Don't forget about Governor Jesse Ventura! Actually, maybe you should forget about him.
Well, I'm not going to forget about him. I'm hoping he'll run for president in 2012 (if the country isn't completely screwed up beyond repair by then). He'd make a much better president than either of the crappy choices we have this year.
I don't necessarily disagree with that. There needs to be some radical changes to fix the issues with health care.
Claiming that health care is an "inherent right" isn't going to fix anything, though. That leads to claiming that food and shelter and clothing, etc. etc. are all rights, but then who provides all that?
... And if a 33% tax rate can buy enough silly bureaucrats to go around doing this kind of crap, just imagine how many a nice, leftist, 75% tax rate will buy!
Don't worry, you'll still be free to spend the remaining 25% of your money any way you want, as long as you don't try to "invest" it or start a "business", which would only serve to "victimize" the citizens.
Besides, what do you need all that money for anyway? You'll get free health care and food stamps. We'll make sure the farmers keep working somehow. And if you company shuts down, we'll have a nice government job waiting for you building fences or something. We'll even send a bus around to pick you up, and provide you a jump suit to work in. Won't that be nice?
Don't worry about somebody taking your house, either, it was a little to big for you anyway. Why would 1 person need 2 bedrooms? I mean, you only use the bathroom a few minutes at a time. We're building a nice big communal house for you that will maximize space, with plenty of people to keep you company!
If that's not an option, take it to your local Best Buy after hours and leave it by the front door. Best Buy recycles e-junk in volume, so it doesn't cost them anything to send it to a recycler.
I see the propaganda machine being cranked up and anybody who tries to take up arms being marginalized as a nut, somebody like McVeigh, and most of the population just changing the channel.
Actually, we're kind of at a tipping point right now. We are educating a lot of folks with what's going on with the government and the plans they have. Sites like True World History and organizations like The Campaign For Liberty are getting the word out at the grass roots and people are starting to recognize the propaganda for what it is.
Any politician that thinks they can control the population through propaganda and force of arms have made some crucial mistakes, as there still doesn't seem to be any impediment to the flow of information on the Internet (at least in the US), and people already know that journalists have major biases, and don't trust what they say without question.
Yea, that McVeigh patsy idea of theirs worked out pretty well to sway public opinion away from the private militias. But it only worked for a while, and the militias ranks are swelling again now. I wonder what the next staged event will be, and if people will buy the government line again.
No, I'm sorry, but it has nothing to do with the "maturity" of software engineering, it just a different process. You will never reach the predictability in software development that you can get from engineering aircraft and bridges.
Mostly, that's because businesses want the automation they rely on to be flexible. Businesses processes change a lot, in order to allow a business to compete and improve productivity. They may be using the same trucks to deliver their products, but where they once took all their orders over the phone, they now get many from their web site, some from their Amazon store, a few from their ebay store, and they've got some volume resellers that utilize a b2b site that plugs into their ordering web services.
Trucks are still driving over the same bridges, too.
Well apparently Snopes didn't get all the anti-McCain emails that I did. They don't list the "Bush's third term" McCain, or the "McCain will prolong the Iraq war for 100 years" one. Then there was the one about McCain opposing equal pay for women because they weren't as educated as men.
I also have to wonder how many of those Obama-bashing emails were sent out by Hillary supporters.
I'm a little fed up with the whole thing - here we are are again with no choices - only the lesser of 2 evils - to vote for in the presidential race. I think the idiot vote will be well over 50% this year, because only an idiot would vote for either one of these globalist elite career politicians.
It's not the HD *content* that's the problem - it's all the lock-down crap on every HD content delivery system these days, and all the restrictions on the hardware (at least what's available in the US).
My own experimentation with an HTPC has been quite and adventure. I started out with the goal to get rid of Comcast, install FiOS for internet, then deal with just the OTA digital stations. They broadcast plenty of HD. A few of my problems were, well... "social", but most were technical.
Of course the first thing that happened was we decided that while only having local channels was not so bad, being without the convenience of the DVR was just a no-starter. So I built one. AMD 690G motherboard (from GigaByte), HDHomeRun dual networked tuner, 500GB storage. Worked pretty good. Then:
The MPEG2 codec from M$ is buggy as hell. Lots of issues there, but mostly niggling stuff
After going through 4 antennas of varying sizes and power, I realized none would pick up all the channels I wanted. Well, I can get all of them on Verizon FiOS for $13 a month. Not bad, simple solution.
Getting the guide to list everything properly was a nightmare. Verizon gives you a couple of channels for each local broacast - figuring out which is in HD and which is downgraded for analog is not easy. Inevitably what I record is either SD, or an erroneously listed main channel program that turned out to be the local station's secondary channel with 24 hour weather. Then they provide you like 122 channels of music. Gotta clear that off the guide, all those "unknown" listings are really annoying. The local PBS station actually broadcasts 3 signals, but I only get 2 from Verizon. Grrr.
Oh - those government converter boxes will *not* tune anything on cable (qam). They are strictly vbs8 (OTA). $5 more dollars a month to Verizon for a STB.
And after working through all that, my wife and teenager are bellyaching so much about never having stuff to watch it's driving me crazy. They both were on board with it before I started. "But I thought there would be more than this..." etc.
I call Verizon. I want 6 channels: SciFi, HGTV, FX, Comedy, Animal Planet, Science. Guess how they responded to that request. My Verizon bill just took a big jump.
Apparently, there is an FCC regulation that requires cable companies to transmit at least the local broadcast stations "in the clear" (no scrambling). Guess how many others they don't scramble. Don't count all those music channels. The answer is "1", and it's in spanish. Ok, I'll need another STB.
Yea, I can get analog from the box to the HTPC no problem. I gave up on HD. HDMI is no-go. No HDMI input (won't work anyway since it won't do HDCP). Firewire will transmit the HD signal! But... only if your input is 5c compliant. WTF?? Yep, it's the "broadcast flag" implementation. If your firewire input don't talk 5c, the cable box won't give it anything. I haven't figured out a way around that, yet... but I'm still trying
But at least I don't have Comcast anymore. Oh, and I'm saving a whopping $8 a month, so my hardware investment will be paid back in... only 7 years!!!
Unless i missed it in there, i don't see any thing in there that grants them more leeway to sieze a person(s) personal computer just because they think they have an idea which might be bad.
Maybe you missed this part:
(B) The forfeiture of property under subparagraph (A), including any seizure and disposition of the property and any related judicial or administrative proceeding, shall be governed by the procedures set forth in section 413 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (21 U.S.C. 853),
So just like in drug cases, you don't even have to be convicted of a crime - you lose your property based on an accusation. Think of it as a DMCA notice that not only takes down your site, but also has a bunch of jack-booted thugs coming and seizing all your stuff.
Maybe they will pursue a conviction and maybe not. If you want your stuff back, you have to put up a bond equal to the value of the stuff that was taken, sue the federal government, and prove your innocence. Good luck with that.
Ah - but you are forgetting the balancing effect of the Manfred Macx character. This guy is the Richard Stallman of technological patents. Creating ideas and patenting them faster than the bureaucratic corporations can keep up, and giving them away as an altruistic believer in the new economics.
The problem, of course, is the laws themselves protecting corporations as entities. As shell corporations are created, given autonomy, and provided the computational resources to legally defend themselves in virtual environments (such as the Internet will evolve into), they will quickly make human-run corporations obsolete.
Humans that upload themselves into the virtual environments, seeking immortality, will soon find themselves competing with autonomous corporations. The better negotiators will capture the greater amount of computational resources, and thus become better negotiators. Merge or die.
Yes, the first sale doctrine is law (it's in 17 USC for those who care), but contracts and agreements present the opportunity for the parties to the instrument to waive certain rights. What do you call it when one party is presented with the "opportunity" to waive certain rights, in exchange for... nothing?
For example: using an object that employs someone else's patent is infringement, but if they give you a license to use the patent, then they have waived the right to sue you (even though 35 USC gives them the right to sue you for it were it not for the license).
Similarly, the purchaser has the right of resale under the first sale doctrine. However, if the purchaser promises not to resell software, then it is bound by that promise.
Now, as I admitted, I didn't RTFA. If Mr Vernor never agreed to the license, then he should prevail as the doctrine of first sale still applies. I do believe that is why he won this case, no?
I just spoke out because I saw what I thought was a lot of arguments throughout this discussion that did not hold legal water or whose implications were severe for other tangential cases (such as GPL software, because remember that the "L" there stands for license).
You seem to want to equate usage licenses with copyright licenses. GPL is not a usage license. You don't have to agree to anything to use GPL software. How is it anything like a EULA, where you have already paid for a copy of the software, but then are asked to waive your rights without any consideration from the other party, other than they will not invalidate the purchase that you have already made?
I assume this is the code that was quoted to the guy:
Ala. Code 28-1-1 - "In all counties of the state it shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to have in his or its possession any still or apparatus to be used for the manufacture of any alcoholic beverage of any kind or any alcoholic beverage of any kind illegally manufactured or transported within the state or imported into the state from any other place without authority of the alcoholic control board of the state, and any person, firm or corporation violating this provision or who transports any illegally manufactured alcoholic beverages or who manufactures illegally any alcoholic beverages shall, upon conviction, be punished as provided by law."
May be less clear that it first appears. After all, if you're just making home brew, are they going to call your stock pot and plastic bucket "apparatus"? Seems like it would be a hard sell. Most of the rest is about transporting which wouldn't apply, since you're at home.
Plus, everything refers to "illegal" beverages. As long as you don't do any recipes that produce high ABV beer (prohibited in Alabama), it's probably not applicable to home brew.
Doesn't mean the ABC won't go around intimidating people if they are flaunting their home brewing, but if they have to check they ABV of a homebrew to determine whether someone broke the law (I think they would), they are probably not really interested in enforcing it. Which is why there are plenty of homebrew supply stores in Alabama that are left alone.
No, that's crazy. You don't need a license or anything to brew beer in your home for personal use. Federal post-prohibition laws specifically allow for home breweries, and some limits to the amount (200 gallons per year).
Due to this specific Federal law, there is not state or local jurisdiction that can get away with outlawing it.
It seems the tampering will continue. From the article:
The source isn't certain whether this new cap and overage structure will be accompanied by throttling. Reading between the lines of their new deal with the Distributed Computing Industry Association, it seems likely that they'll ultimately be throttling just illegal P2P traffic, once network hardware evolves.
(Emphasis mine). I'm not sure if they mean that they are anticipating some god-like hardware router that can automatically determine that some traffic is involved in illegal infringement, or if they are implying that P2P traffic itself is illegal.
Either way, this does not bode well for their customers.
Not hate speech, it just marks you as a retard, unfit to defend our country against the likes of Timothy McVeigh and others [trinicenter.com].
I've heard a lot of conspiracy theories lately, but Tim McVeigh as a white supremacist was not one of them. I wonder why it never came up during the trial and execution.
McVeigh, of course, was actually a dupe. After the Waco compound was invaded and demolished by Washington's armed bureaucracies, the ranks of the various Militia groups around the country swelled to record numbers. The incident pointed to a government out of control and ready to crush all resistance with overwhelming force. Militia groups were a way to demonstrate that the free people were not going to make that easy for them.
Militias have an old and entrenched tradition in the US and their organizations are well protected by common law. The 2nd amendment, while rarely giving private citizens carte blanc to heavily arm themselves, has real teeth when used to defend the regular militia. They are the last best defense of American soil.
The armed bureaucracies saw them as a threat, and desperately wanted to discredit them, since they couldn't just go after them outright. Along comes Tim McVeigh. (There were probably many candidates ignorant and twisted enough to fit their needs. Tim McVeigh was the one that became their patsy, though, for whatever reason).
It was probably very easy to manipulate this guy. He already had a dislike and mistrust of the government. He had little to lose, was militarily trained, and had the will to carry out the misguided plan they set up for him. They made sure he could get the materials, and their moles made sure he selected the target that would provide the effect wanted.
He probably knew as soon as the reports came over the radio about the day care center that he had been duped. Far from the rallying counter-strike he was hoping for, it was a devastating blow. The attack was vicious, malign, and horrendous. What McVeigh had hoped would be a warning to the Feds against their heavy-handed military tactics turned into a wholly unjustified terrorist attack on innocent children. Not even the most vehement of the anti-federalist crowd would defend him.
Of course it had the effect that the planners wanted. Within a few months the ranks of the militia groups dropped precipitously. Public opinion turned soundly against them. Many disbanded and broke up. Others shrunk and went underground, their members were targeted and their weapons caches seized.
And the Feds continue to disarm the citizenry. Many of the weapons seized in Mississippi and Louisiana during the Katrina disaster were never returned. Bush has effectively rescinded the posse comitatus act (not that anybody paid much attention to it before). Anyone buying a gun today goes into the database. SCOTUS is now considering whether it's OK for Washington D.C. to essentially ban gun ownership entirely. What do you think they'll decide?
Wow, a lucid post from an AC. I hope it's modded accordingly.
The only thing I'm not sure about is this quote from Martin:
"The DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility purposes and hence in the end no matter what the 'other points' are the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent."
I don't really believe that is the case. It was my understanding that DMCA prohibited any reverse engineering, but IANAL. Yes, the DMCA allows reverse engineering as a very narrow exception to the anti-circumvention provisions (see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.html#f).
However, I think it only applies to reverse engineering of a "technological measure" used to enforce copy protection. The DMCA doesn't single-handedly outlaw reverse engineering.
Slashdot Mirror
Congress approves the budget, it's drawn up by the executive.
Nope. It's fully Congress' responsibility.
Don't forget about Governor Jesse Ventura! Actually, maybe you should forget about him.
Well, I'm not going to forget about him. I'm hoping he'll run for president in 2012 (if the country isn't completely screwed up beyond repair by then). He'd make a much better president than either of the crappy choices we have this year.
Damn right. He made accumulating national debt the national pastime.
Congress sets the budget, not the president.
I don't necessarily disagree with that. There needs to be some radical changes to fix the issues with health care.
Claiming that health care is an "inherent right" isn't going to fix anything, though. That leads to claiming that food and shelter and clothing, etc. etc. are all rights, but then who provides all that?
Don't worry, you'll still be free to spend the remaining 25% of your money any way you want, as long as you don't try to "invest" it or start a "business", which would only serve to "victimize" the citizens.
Besides, what do you need all that money for anyway? You'll get free health care and food stamps. We'll make sure the farmers keep working somehow. And if you company shuts down, we'll have a nice government job waiting for you building fences or something. We'll even send a bus around to pick you up, and provide you a jump suit to work in. Won't that be nice?
Don't worry about somebody taking your house, either, it was a little to big for you anyway. Why would 1 person need 2 bedrooms? I mean, you only use the bathroom a few minutes at a time. We're building a nice big communal house for you that will maximize space, with plenty of people to keep you company!
Apparently because they can't learn from their mistakes.
If that's not an option, take it to your local Best Buy after hours and leave it by the front door. Best Buy recycles e-junk in volume, so it doesn't cost them anything to send it to a recycler.
My last 2 boards were Gigabyte AM2 boards. Desktop and HTPC. Both are great products, no problems at all. Recommended.
Actually, we're kind of at a tipping point right now. We are educating a lot of folks with what's going on with the government and the plans they have. Sites like True World History and organizations like The Campaign For Liberty are getting the word out at the grass roots and people are starting to recognize the propaganda for what it is.
Any politician that thinks they can control the population through propaganda and force of arms have made some crucial mistakes, as there still doesn't seem to be any impediment to the flow of information on the Internet (at least in the US), and people already know that journalists have major biases, and don't trust what they say without question.
Yea, that McVeigh patsy idea of theirs worked out pretty well to sway public opinion away from the private militias. But it only worked for a while, and the militias ranks are swelling again now. I wonder what the next staged event will be, and if people will buy the government line again.
My eyes, my eyes!!
Mostly, that's because businesses want the automation they rely on to be flexible. Businesses processes change a lot, in order to allow a business to compete and improve productivity. They may be using the same trucks to deliver their products, but where they once took all their orders over the phone, they now get many from their web site, some from their Amazon store, a few from their ebay store, and they've got some volume resellers that utilize a b2b site that plugs into their ordering web services.
Trucks are still driving over the same bridges, too.
I also have to wonder how many of those Obama-bashing emails were sent out by Hillary supporters.
I'm a little fed up with the whole thing - here we are are again with no choices - only the lesser of 2 evils - to vote for in the presidential race. I think the idiot vote will be well over 50% this year, because only an idiot would vote for either one of these globalist elite career politicians.
My own experimentation with an HTPC has been quite and adventure. I started out with the goal to get rid of Comcast, install FiOS for internet, then deal with just the OTA digital stations. They broadcast plenty of HD. A few of my problems were, well... "social", but most were technical.
Of course the first thing that happened was we decided that while only having local channels was not so bad, being without the convenience of the DVR was just a no-starter. So I built one. AMD 690G motherboard (from GigaByte), HDHomeRun dual networked tuner, 500GB storage. Worked pretty good. Then:
But at least I don't have Comcast anymore. Oh, and I'm saving a whopping $8 a month, so my hardware investment will be paid back in ... only 7 years!!!
Maybe you missed this part:
So just like in drug cases, you don't even have to be convicted of a crime - you lose your property based on an accusation. Think of it as a DMCA notice that not only takes down your site, but also has a bunch of jack-booted thugs coming and seizing all your stuff.
Maybe they will pursue a conviction and maybe not. If you want your stuff back, you have to put up a bond equal to the value of the stuff that was taken, sue the federal government, and prove your innocence. Good luck with that.
The problem, of course, is the laws themselves protecting corporations as entities. As shell corporations are created, given autonomy, and provided the computational resources to legally defend themselves in virtual environments (such as the Internet will evolve into), they will quickly make human-run corporations obsolete.
Humans that upload themselves into the virtual environments, seeking immortality, will soon find themselves competing with autonomous corporations. The better negotiators will capture the greater amount of computational resources, and thus become better negotiators. Merge or die.
Beware! I live!
OMG $80 for a video!!!??!! Egad! The plans are only $25! What's so great about the freakin' video? That's outrageous.
Maybe I can find somebody to rent me their copy...
What do you call it when one party is presented with the "opportunity" to waive certain rights, in exchange for
Similarly, the purchaser has the right of resale under the first sale doctrine. However, if the purchaser promises not to resell software, then it is bound by that promise.
Now, as I admitted, I didn't RTFA. If Mr Vernor never agreed to the license, then he should prevail as the doctrine of first sale still applies. I do believe that is why he won this case, no?
I just spoke out because I saw what I thought was a lot of arguments throughout this discussion that did not hold legal water or whose implications were severe for other tangential cases (such as GPL software, because remember that the "L" there stands for license).
You seem to want to equate usage licenses with copyright licenses. GPL is not a usage license. You don't have to agree to anything to use GPL software. How is it anything like a EULA, where you have already paid for a copy of the software, but then are asked to waive your rights without any consideration from the other party, other than they will not invalidate the purchase that you have already made?
Wow. Not even finished with law school yet, and already a corporate shill...
Not quite. The Federal homebrew law was passed in 1979
May be less clear that it first appears. After all, if you're just making home brew, are they going to call your stock pot and plastic bucket "apparatus"? Seems like it would be a hard sell. Most of the rest is about transporting which wouldn't apply, since you're at home.
Plus, everything refers to "illegal" beverages. As long as you don't do any recipes that produce high ABV beer (prohibited in Alabama), it's probably not applicable to home brew.
Doesn't mean the ABC won't go around intimidating people if they are flaunting their home brewing, but if they have to check they ABV of a homebrew to determine whether someone broke the law (I think they would), they are probably not really interested in enforcing it. Which is why there are plenty of homebrew supply stores in Alabama that are left alone.
Due to this specific Federal law, there is not state or local jurisdiction that can get away with outlawing it.
(Emphasis mine). I'm not sure if they mean that they are anticipating some god-like hardware router that can automatically determine that some traffic is involved in illegal infringement, or if they are implying that P2P traffic itself is illegal.
Either way, this does not bode well for their customers.
I've heard a lot of conspiracy theories lately, but Tim McVeigh as a white supremacist was not one of them. I wonder why it never came up during the trial and execution.
McVeigh, of course, was actually a dupe. After the Waco compound was invaded and demolished by Washington's armed bureaucracies, the ranks of the various Militia groups around the country swelled to record numbers. The incident pointed to a government out of control and ready to crush all resistance with overwhelming force. Militia groups were a way to demonstrate that the free people were not going to make that easy for them.
Militias have an old and entrenched tradition in the US and their organizations are well protected by common law. The 2nd amendment, while rarely giving private citizens carte blanc to heavily arm themselves, has real teeth when used to defend the regular militia. They are the last best defense of American soil.
The armed bureaucracies saw them as a threat, and desperately wanted to discredit them, since they couldn't just go after them outright. Along comes Tim McVeigh. (There were probably many candidates ignorant and twisted enough to fit their needs. Tim McVeigh was the one that became their patsy, though, for whatever reason).
It was probably very easy to manipulate this guy. He already had a dislike and mistrust of the government. He had little to lose, was militarily trained, and had the will to carry out the misguided plan they set up for him. They made sure he could get the materials, and their moles made sure he selected the target that would provide the effect wanted.
He probably knew as soon as the reports came over the radio about the day care center that he had been duped. Far from the rallying counter-strike he was hoping for, it was a devastating blow. The attack was vicious, malign, and horrendous. What McVeigh had hoped would be a warning to the Feds against their heavy-handed military tactics turned into a wholly unjustified terrorist attack on innocent children. Not even the most vehement of the anti-federalist crowd would defend him.
Of course it had the effect that the planners wanted. Within a few months the ranks of the militia groups dropped precipitously. Public opinion turned soundly against them. Many disbanded and broke up. Others shrunk and went underground, their members were targeted and their weapons caches seized.
And the Feds continue to disarm the citizenry. Many of the weapons seized in Mississippi and Louisiana during the Katrina disaster were never returned. Bush has effectively rescinded the posse comitatus act (not that anybody paid much attention to it before). Anyone buying a gun today goes into the database. SCOTUS is now considering whether it's OK for Washington D.C. to essentially ban gun ownership entirely. What do you think they'll decide?
However, I think it only applies to reverse engineering of a "technological measure" used to enforce copy protection. The DMCA doesn't single-handedly outlaw reverse engineering.