What bothers me is that I actually spent five irrecoverable minutes reading the trash spewed by this so-called think tank. If Ken Brown is representative of the type of intellectual talent found in the typical "think tank" it's no wonder the world is in trouble from listening to those folks. I suspect that, given enough money, Mr. Brown would be able to "prove" that he's his own father; which, frankly, is the only way that I can figure out for him to have come into being.
I'm afraid that, for most purposes, government and corporations are indistinguishable. Here in the U.S. the MPAA and RIAA are allowed to serve John Doe warrants themselves. The situation here in the States is such that MPAA and RIAA congresscritters such as Orrin Hatch make little effort to cover up their attachment to corporations. So-called election finance reform has been shown to be a joke; corporations still buy politicians and the politicians stay bought.
The courts here in the U.S. no longer seem to pay any attention to our Constitution. The "justice" system in this country is not quite as corrupt as the legislative and executive branches of government, but that's changing. Given that the courts have not seen fit to declare unconstitutional such legislation as the DMCA, the PATRIOT ACT, and other acts that limit American's civil liberties, I don't see much hope that the situation will change for the better anytime soon.
I wonder if it might be possible to convince enough people to boycott everything produced by members of the RIAA and MPAA that we could starve the monsters that are corrupting our political and judicial systems? I think I'll start by cancelling my memberships in various CD/DVD clubs, etc. Frankly, I'm surprised that there hasn't been a move towards such actions already, at least I'm not aware of any, but would be glad to be proven wrong.
I wonder if MS might be the next in line for this sort of thing? After all, it's been shown repeatedly that they use the threat of cutting off supplies of their products if a manufacturer even thinks about putting non-MS approved software on as part of a preload. Maybe some of our Japanese Slashdotters could point this out to their government. It would be wonderful to see MS be declared a criminal organization is yet another country.
You may be right, but I find the timing of MS's "purchase" of a UNIX license suspicious. It strikes me as more of a conspiracy between between the charlatans who run SCO and His Billness to cause trouble for the FOSS world. As seems to be the usual outcome of anyone dealing with His Billness the SCO crowd got screwed worse than they ever imagined they would.
This is a bit off-topic, but your point about the exec who's saving over $1 million a year with Linux is important. Word of mouth, in the IT world as most other places, is the best advertising there is. That's something that MS hasn't figured out about its "Get The Facts" campaign. It isn't working because the people who make decisions about strategic Linux installations/conversions don't generally pay much attention to glitzy ads and websites. Instead, they have lunch with Joe down the street whose company just switched to Linux and is saving X dollars per year. To them, that's much more relevant than any amount of advertising.
That's also why the SCO suit failed to have much lasting impact on the adoption of Linux. After the initial flood of "the world of Linux is falling" stories, people realized that the SCO move is nothing but a blatant attempt to blackmail IBM and the Linux community for the benefit of MS. Once the facts of the MS involvement in backing SCO financially, combined with the utter lack of factual backing for SCO's claims, became known most people, except perhaps Laura Didio, understand that the whole SCO ploy is a sham and nothing to worry about.
I hope that the SEC starts looking into the stock manipulations that McBride and company have been pulling. It would be fitting to see all of them follow Martha into imprisonment. It would be even nicer if they ended up in someplace like Marion, in with the general population.
I agree that this is an appropriate use of GPS technology by law enforcement. There are some practical issues that would need to be worked out, such as how violation notifcations would be handled by police, what priority those violations would take, how to practically define the map of excluded areas, and similar hurdles. However, granted that all of these things could be worked out I would support expanding the use of this type of restraint to all felons who have been convicted of violent crimes and whose parole conditions have geographic area restrictions. As you, rightly, point out there is already plenty of precedent for restricting the civil liberties of convicted felons. Use of GPS trackers could lower the workload of parole officers and others involved with monitoring the parole of felons.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but when I went to school the teacher didn't follow me whenever I left the room. There's a difference between manually taking attendence to determine who is in class on a given day and forcing students to wear a device which tracks every move they make within the confines of the school. There is a difference between knowing that Johnny was in class this morning and knowing, via remote tracking systems, that Johnny is now in the school library.
This is not about ensuring the safety of students. This is about conditioning future citizens to accept the governement's "right" to monitor the actions of said citizens. Hitler and Stalin had youth programs, the "Hitler Youth" and the "Young Pioneers," both of which programs existed to accustomize children to government control and oversight of their actions. Molding the behaviour of a population is easier when one is willing to be patient and grow a generation which has no concept of what civil liberties are, or what the limits on governmental powers should be. These are the sorts of government actions that need to be fought whenever and wherever they raise their ugly little totalitarian heads.
My point is not that games shouldn't be rated, but that the government has no business setting itself up as a rating authority with the power to determine the ratings, interpret their meanings, determine who is in violation of those ratings, and fix the punishment for the violations. If parents are truly as concerned as they say they are then set up a non-governmental operation that issues ratings and guidelines for parents to use in making decisions regarding what their children will be allowed to buy or play. The trend in the US of expecting the government to solve every perceived "problem" is rapidly degrading the individual freedoms that this country was founded on. Government regulatory agencies turn out roughly 60K pages of regulations a year. Do we really need more? It's past time that people begin to accept responsibility for their actions.
"open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts," Gates wrote; ignoring the many versions of Windows, few of which interoperate with each other and several of which deliberately break applications that work on other version of Windows. Yeah, I'd say that His Billness not only understands the problems of interoperability, but also refuses to let a fact get in the way of FUD.
I have yet to figure out why our society seems to have decided that parents/guardians are not capable of making their own determination of what type of entertainment their children are capable of handling. We are being regulated to the point that our essential freedoms are in grave danger of vanishing under a sea of bureaucrat generated quasi-law. These sorts of moves need to be resisted on principal. The idea of allowing a regulatory body to promulgate regulations, interpret those same regs, and then determine who is in violation of the regs flies in the face of the Constitutional provisions for the separation of powers. Stand up for your rights and oppose regulation.
Well said. A large part of the problem that we're discussing here is what comes after use limiting technologies are given the force of law. Not enough people understand that the drive for DRM will result, if not opposed vigourously by eveyone who cares about freedom, in a society in which access to information can be absolutely limited. DRM, as envisioned by MS, members of the government such as Orrin Hatch, and media organizations such as the RIAA and the MPAA, will make it impossible for "unauthorised persons" to have access to information. The decisions as to who will be authorised and who is not will be made arbitrarily. And it's not just "entertainment" that will be so protected. Government and industry secrets, or just regular documents, will also be protected via DRM mechanisms.
Once DRM schemes are fully in place no unauthorised person will be able to so much as see certain documents, let alone surrepititiously print them and smuggle them out of a government or industry office. Merely attempting to access such documents may be made a crime and will certainly be tracked in order to identify individuals who might be a "threat" (for some value of threat). The joining of technological means of limiting access to information and the wishes of the powerful to maintain their positions will result in a world in which the vast majority of people will have no clue about what's really happening. How many people would know about the Abu Graib events if the powers that be had the ability to utterly refuse access to anything incriminating simply by locking it up behind a wall of DRM permissions? A well-managed DRM scheme devoted to keeping things secret could well lead to a situation in which there is literally no clue available that something may be rotten in Denmark.
The future of political and civil rights depends on our ability to resist the drive by the rich and powerful to implement DRM technology and the laws which will make it illegal to attempt to circumvent same. No matter how attractive the "content" that is protected by DRM, in any guise, is the fact of the matter is that it's not worth it. Anyone who buys a copy-protected game, movie, music CD, DVD, etc. is only putting money in the pockets of those who would, in the end, like to see the vast majority of people reduced to "consumer units" with no political or civil rights worth talking about.
I think that it's about time for Americans to start practicing a little civil disobedience and start using software that subverts the attempts by the government and corporations to limit the information we have access to or the ways in which we can use it. Maybe the slogan for the next revolution should be "The B-Tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the Bytes of Evil Corporations and patriots." In that vein I urge everybody to buy HDTV that don't recognize the "broadcast flag" before it becomes illegal to do so.
I suspect that, as with the EFF and other organizations, the number of available attorneys is not necessarily reflected by the number of staff. I suspect that Prof. Moglen and friends have put together a list of attorneys who are willing to do pro-bono work for the Center. I know that all of us have our favorite lawyer jokes, but there are still a few that do work for the public good, whether or not that work is remunerative.
If you're concerned about the number of lawyers and other resources available to the SFLC send them some money. I'm sure that they'll put it to good use.
I think that this is an example of the increasing trend in the US for rule by men instead of rule by law. The Bush Administration has done an excellent job of convincing Americans that it's more important to be "safe" than it is to be free. Anyone who questions the basic assumptions of the President (who has never made a mistake, BTW) is now automatically assumed to be at least unpatriotic, if not an active abettor of terrorism. I'm afraid that electing John Kerry won't make much of a change as he has been mostly silent on issues relating to civil liberties in this country. It may be getting close to time to water the "Tree of Liberty," again.
It seems to me that we have two equally bad things going on here. There's the Altnet folks and their software patent on techniques that have been used for years to identify files. Then there's the RIAA and its allies attempting to defend an outmoded business model using the prior art techniques (among others) that Altnet is claiming a patent on. Someone needs to straighten this whole mess out or everybody is going to end up losers in the long run.
Software producers, whether closed or open source, are finding it ever more difficult to avoid becoming ensnared in the Wonderful World of Software Patents(TM). Given enough foolish patents being granted by the USPTO, software developers in the U.S. will no longer be able to practice their trade without a battalion of lawyers carefully scrutinizing every line of code and every design idea/decision. This is certain to drive software development out of this country.
Then there's the RIAA setting itself up as investigator, judge, and jury to the detriment of the legal system in the U.S. Right now the courts seem to be starting to see through the RIAA's arguments against the use of technology that it doesn't control. However, all it will take is for the RIAA's congressional lap dogs to pass the necessary legislation and the court decisions will be moot. Again, we'll see creative people and companies driven out of a country that is proving to be much more enamoured of short-term profit than it is with long-term economic viability.
Given enough time these two trends will make the Bush administration's proposal to categorize fast food jobs as manufacturing a necessity. Such jobs will be among the few left in the U.S.; along with a legal system that is busy engaging in incestuous legal battles that, in the end, benefit no one except the lawyers.
Just my $.02, Ron
Re:At least now it's out in the open.
on
Ballmer on Linux
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· Score: 1
This is actually another lie. In the end Windows users end up paying for legal costs in higher price of products. That also has an affect on MS product quality as the money spent on defending patent infringement claims takes money from security R&D. So, in the end MS users get bitten twice when they use MS products. This is not so much of a problem for end users of F/OSS products.
Just my $.02, Ron
Re:OS at odds with MS again, no surprise there..
on
Ballmer on Linux
·
· Score: 1
The real problem right now is that, if his company falls down from his spinning so much, it may take us with it. The spin here is as good an argument in favor of making sure there is no computing monoculture as anything I've ever heard.
I agree. Anything that even looks like an attack on the Republican's Internet infrastructure will result in more controls being slapped on the 'Net. Never mind that the controls will likely be unconstitutional. The courts in this country have a long history of allowing administrations to get away with almost civil liberty infringements so long as there is a "war" on.
It would be incredibly convenient for Bush to be able to use "cyber-terrorism" as an excuse to demand the passage of PATRIOT II. It is not smart to deliberately taunt Texas' favorite village idiot, he has the power to make things go from bad to worse quickly.
George W. Bush - born on third base, but thinks he hit a triple.
If we continue to think that third party votes are wasted we are doomed to continue on the path towards a police state. Both major parties are in debt to corporate sponsors, in spite of election reform, and there isn't a lot of real difference between them. If we don't try to effect change through the ballot box, then we have to start moving down the list of other boxes available. I'd like to think that there are enough Americans who still believe in what this country has always stood for that we can affect government policy regarding the erosion of civil liberties.
We have to accept that change, if it comes, will be in small steps. If Badnarik gets more than 2%-3% of the vote there will, most likely, be at least some discussion of what he stands for and why. If he can pull in more than 5% the Libertarians will qualify, IIRC, for Federal election dollars the next time around.
The trick is to get enough votes that the politicians in the major parties have to start thinking about what the motivation is for those votes. I think that Perot's 1992 candidacy, even though he lost, led to much greater concern about the effects of deficit spending upon the economy in general. The fact that Perot was able to get a substantial number of votes forced the incumbents to understand that a change in Americans' acceptance of endless government deficits was happening. Thus, we saw balanced budgets a few years later.
If you really want ot help Badnarik and the Libertarians, send them money and, more importantly, get involved with your local Libertarian group. If there isn't one in your area the Libertarian party web-site has a nice step-by-step guide to getting one started. It won't be an easy fight, but I think we still have a brief window of opportunity to make some real changes in the way that the Federal government is run.
You make a valid point. The problem is that corporations and the government are doing their damnedest to prevent the use of technology to promote or enable "speech" that they don't like. That's what DRM is all about in the end. If you make it impossible for information to be disseminated you go a long way to controlling the ability of people to think about possible alternatives as the information needed to develop the alternatives is not obtainable.
I'm not so sure about the pine box. I plan on being cremated.;) Anyway, if a stand is to be made at some point better to do it while we still have a reasonable chance of putting up a fight and having the information regarding what the fight is about get out to the world. I'm not advocating revolution, but if we continue on the current path we may have to remind ourselves what Jefferson said about the "Tree of Liberty."
Shall we go through the list of countries in which gun registration led, more or less directly, to gun confiscation? Let's start with England, then add Australia and, I believe New Zealand. Those are just current examples. Going back to the WWII and post-WWII era the list includes Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Rumania, and Bulgaria. In all of those countries either the Nazis used gun registration lists to confiscate weapons after the country was conquered, as in France, or the USSR used the lists for the same purpose in order to make sure that there was no real means of resistance when they marched into Eastern Europe and took over former German allies such as Hungary and Rumania.
Do I distrust those who say that gun registration will help deter crime and I shouldn't be worried that my guns will be confiscated one day? You bet. In all the history of this country there is no evidence to support that claim. There is good evidence that allowing an armed citizenry has a deterrent effect. Why do you think places such as Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, and other states, where weapons kept loaded in households are traditional, have the lowest crime rates in the country? If you're a criminal where would you rather practice your trade: in New York City, where law-abiding citizens can't have guns and your chances of being resisted, particularly since you probably have an illegal gun, are minimal, or in Laramie, Wyo. where you'll more than likely get splattered into next week if you break into someone's home and they happen to be there?
Gun registration does lead to gun confiscation. How do you think the New York City cops knew where to find the weapons when the "Sullivan Laws" came to town? An unarmed populace is a helpless populace as any dictator worth his salt will tell you. Given this administration's assualt on constitutional freedoms I don't think it's beyond them, and I know it's not beyond the Democrats, to try to disarm this nation's people in toto. As Thomas Jefferson once remarked, "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Based on what I've seen and read about I think the Founding Fathers were right not to trust the government. People forget that the first goal of any government is self-preservation and governments will go to great lengths to insure they meet that goal.
When it comes to no-knock middle of the night raids for guns I belive in two things: gun control means hitting your target; Churchill was wrong - you should be able to take at least two of the bastards with you.
When they come for your guns, give them the ammo first.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't encourage them...it'll only make us laugh harder and possibly injure ourselves.
Just my $.02,
Ron
What bothers me is that I actually spent five irrecoverable minutes reading the trash spewed by this so-called think tank. If Ken Brown is representative of the type of intellectual talent found in the typical "think tank" it's no wonder the world is in trouble from listening to those folks. I suspect that, given enough money, Mr. Brown would be able to "prove" that he's his own father; which, frankly, is the only way that I can figure out for him to have come into being.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I'm afraid that, for most purposes, government and corporations are indistinguishable. Here in the U.S. the MPAA and RIAA are allowed to serve John Doe warrants themselves. The situation here in the States is such that MPAA and RIAA congresscritters such as Orrin Hatch make little effort to cover up their attachment to corporations. So-called election finance reform has been shown to be a joke; corporations still buy politicians and the politicians stay bought.
The courts here in the U.S. no longer seem to pay any attention to our Constitution. The "justice" system in this country is not quite as corrupt as the legislative and executive branches of government, but that's changing. Given that the courts have not seen fit to declare unconstitutional such legislation as the DMCA, the PATRIOT ACT, and other acts that limit American's civil liberties, I don't see much hope that the situation will change for the better anytime soon.
I wonder if it might be possible to convince enough people to boycott everything produced by members of the RIAA and MPAA that we could starve the monsters that are corrupting our political and judicial systems? I think I'll start by cancelling my memberships in various CD/DVD clubs, etc. Frankly, I'm surprised that there hasn't been a move towards such actions already, at least I'm not aware of any, but would be glad to be proven wrong.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I wonder if MS might be the next in line for this sort of thing? After all, it's been shown repeatedly that they use the threat of cutting off supplies of their products if a manufacturer even thinks about putting non-MS approved software on as part of a preload. Maybe some of our Japanese Slashdotters could point this out to their government. It would be wonderful to see MS be declared a criminal organization is yet another country.
Just my $.02,
Ron
You may be right, but I find the timing of MS's "purchase" of a UNIX license suspicious. It strikes me as more of a conspiracy between between the charlatans who run SCO and His Billness to cause trouble for the FOSS world. As seems to be the usual outcome of anyone dealing with His Billness the SCO crowd got screwed worse than they ever imagined they would.
Just my $.02,
Ron
This is a bit off-topic, but your point about the exec who's saving over $1 million a year with Linux is important. Word of mouth, in the IT world as most other places, is the best advertising there is. That's something that MS hasn't figured out about its "Get The Facts" campaign. It isn't working because the people who make decisions about strategic Linux installations/conversions don't generally pay much attention to glitzy ads and websites. Instead, they have lunch with Joe down the street whose company just switched to Linux and is saving X dollars per year. To them, that's much more relevant than any amount of advertising.
That's also why the SCO suit failed to have much lasting impact on the adoption of Linux. After the initial flood of "the world of Linux is falling" stories, people realized that the SCO move is nothing but a blatant attempt to blackmail IBM and the Linux community for the benefit of MS. Once the facts of the MS involvement in backing SCO financially, combined with the utter lack of factual backing for SCO's claims, became known most people, except perhaps Laura Didio, understand that the whole SCO ploy is a sham and nothing to worry about.
I hope that the SEC starts looking into the stock manipulations that McBride and company have been pulling. It would be fitting to see all of them follow Martha into imprisonment. It would be even nicer if they ended up in someplace like Marion, in with the general population.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I agree that this is an appropriate use of GPS technology by law enforcement. There are some practical issues that would need to be worked out, such as how violation notifcations would be handled by police, what priority those violations would take, how to practically define the map of excluded areas, and similar hurdles. However, granted that all of these things could be worked out I would support expanding the use of this type of restraint to all felons who have been convicted of violent crimes and whose parole conditions have geographic area restrictions. As you, rightly, point out there is already plenty of precedent for restricting the civil liberties of convicted felons. Use of GPS trackers could lower the workload of parole officers and others involved with monitoring the parole of felons.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but when I went to school the teacher didn't follow me whenever I left the room. There's a difference between manually taking attendence to determine who is in class on a given day and forcing students to wear a device which tracks every move they make within the confines of the school. There is a difference between knowing that Johnny was in class this morning and knowing, via remote tracking systems, that Johnny is now in the school library.
This is not about ensuring the safety of students. This is about conditioning future citizens to accept the governement's "right" to monitor the actions of said citizens. Hitler and Stalin had youth programs, the "Hitler Youth" and the "Young Pioneers," both of which programs existed to accustomize children to government control and oversight of their actions. Molding the behaviour of a population is easier when one is willing to be patient and grow a generation which has no concept of what civil liberties are, or what the limits on governmental powers should be. These are the sorts of government actions that need to be fought whenever and wherever they raise their ugly little totalitarian heads.
Just my $.02,
Ron
My point is not that games shouldn't be rated, but that the government has no business setting itself up as a rating authority with the power to determine the ratings, interpret their meanings, determine who is in violation of those ratings, and fix the punishment for the violations. If parents are truly as concerned as they say they are then set up a non-governmental operation that issues ratings and guidelines for parents to use in making decisions regarding what their children will be allowed to buy or play. The trend in the US of expecting the government to solve every perceived "problem" is rapidly degrading the individual freedoms that this country was founded on. Government regulatory agencies turn out roughly 60K pages of regulations a year. Do we really need more? It's past time that people begin to accept responsibility for their actions.
Just my $.02,
Ron
"open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts," Gates wrote; ignoring the many versions of Windows, few of which interoperate with each other and several of which deliberately break applications that work on other version of Windows. Yeah, I'd say that His Billness not only understands the problems of interoperability, but also refuses to let a fact get in the way of FUD.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I have yet to figure out why our society seems to have decided that parents/guardians are not capable of making their own determination of what type of entertainment their children are capable of handling. We are being regulated to the point that our essential freedoms are in grave danger of vanishing under a sea of bureaucrat generated quasi-law. These sorts of moves need to be resisted on principal. The idea of allowing a regulatory body to promulgate regulations, interpret those same regs, and then determine who is in violation of the regs flies in the face of the Constitutional provisions for the separation of powers. Stand up for your rights and oppose regulation.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Well said. A large part of the problem that we're discussing here is what comes after use limiting technologies are given the force of law. Not enough people understand that the drive for DRM will result, if not opposed vigourously by eveyone who cares about freedom, in a society in which access to information can be absolutely limited. DRM, as envisioned by MS, members of the government such as Orrin Hatch, and media organizations such as the RIAA and the MPAA, will make it impossible for "unauthorised persons" to have access to information. The decisions as to who will be authorised and who is not will be made arbitrarily. And it's not just "entertainment" that will be so protected. Government and industry secrets, or just regular documents, will also be protected via DRM mechanisms.
Once DRM schemes are fully in place no unauthorised person will be able to so much as see certain documents, let alone surrepititiously print them and smuggle them out of a government or industry office. Merely attempting to access such documents may be made a crime and will certainly be tracked in order to identify individuals who might be a "threat" (for some value of threat). The joining of technological means of limiting access to information and the wishes of the powerful to maintain their positions will result in a world in which the vast majority of people will have no clue about what's really happening. How many people would know about the Abu Graib events if the powers that be had the ability to utterly refuse access to anything incriminating simply by locking it up behind a wall of DRM permissions? A well-managed DRM scheme devoted to keeping things secret could well lead to a situation in which there is literally no clue available that something may be rotten in Denmark.
The future of political and civil rights depends on our ability to resist the drive by the rich and powerful to implement DRM technology and the laws which will make it illegal to attempt to circumvent same. No matter how attractive the "content" that is protected by DRM, in any guise, is the fact of the matter is that it's not worth it. Anyone who buys a copy-protected game, movie, music CD, DVD, etc. is only putting money in the pockets of those who would, in the end, like to see the vast majority of people reduced to "consumer units" with no political or civil rights worth talking about.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I think that it's about time for Americans to start practicing a little civil disobedience and start using software that subverts the attempts by the government and corporations to limit the information we have access to or the ways in which we can use it. Maybe the slogan for the next revolution should be "The B-Tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the Bytes of Evil Corporations and patriots." In that vein I urge everybody to buy HDTV that don't recognize the "broadcast flag" before it becomes illegal to do so.
Just my $.02,
Ron
More like the corner whore talking about the problems of STDs.
I suspect that, as with the EFF and other organizations, the number of available attorneys is not necessarily reflected by the number of staff. I suspect that Prof. Moglen and friends have put together a list of attorneys who are willing to do pro-bono work for the Center. I know that all of us have our favorite lawyer jokes, but there are still a few that do work for the public good, whether or not that work is remunerative.
If you're concerned about the number of lawyers and other resources available to the SFLC send them some money. I'm sure that they'll put it to good use.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I think that this is an example of the increasing trend in the US for rule by men instead of rule by law. The Bush Administration has done an excellent job of convincing Americans that it's more important to be "safe" than it is to be free. Anyone who questions the basic assumptions of the President (who has never made a mistake, BTW) is now automatically assumed to be at least unpatriotic, if not an active abettor of terrorism. I'm afraid that electing John Kerry won't make much of a change as he has been mostly silent on issues relating to civil liberties in this country. It may be getting close to time to water the "Tree of Liberty," again.
Just my $.02,
Ron
It seems to me that we have two equally bad things going on here. There's the Altnet folks and their software patent on techniques that have been used for years to identify files. Then there's the RIAA and its allies attempting to defend an outmoded business model using the prior art techniques (among others) that Altnet is claiming a patent on. Someone needs to straighten this whole mess out or everybody is going to end up losers in the long run.
Software producers, whether closed or open source, are finding it ever more difficult to avoid becoming ensnared in the Wonderful World of Software Patents(TM). Given enough foolish patents being granted by the USPTO, software developers in the U.S. will no longer be able to practice their trade without a battalion of lawyers carefully scrutinizing every line of code and every design idea/decision. This is certain to drive software development out of this country.
Then there's the RIAA setting itself up as investigator, judge, and jury to the detriment of the legal system in the U.S. Right now the courts seem to be starting to see through the RIAA's arguments against the use of technology that it doesn't control. However, all it will take is for the RIAA's congressional lap dogs to pass the necessary legislation and the court decisions will be moot. Again, we'll see creative people and companies driven out of a country that is proving to be much more enamoured of short-term profit than it is with long-term economic viability.
Given enough time these two trends will make the Bush administration's proposal to categorize fast food jobs as manufacturing a necessity. Such jobs will be among the few left in the U.S.; along with a legal system that is busy engaging in incestuous legal battles that, in the end, benefit no one except the lawyers.
Just my $.02,
Ron
This is actually another lie. In the end Windows users end up paying for legal costs in higher price of products. That also has an affect on MS product quality as the money spent on defending patent infringement claims takes money from security R&D. So, in the end MS users get bitten twice when they use MS products. This is not so much of a problem for end users of F/OSS products.
Just my $.02,
Ron
The real problem right now is that, if his company falls down from his spinning so much, it may take us with it. The spin here is as good an argument in favor of making sure there is no computing monoculture as anything I've ever heard.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I agree. Anything that even looks like an attack on the Republican's Internet infrastructure will result in more controls being slapped on the 'Net. Never mind that the controls will likely be unconstitutional. The courts in this country have a long history of allowing administrations to get away with almost civil liberty infringements so long as there is a "war" on.
It would be incredibly convenient for Bush to be able to use "cyber-terrorism" as an excuse to demand the passage of PATRIOT II. It is not smart to deliberately taunt Texas' favorite village idiot, he has the power to make things go from bad to worse quickly.
George W. Bush - born on third base, but thinks he hit a triple.
Just my $.02,
Ron
If we continue to think that third party votes are wasted we are doomed to continue on the path towards a police state. Both major parties are in debt to corporate sponsors, in spite of election reform, and there isn't a lot of real difference between them. If we don't try to effect change through the ballot box, then we have to start moving down the list of other boxes available. I'd like to think that there are enough Americans who still believe in what this country has always stood for that we can affect government policy regarding the erosion of civil liberties.
Just my $.02,
Ron
We have to accept that change, if it comes, will be in small steps. If Badnarik gets more than 2%-3% of the vote there will, most likely, be at least some discussion of what he stands for and why. If he can pull in more than 5% the Libertarians will qualify, IIRC, for Federal election dollars the next time around.
The trick is to get enough votes that the politicians in the major parties have to start thinking about what the motivation is for those votes. I think that Perot's 1992 candidacy, even though he lost, led to much greater concern about the effects of deficit spending upon the economy in general. The fact that Perot was able to get a substantial number of votes forced the incumbents to understand that a change in Americans' acceptance of endless government deficits was happening. Thus, we saw balanced budgets a few years later.
If you really want ot help Badnarik and the Libertarians, send them money and, more importantly, get involved with your local Libertarian group. If there isn't one in your area the Libertarian party web-site has a nice step-by-step guide to getting one started. It won't be an easy fight, but I think we still have a brief window of opportunity to make some real changes in the way that the Federal government is run.
Just my $.02,
Ron
You make a valid point. The problem is that corporations and the government are doing their damnedest to prevent the use of technology to promote or enable "speech" that they don't like. That's what DRM is all about in the end. If you make it impossible for information to be disseminated you go a long way to controlling the ability of people to think about possible alternatives as the information needed to develop the alternatives is not obtainable.
;) Anyway, if a stand is to be made at some point better to do it while we still have a reasonable chance of putting up a fight and having the information regarding what the fight is about get out to the world. I'm not advocating revolution, but if we continue on the current path we may have to remind ourselves what Jefferson said about the "Tree of Liberty."
I'm not so sure about the pine box. I plan on being cremated.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Shall we go through the list of countries in which gun registration led, more or less directly, to gun confiscation? Let's start with England, then add Australia and, I believe New Zealand. Those are just current examples. Going back to the WWII and post-WWII era the list includes Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Rumania, and Bulgaria. In all of those countries either the Nazis used gun registration lists to confiscate weapons after the country was conquered, as in France, or the USSR used the lists for the same purpose in order to make sure that there was no real means of resistance when they marched into Eastern Europe and took over former German allies such as Hungary and Rumania.
Do I distrust those who say that gun registration will help deter crime and I shouldn't be worried that my guns will be confiscated one day? You bet. In all the history of this country there is no evidence to support that claim. There is good evidence that allowing an armed citizenry has a deterrent effect. Why do you think places such as Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, and other states, where weapons kept loaded in households are traditional, have the lowest crime rates in the country? If you're a criminal where would you rather practice your trade: in New York City, where law-abiding citizens can't have guns and your chances of being resisted, particularly since you probably have an illegal gun, are minimal, or in Laramie, Wyo. where you'll more than likely get splattered into next week if you break into someone's home and they happen to be there?
Gun registration does lead to gun confiscation. How do you think the New York City cops knew where to find the weapons when the "Sullivan Laws" came to town? An unarmed populace is a helpless populace as any dictator worth his salt will tell you. Given this administration's assualt on constitutional freedoms I don't think it's beyond them, and I know it's not beyond the Democrats, to try to disarm this nation's people in toto. As Thomas Jefferson once remarked, "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Based on what I've seen and read about I think the Founding Fathers were right not to trust the government. People forget that the first goal of any government is self-preservation and governments will go to great lengths to insure they meet that goal.
Just my $.02,
Ron
When it comes to no-knock middle of the night raids for guns I belive in two things: gun control means hitting your target; Churchill was wrong - you should be able to take at least two of the bastards with you.
When they come for your guns, give them the ammo first.
Just my $.02,
Ron