enforcement) to become terrorists. Thats the point you're trying to make? I guess thats why the CCTV cameras everywhere (for your protection!) were not able to protect a Brazilian from being murdered in cold blood by police in 2005. The same police who fabricated evidence, made false statements of fact regarding the clothing and behavior of their victim, destroyed CCTV camera footage of their deeds, and refused to testify before courts. You know what, they really do sound like terrorists.
If its a choice between living under state terrorism, or living in constant threat of religious extremist terrorism, then I chose the later. The threat from the state is multiple orders of magnitude more dangerous, and their terrorist minions far more numerous and widespread.
Is Linux is "Open"?
How can anything be "Open" if honest discussion isn't allowed?
Yeah, me and Bob were about to start an earnest discussion of Linux around the coffee machine at work the other day, when a bunch of dreadlocked hippies in penguin suits burst into the office, waved around AK-47s, and demanded that we remain silent, or else. After 'they' left, we darkly concluded that Linux cant possibly be open, since honest discussion isnt allowed.
Is Linux a Myth?
Little do my superiors realise, all these servers running Linux that handle all the companies file-storage, backups, email, dns, and other vital functions dont really exist! They are all delusions bought on by me pumping hallucinogens into the air-conditioning, ahaha! Now when the voices in my head urging me to kill my enemies and devour their flesh have died down sufficiently, I'm going to fly my trained wyvern to the flat-earth conference, where we will spend all weekend lounging around smoking crack and laughing at those poor fools who believe in the holocaust, the moon-landing, or evolution.
That article was up there with TimeCube and the paranoid delusional rants from SCO, I expected to see the Pythonesque Foot icon attached to this story instead of Tux.
The Olympics is a crime syndicate - every country they infest they commit the same crimes against the population. How can they legally appropriate trademark rights ( since copyright & patents sure dont cover individual words one assumes Trademark Law is how they are doing this ) owned by the public domain ( that is, terms that can be used by anyone without restriction ) without the consent of all public-domain co-owners? They cant, its just not possible. But they get away with this bullshit every time.
For the same reason that trademark infringers have their counterfeit-branded stuff seized and confiscated ( and can face criminal charges for large quantities of stuff ), the Olympics needs to face the music and the law too. Being about the spirit of equal and fair competition originally, its crazy that they are now an extortion powerhouse who can operate with legal impunity.
The U.S. copyright lobby exists for one purpose: to give distributors sole custody of intellectual property "rights."
The term "intellectual property" needs to die as it is most often used in an inherently meaningless and contradictory way. Copyright, Trademarks and Patents all exist for different reasons and empower producers and consumers in different ways. Co-opting the emotional rhetoric of the civil/black/womens rights movements 'Give us our rights, our intellectual property rights!!' is a means of obfucation and extortion as it intentionally clouds the issue with hysteria which obstructs reasoned analysis.
Looking at the demands of the media cartels in the cold light of day, one can only conclude they are demanding enslavement and mandatory serfdom. They demand a fascist, feudal world where the all property is owned by a single entity ( the media companies ), and people own nothing - not the devices they buy ( thanks to the DMCA 'circumvention technology' agenda ), nor the original content they produce ( thanks to the guilty-till-proven-innocent part of the DMCA that allows any website/content to be taken down, how can an independent artist afford to prove they own their content in court when facing down the MPAA/RIAA/BSA? ).
The current copyright regime in the US is illegal and unconstitutional - how does 'for limited times' mesh with DMCA/DRM that makes 'copy-protected' content illegal to access forever? ).
The current patent regime in the US is so riddled with blatant fraud that it is also broken. Patents taken out when prior art clearly exists, or when 'obviousness' of the invention is unquestionable is common fraud.
The current trademark regime in the US is also pretty busted. In a court of law we have seen the 'Lindash' trademark ruled to be 'confusingly similar' to the 'Microsoft Windows' trademark. Its subject to all the bribes and corruption of patents and copyright, and is broken for the same reasons by the same groups of felons - Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA and others.
Its a state of anarchy, looting and pillaging by corporates & conglomerates who will not follow the law.
A sentence that equates to life in prison ( she will be what, 65 - 70 by the time she gets out? Better odds that she would die in prison during that time.. ) for being in the same room as a malfunctioning PC.. that the vast majority of people in the US would be utterly unable to understand, much less have any hope in hell of cleaning viruses and spyware off it unaided.
So are we going to see state executions for Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, the entire Microsoft board, and all majority shareholders too, as enablers and trafficers of child endangerment? What about senators and congressmen that forward pornographic emails, perhaps we should send them to the gallows due to the risk that they might damage children?
I cant see that any crime has even taken place at all.. and death sentences are being handed down as a result? It sounds like the terrorists havent just won, but have taken over the country in its entirety.
Or you could try taking a leaf out of Richard Stallmans book - use the system to fight the system, with the ultimate aim of the destruction of said system.
Get a cheapass silkscreened t-shirt made up with a poem or arty image that you have made yourself. Walk into a foyer of the building of a large MPAA/RIAA affiliated media corporation ( which is pretty much all of them ), count the number of surveillance cameras all busily engaged in the crime of infringing your valuable intellectual property, threaten the receptionist with years in prison, and call the police and report a heinous crime against yourself. Under the new laws these companies are liable.
Do the same thing with your car. The next redlight or speed camera you pass, call the Roads and Traffic authority and announce that you will report them to the federal police, those damn pirates with their filthy stealing ways! Make random comments comparing them to the Boston Strangler. Call up the minister for roads and threaten him with jail too.
Take a walk to Parliment house, pausing only to threaten the arrest of the entire government for criminal infringement after being caught on yet more surveillance cameras.
And so on and so forth. Yes, these laws are a new low for one of the most openly malicious and dictatorial governments the nation has ever seen. Laws enabling abductions without jury, crime or changes being laid, laws that remove civil liberties and presumption of innocence, laws that give police 'strong new powers', including shoot-to-kill authority, retroactive laws passed to allow attacking whatever group is the popular recipient of the 5 minutes of hate at the time ( asylum seekers, detainees, australians abducted and suspected of being tortured abroad ).. its a litany of disgrace and horror.
It seems to me that the TSA ought to be investigated into supporting and encouraging terrorism.
Deliberately keeping flawed airport security systems in place ( for over a year ) even though you know that it provides no safety to people? Lying to the people who you are charged with protecting about how safe they really are, and attempting to silence all criticism that may actually result in these systems being scrutinised so that security improves?
Doesnt it look like the TSA is trying to help terrorists? And when there is another terrorist attack conducted via an airport, what happens? The TSA will ask for and receive even more power! They (incredibly, how on earth did this conflict of interest happen?!) have a motive to help terrorists, and now this security reseacher has uncovered evidence that supports this viewpoint - that they are deliberately endangering people by keeping this flawed system in place.
Pacifist civil disobiedience Ghandi-style only works if your opponent is sufficiently good & civilised to not order the massacre of unarmed civilians, as the British arguably were at the time. If there is one thing that observing the antics of the Bush regime over the last 6 years has taught me, its that Bush lusts to kill, torture, humiliate and terrorise innocents. He makes up excuses for doing it. He helps others do it. Initiatives which serve to actually reduce suffering, like stem-cell research he opposes in all forms, even when the research can utilise stem cells with no ethical dilemmas - like those taken from placentas.
So I'm thinking that it wont work this time, he Rumsfield and Cheney would order the military to make strikes on civilian towns and cities inside the US in a heartbeat, we have seen evidence of this mindset in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now there are thousands of US troops who are used to waging war against civilian populations, who are trained to see anyone not in US battle fatigues as a terrorist and an enemy.
If the US population had sufficient will, they could sieze their nation within 24 hours, occupying all government buildings, courthouses, and police stations. 200 million people armed with guns and the resolve to use them spread throughout the nation and in every city, town and rural area. You cant beat that with a conventional military force. Or do you think the insurgents in Iraq are in their last throes, ready to give up, lay down and die any day now?