the only thing I can really think of is the air force doing the obvious shady things that it does.
Uh... what exactly do you mean by "shady things"? If you have a problem with what our armed forces are doing, you'd be better off leveling your charges at Congress. Ultimately, they're the ones that fund any "shady" things the military does.
So far, they have been able to claim "common carrier" protection.
No they have not, because none of the big players have common-carrier status for their data services. Not even the telcos. Nor, I might add, do they want it.
I think the big fiction is that there has to be a "last mile" monopoly in the first place. That made sense back when a. there was only one telecommunications provider and b. running that last mile was prohibitively expensive. The telcos have been milking that for all it's worth: maybe it is time to eliminate that monopoly and allow some serious competition.
Any guesses which European country requires cell phone providers to record where their customers make calls, and then allows them to give that data away without disclosing that they have done so?
No kidding. Take Linksys, for example... they're a division of Cisco for chrissakes, and you'd think they could devote some resources to providing top-notch firmware. Sometimes I think Cisco doesn't want the Linksys stuff to become too good. Wouldn't want it to compare too well to their higher-end corporate products, I suppose.
Personally, I use Tomato (simply because it's solid, I like the GUI, and it has the specific features that I happen to need) and haven't had any problems with it with XP SP3. The author is also very helpful and responsive.
Fundamentally, the problem is that virtually every society on Earth is ruled by sociopaths (or in the case of my country right now, perhaps psychopath is more accurate.)
My first real computer game was the original Integer BASIC "Star Wars" game that came on cassette with the Apple ][ Standard that was my first personal computer. Sure, I'd played plenty of arcade games by then, but that was the first computer game. My brother and I just about wore out the paddle controllers.
I still have a couple of hundred 143 Kb Apple floppies in a box somewhere, I had one of the biggest collections of Apple software in the area at the time. Dunno if they're still any good or not.
Yes, that was my first thought upon reading the summary. I still have that book in my collection somewhere: I remember Ainslie's Bacillus and Degron, and the cyanide-laced variant they created to kill it ("We'll get Polytad to mass produce!") By the way thanks for the Wikipedia link: it was an interesting read.
Forget that... make them wear whole-body foil suits like the Robinson Family used to have on Lost in Space, along with a tin-foil helmet to block any stray emissions that might be impacting whatever they use for brains.
Now, we have a somewhat eficent government that can and will make laws based on "save the children", "kill pedophiles" or "teh evul terrorists" without any thoughts on how those laws can be used in other, unforeseen ways.
Well, I disagree with you only to the extent that you think those secondary effects are "unforeseen". Yes, there's a certain level of ignorance/incompetence involved, but in many (if not most) cases they know exactly what they're doing, and use the "save the children" / "evul terrorist" mantra as a way to rationalize passing bad law. They know the voting public wouldn't swallow their particular line of crap if they came right out and told us what they were going to do, so they have to sugar-coat it first.
Mark Twain said it best: "There is no distinctly native American criminal class - except Congress."
I'll pay $AU1000 a year, upfront if need be, for investment in this kind of infrastructure.
Well, if your utility companies are anything like ours (I live in the U.S.) they'll make all kinds of bombastic claims about what they're going to do for you to get as much money from the government and private sector investment as they can, pocket it... and then deliver absolutely nothing
Well, there are also many videos showing Iraqi's getting mowed down by various US weapons. Bombs, cannons, and so on. What do people who want to remove "terrorist" videos want to do with these?
A bigger problem is the amount of $$ that goes to purchase imported oil.
An even bigger problem is the amount of $$ that line the pockets of Wall Street petroleum futures traders. They're the ones that are making out like criminals in all of this, mainly because that's exactly what many of them are. Sure, it would be nice to remove our dependence upon foreign oil production, but you can't actually blame high pump prices on that. It's people right here that are doing most of the profiteering.
Creating cheap crap for pennies is removing our ability to create wealth?
Yes. The production facilities and technological capability required to create that "cheap crap" is also needed to manufacture more important goods. I suppose it would be okay if we just imported non-critical items from China, but we don't. Our military cannot function without technology purchased abroad (Boeing, I understand, can't make avionics any more, they buy it from Japan.) We are importing so much that we've lost the ability to make it ourselves: you people just don't understand what is happening here. As an engineer who's been in industry for the better part of thirty years, I can tell you this: we're in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. We're giving up our essential security for cheap crap in the same way that some Native American tribes sold vast tracts of land for trinkets in pre-Colonial times. They didn't realize what they'd done, and neither do most of us.
You cannot be a free nation if you are not simultaneously an independent nation, which means you must have the ability to take care of yourself. Sacrificing our independence on the altar of greed, and relying upon a foreign power (and a hostile foreign power at that) for our basic needs is stupidity of the highest order. China is not making that mistake, but most of the rest of the world is. The price we're eventually going to pay is going to be beyond belief, unless you believe that China will continue to provide for us forever, out of the goodness of its collective heart.
Let me ask you this: when people talk about "creation of wealth", what do they mean? Does it mean printing more money? No, it means that something was manufactured from raw materials and sold for a profit. That's what made America great: hell, after World War II was over we alone produced and exported more than half of the world's manufactured goods. Over half, from one country. Then Japan, followed by China, targeted our weak points and went after them, decimating industry after key industry. Now, calling Japan an ally in this context is something of a misnomer, I think, they screwed us over good. They may live to regret that. Regardless, what Japan left, China is taking, and there's not so much left as there used to be.
And before you bring up the ridiculous concept known as a "service economy", let me point out that that is semantically equivalent to "Third World Economy." Frankly, I don't want to live in the Third World, and the policies of our elected leaders and "Captains of Industry" are fucking making it happen.
Well, I guess you'd have to make the distinction between a moderated discussion (which is what you're talking about) vs. a censored format, where posts are removed because they fail to meet some arbitrary standard imposed by the forum operators. Then, of course, there are user-moderated environments like Slashdot, where the operators don't censor us... we censor us.
ust look at the current situation in the US: the neocon start a war for the 'good' of 'merica and its net effect is that the US economy now belongs to China. Talk about being patriots !
That's not really correct. Much as I dislike the present Administration, the reality is that our government and our private sector sold out to China long before Bush & Co. took office. I agree, there's a substantial amount of high treason involved, but you can't lay this at our President's feet. Well, not all of it, anyway. Hell, Bill Clinton was partly responsible for what has become the largest transfer of scientific knowledge and technological capability from one nation to a hostile totalitarian state in the history of Mankind. Kinda makes you wonder whose side either of these two men is really on. Not ours, that's for sure.
Even then, you have to go back farther than the previous Administration: this process really began back in the seventies. It's only accelerated to point of economic ruin for the United States within the past fifteen years or so. People don't fully understand the way China looks at the these things: they take a generational approach to foreign affairs. I don't know when the decision was made to take us out of the equation, but there's no doubt that once it was made they followed through with it. Look, the Russians tried the frontal approach: it didn't work, and their Empire eventually collapsed of its own weight, but China is not making that same mistake. They realized that behind the vaunted American military was a capable industrial engine, and that they'd never gain any traction over us until they removed our ability to create wealth and support our military.
China's leaders may be evil and corrupt by our standards, but they most certainly aren't stupid, and are rapidly taking care of their only real obstacle to world domination, the United States, by using the greed and avarice of our elected and corporate leaders as a weapon. It's working, and probably working better they they ever expected.
Slashdot Mirror
the only thing I can really think of is the air force doing the obvious shady things that it does.
... what exactly do you mean by "shady things"? If you have a problem with what our armed forces are doing, you'd be better off leveling your charges at Congress. Ultimately, they're the ones that fund any "shady" things the military does.
Uh
So far, they have been able to claim "common carrier" protection.
No they have not, because none of the big players have common-carrier status for their data services. Not even the telcos. Nor, I might add, do they want it.
What Shall We Do With the Moon Once We Get There?
... break it.
What we always do with a new toy
I think the big fiction is that there has to be a "last mile" monopoly in the first place. That made sense back when a. there was only one telecommunications provider and b. running that last mile was prohibitively expensive. The telcos have been milking that for all it's worth: maybe it is time to eliminate that monopoly and allow some serious competition.
Any guesses which European country requires cell phone providers to record where their customers make calls, and then allows them to give that data away without disclosing that they have done so?
... could it be ... BRITAIN?"
"Oh, I don't know
Only in America.
Not hardly. The madness is spreading.
No kidding. Take Linksys, for example ... they're a division of Cisco for chrissakes, and you'd think they could devote some resources to providing top-notch firmware. Sometimes I think Cisco doesn't want the Linksys stuff to become too good. Wouldn't want it to compare too well to their higher-end corporate products, I suppose.
Personally, I use Tomato (simply because it's solid, I like the GUI, and it has the specific features that I happen to need) and haven't had any problems with it with XP SP3. The author is also very helpful and responsive.
Fundamentally, the problem is that virtually every society on Earth is ruled by sociopaths (or in the case of my country right now, perhaps psychopath is more accurate.)
NebuAd claim they are using DPI to enable their advertising to reach 10% of USA internet users.
So those ISPs have chosen to deliberately corrupt data transmitted to at least ten percent of their user base.
Brilliant.
Is this just iPhone fear-mongering? Do you think the passwords execs could remember would help with securing PDAs and smart phones?
I think we first have to ask the question, are executives actually capable of remembering a password? Doubtful, in my opinion.
...the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state...
Can somebody please explain what the Hell that means?
My first real computer game was the original Integer BASIC "Star Wars" game that came on cassette with the Apple ][ Standard that was my first personal computer. Sure, I'd played plenty of arcade games by then, but that was the first computer game. My brother and I just about wore out the paddle controllers.
I still have a couple of hundred 143 Kb Apple floppies in a box somewhere, I had one of the biggest collections of Apple software in the area at the time. Dunno if they're still any good or not.
Good luck in getting Guido "The Killer Pimp" Loanshark to send in his finger prints...
...
Oh, I'm sure that Guido will be sending in fingerprints. They may or may not be his fingerprints, you understand
Yes, that was my first thought upon reading the summary. I still have that book in my collection somewhere: I remember Ainslie's Bacillus and Degron, and the cyanide-laced variant they created to kill it ("We'll get Polytad to mass produce!") By the way thanks for the Wikipedia link: it was an interesting read.
Forget that ... make them wear whole-body foil suits like the Robinson Family used to have on Lost in Space, along with a tin-foil helmet to block any stray emissions that might be impacting whatever they use for brains.
They probably should have covered the status LEDs with electrical tape.
I don't.
Don't know anybody, or don't regret it?
Now, we have a somewhat eficent government that can and will make laws based on "save the children", "kill pedophiles" or "teh evul terrorists" without any thoughts on how those laws can be used in other, unforeseen ways.
Well, I disagree with you only to the extent that you think those secondary effects are "unforeseen". Yes, there's a certain level of ignorance/incompetence involved, but in many (if not most) cases they know exactly what they're doing, and use the "save the children" / "evul terrorist" mantra as a way to rationalize passing bad law. They know the voting public wouldn't swallow their particular line of crap if they came right out and told us what they were going to do, so they have to sugar-coat it first.
Mark Twain said it best: "There is no distinctly native American criminal class - except Congress."
I'll pay $AU1000 a year, upfront if need be, for investment in this kind of infrastructure.
... and then deliver absolutely nothing
Well, if your utility companies are anything like ours (I live in the U.S.) they'll make all kinds of bombastic claims about what they're going to do for you to get as much money from the government and private sector investment as they can, pocket it
Well, there are also many videos showing Iraqi's getting mowed down by various US weapons. Bombs, cannons, and so on. What do people who want to remove "terrorist" videos want to do with these?
Well, presumably they want to watch them.
Only four gigawatts? That's pretty slim pickens for a system that size.
A bigger problem is the amount of $$ that goes to purchase imported oil.
An even bigger problem is the amount of $$ that line the pockets of Wall Street petroleum futures traders. They're the ones that are making out like criminals in all of this, mainly because that's exactly what many of them are. Sure, it would be nice to remove our dependence upon foreign oil production, but you can't actually blame high pump prices on that. It's people right here that are doing most of the profiteering.
Creating cheap crap for pennies is removing our ability to create wealth?
Yes. The production facilities and technological capability required to create that "cheap crap" is also needed to manufacture more important goods. I suppose it would be okay if we just imported non-critical items from China, but we don't. Our military cannot function without technology purchased abroad (Boeing, I understand, can't make avionics any more, they buy it from Japan.) We are importing so much that we've lost the ability to make it ourselves: you people just don't understand what is happening here. As an engineer who's been in industry for the better part of thirty years, I can tell you this: we're in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. We're giving up our essential security for cheap crap in the same way that some Native American tribes sold vast tracts of land for trinkets in pre-Colonial times. They didn't realize what they'd done, and neither do most of us.
You cannot be a free nation if you are not simultaneously an independent nation, which means you must have the ability to take care of yourself. Sacrificing our independence on the altar of greed, and relying upon a foreign power (and a hostile foreign power at that) for our basic needs is stupidity of the highest order. China is not making that mistake, but most of the rest of the world is. The price we're eventually going to pay is going to be beyond belief, unless you believe that China will continue to provide for us forever, out of the goodness of its collective heart.
Let me ask you this: when people talk about "creation of wealth", what do they mean? Does it mean printing more money? No, it means that something was manufactured from raw materials and sold for a profit. That's what made America great: hell, after World War II was over we alone produced and exported more than half of the world's manufactured goods. Over half, from one country. Then Japan, followed by China, targeted our weak points and went after them, decimating industry after key industry. Now, calling Japan an ally in this context is something of a misnomer, I think, they screwed us over good. They may live to regret that. Regardless, what Japan left, China is taking, and there's not so much left as there used to be.
And before you bring up the ridiculous concept known as a "service economy", let me point out that that is semantically equivalent to "Third World Economy." Frankly, I don't want to live in the Third World, and the policies of our elected leaders and "Captains of Industry" are fucking making it happen.
Well, I guess you'd have to make the distinction between a moderated discussion (which is what you're talking about) vs. a censored format, where posts are removed because they fail to meet some arbitrary standard imposed by the forum operators. Then, of course, there are user-moderated environments like Slashdot, where the operators don't censor us ... we censor us.
These guys are scammers ... it's the old When Hairy Met Sili Con.
ust look at the current situation in the US: the neocon start a war for the 'good' of 'merica and its net effect is that the US economy now belongs to China. Talk about being patriots !
That's not really correct. Much as I dislike the present Administration, the reality is that our government and our private sector sold out to China long before Bush & Co. took office. I agree, there's a substantial amount of high treason involved, but you can't lay this at our President's feet. Well, not all of it, anyway. Hell, Bill Clinton was partly responsible for what has become the largest transfer of scientific knowledge and technological capability from one nation to a hostile totalitarian state in the history of Mankind. Kinda makes you wonder whose side either of these two men is really on. Not ours, that's for sure.
Even then, you have to go back farther than the previous Administration: this process really began back in the seventies. It's only accelerated to point of economic ruin for the United States within the past fifteen years or so. People don't fully understand the way China looks at the these things: they take a generational approach to foreign affairs. I don't know when the decision was made to take us out of the equation, but there's no doubt that once it was made they followed through with it. Look, the Russians tried the frontal approach: it didn't work, and their Empire eventually collapsed of its own weight, but China is not making that same mistake. They realized that behind the vaunted American military was a capable industrial engine, and that they'd never gain any traction over us until they removed our ability to create wealth and support our military.
China's leaders may be evil and corrupt by our standards, but they most certainly aren't stupid, and are rapidly taking care of their only real obstacle to world domination, the United States, by using the greed and avarice of our elected and corporate leaders as a weapon. It's working, and probably working better they they ever expected.