You need to follow the link. Wen said that free speech was important. When Chinese official media distributed his interview, however, his words were removed from the loop. His speech was "harmonized" by the state media outlets. Talk about irony...
"Harmonized." Whenever I hear that word being applied to laws, potential laws, or treaties I just cringe. What it really means is that something good is about to be overridden.
Honor? No, certainly not. But there are plenty of backroom deals, and that's what makes these outfits so dangerous. They are about the most egregious example of why lobbying and corporate funding of political campaigns should be completely outlawed that I've ever encountered.
Would you please not call them "bloodsucking leeches". Leeches are actually very useful, unlike the *AA.
_
Well, I mean no disrespect to the much, and often unfairly-maligned leech, but the comparison serves to elucidate the parasitic, nay, vampiric nature of these organizations.
I suppose I could call them "bloodsucking fruitbats" instead, but then all the "friends of the fruitbat" would come out and pitchfork me.
We are already using the 100% of our brain. For something as expensive to maintain as the brain, having 90% of unused area is an evolutionary disadvantage. Maybe we could give it a better use, for some value of better, but is not unused right now.
Frankly, a much better use of some derivative of this technology would be to scan a human brain and map it into a computer space. Add as much capacity as you need or can afford: no abitrary limits on how many cortical folds you can stuff into a bone box. There have been many stories written about such exploits (the Annals of the Hee Chee, Nivens' Sharls Davis Kendy, and of course Max Headroom.) I have no problem with the idea of becoming an immortal computer program, especially if the alternative was nonexistence. It was especially nifty in the case of the Hee Chee tech, because you could live in any virtual reality that you wished, and interact with other virtual beings (and, of course, slow yourself down to work at meatspace speeds when necessary.)
Cell Broadcast is a standard feature of GSM that has been there since the start. Usually the only feature enabled is area code or area name, but there is support designed in for all kinds of information services. At least on GSM networks, it would be foolish to use anything else. The tricky bit will be to automatically subscribe existing phones to the new emergency alert service, unless there has always been a code reserved for this and phones are already automatically subscribed to it.
Yes, well, with my luck they'll finally roll it out just as 2012 hits, and the first message I get will be: "You are about to die."
Addressing the free speech concerns, MPAA chief Bob Pisano dismissed the First Amendment issues, saying '...the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means.'"
A comment like that makes me want to break into this guys house and "steal" all of his stuff so that he can learn the meaning of the word.
Yeah. And if he keeps it up, he may find himself on the unemployment line, just like the ex-CEO of BP talked himself out of a job. They aren't even trying to make their rhetoric sound palatable anymore. "Your much-vaunted 'free speech' means nothing to us, and if we can destroy it in order to regain control of content distribution, we will. So, here's a hearty 'Fuck YOU!', America!" Now, that's exactly how you would expect a bunch of foreign-owned corporations to think... I'm just surprised they're being that open about it. Well, they aren't: it's their paid mouthpieces (the RIAA and the MPAA) that are spewing this garbage on their behalf.
So, the next time you buy a DVD with Sony, Time Warner, Vivendi, Viacom or the name of any of the other major studios printed on the side, remember who you have to thank for it. This is no longer about shutting down torrent sites or suing file-sharers. This is about the ongoing destruction of the Supreme Law of our Land by foreign influences. Remember that when the Feds start blocking your favorite Web sites because some lawyer at the "Justice Department", or some member of Congress who just had his infidelity exposed, has them blacklisted.
Remember also that the top slots at the Justice Department are filled by ex-RIAA attorneys. They aren't going to fight this for you, they're not even going to register a complaint. This is about as direct an attack on the Constitution as we've seen in recent years. And yes, even if signed into law, it may very well be eventually struck down, but this is how they operate. Remember, they always ask for something completely unreasonable, fully expecting to fail, and then they ask for a law that is somewhat less obnoxious (but still awful) but which seems positively benign in comparison.
Pisano is INcorrect in saying "the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means". The First Amendment was/is intended as a shield for any US Citizen irrespective of their means. The First Amendment still applies to people that have committed a crime.
Yes. You may not be able to vote... but you can still speak. The fundamental problem here is that law enforcement and the courts have, quite unreasonably in my opinion, failed to connect the dots. Information published on the Internet is still speech, even if the communications technology did not exist in the Founder's time. This attempt to create a false dichotomy between online activities and traditional physical activities is a smoke screen, no more and no less.
essentially foreign-owned criminal cartels illegally extending their influence into our Federal Government.
The problem is they are doing it legally. It's up to the people to fight it and convince politicians it's not in their best interest to accept **AA party lines or BS, and that we don't want it.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. The problem is, the people most able to call them on it (Congress and the Justice Department) have already been coopted. But you're right though: this is an issue where We the People had better take a stand.
Just think, so many Slashdotters were in favor of net neutrality. I bet the MPAA was ecstatic over the idea of lobbying friendly politicians to "regulate" torrent traffic.
As Gollum would no doubt ask, were he present: "What did he say?"
Addressing the free speech concerns, MPAA chief Bob Pisano dismissed the First Amendment issues, saying '...the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means.'"
That's how Mr. Pisano "addresses" free speech concerns? By dismissing them? I have news for you, bub... you aren't speaking for the Founding Fathers when you mouth that garbage. The reality is, the First Amendment was not intended to be dismissed so lightly by what are essentially foreign-owned criminal cartels illegally extending their influence into our Federal Government.
Addressing the free speech concerns, MPAA chief Bob Pisano dismissed the First Amendment issues, saying '...the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means.'"
Well, of course he would say that. The reality is that the First Amendment was not intended to be dismissed so lightly by a cartel composed entirely of bloodsucking leeches.
I think one of the things people on/. tend to miss is that 99% of the population has no idea what you are talking about.
Well, I don't know as we miss it, so much as find the entire issue utterly overwhelming. There are only so many geeks, nerds and technojocks to go around, and probably a billion Internet users who all need effective protection. Ultimately, the solution (if any) is going to have to be in vastly more secure operating systems put into widespread use. That would pretty much mean dumping Windows, though: Microsoft has had a couple of decades and a few rewrites to get it right, and they still haven't. Not to the degree that, say, one of the BSDs would be, and that's where we need to be. The bar is nowhere near high enough yet.
"To be fair, the UK doesn't have a Section 7 in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect against this sort of thing like Canada does."
To be fair, the governments of the world usually don't follow the follows unless they're forced to follow the rules (or it's in their best interest to do so). If they can indoctrinate enough drones to believe that what they are doing is good, distract the drones with other petty endeavors, or merely inch their freedom-violating bills into effect so slowly that the average person won't find it worth the effort to take action, they can easily get around any rule that stands in their way.
Yes, boiling the frog slowly. The technical term for it is "incrementalism".
So we either use email and hope that no one is snooping, or we give it up.
Another option (and I have met a few people in this category over the years) is to learn how to defend yourself.
Some folks will spend years taking self-defense and martial arts classes, so they can be more secure in their physical person. Apply that same logic to network defense, and more people would be more secure. At least, if one is not a complete idiot about security, when asking that whiz kid to set up your server, you'll know if he's pulling the wool over your eyes.
Also, remember that in Canada, the people isn't sovereign, the Queen is. She is the root source of all authority and power of law.
She really isn't. She has no control over the courts - they operate in her name, but she has zero influence over them. She has no power to enact law unlaterally. Her assent is technically required to pass a law. But if the Queen decided to instruct the govenor general to withhold Royal assent to a law that had been passed by parliament and the senate -- in this day and age? We'd pretty much be in uncharted waters.
"uncharted waters" applies to pretty much any situation where the Queen's representatives don't do precisely what they are expected to do.
So, I'm guessing that the word "figurehead" is applicable here.
True, but it could also be secretly re-routed, scanned, and logged by any number of deviants in the middle.
AT&T, I'm looking at you.
Oh sure. That's the case no matter what you do, and if you really want your mail to be secure just encrypt it.
I just don't want my regular plaintext mail residing unnecessarily on anyone else's equipment, especially not my ISP's. Which, in my case, happens to be AT&T.
The lack of competence goes all the way to the top. Facebook is coasting on inertia at this point and surviving on the lack of a decent competitor. As far as I can tell the current business model is based upon taking away the features users like and adding ones they don't want. And somehow some businesses still advertise there.
Well, if that's true (and I've never been a Facebook user, so I'll take your word for it) it sounds like Facebook is ripe for the plucking. Other posters were wondering if Facebook would still be relevant five or ten years from now. I think somebody may steal Zuckerbert's thunder well before then: things happen fast in social-network time.
To be fair, the UK doesn't have a Section 7 in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect against this sort of thing like Canada does. Section 7 has upheld the right of Canadians to possess child pornography for "personal use". I have to imagine it'll protect Canadians' rights to have private passwords as well.
Well, I hope it stands up to your lawmakers ridiculous demands for more power and authority better than has our Constitution. Every time I hear the phrase "Constitutional Exception" I just cringe.
Depends. With outgoing mail, my server attempts to connect directly to the target mail server
Unless you have a direct physical connection to the target mail server, your mail will almost certainly go through a number of other servers. This is true for any internet traffic, so if you're really concerned about your privacy you should encrypt your email, in which case you can keep on using webmail.
It will go through a number of routers, certainly. But that's not the same thing as saying it will be stored on a number of servers.
I thought that too -- always knew that I would disagree with BHO on most domestic issues but I had anticipated that he would restore some respect for civil liberties into the Federal Government. Instead we've learned that the Democrats are just as happy as the GOP to embrace security theater.
And were the President to actually take action and dismantle some of the security theater apparatus, you would howl that he was betraying the United States.
Well. I wouldn't. I don't know about the rest of them.
Slashdot Mirror
You need to follow the link. Wen said that free speech was important. When Chinese official media distributed his interview, however, his words were removed from the loop. His speech was "harmonized" by the state media outlets. Talk about irony...
"Harmonized." Whenever I hear that word being applied to laws, potential laws, or treaties I just cringe. What it really means is that something good is about to be overridden.
There is indeed no honor among thieves.
Honor? No, certainly not. But there are plenty of backroom deals, and that's what makes these outfits so dangerous. They are about the most egregious example of why lobbying and corporate funding of political campaigns should be completely outlawed that I've ever encountered.
Would you please not call them "bloodsucking leeches". Leeches are actually very useful, unlike the *AA. _
Well, I mean no disrespect to the much, and often unfairly-maligned leech, but the comparison serves to elucidate the parasitic, nay, vampiric nature of these organizations.
I suppose I could call them "bloodsucking fruitbats" instead, but then all the "friends of the fruitbat" would come out and pitchfork me.
I'll volunteer to push the button, I can find a way to live with it.
No matter. Consider it a civic duty, nay, a moral imperative.
We are already using the 100% of our brain. For something as expensive to maintain as the brain, having 90% of unused area is an evolutionary disadvantage. Maybe we could give it a better use, for some value of better, but is not unused right now.
Frankly, a much better use of some derivative of this technology would be to scan a human brain and map it into a computer space. Add as much capacity as you need or can afford: no abitrary limits on how many cortical folds you can stuff into a bone box. There have been many stories written about such exploits (the Annals of the Hee Chee, Nivens' Sharls Davis Kendy, and of course Max Headroom.) I have no problem with the idea of becoming an immortal computer program, especially if the alternative was nonexistence. It was especially nifty in the case of the Hee Chee tech, because you could live in any virtual reality that you wished, and interact with other virtual beings (and, of course, slow yourself down to work at meatspace speeds when necessary.)
Cell Broadcast is a standard feature of GSM that has been there since the start. Usually the only feature enabled is area code or area name, but there is support designed in for all kinds of information services. At least on GSM networks, it would be foolish to use anything else. The tricky bit will be to automatically subscribe existing phones to the new emergency alert service, unless there has always been a code reserved for this and phones are already automatically subscribed to it.
Yes, well, with my luck they'll finally roll it out just as 2012 hits, and the first message I get will be: "You are about to die."
Addressing the free speech concerns, MPAA chief Bob Pisano dismissed the First Amendment issues, saying '...the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means.'"
A comment like that makes me want to break into this guys house and "steal" all of his stuff so that he can learn the meaning of the word.
Yeah. And if he keeps it up, he may find himself on the unemployment line, just like the ex-CEO of BP talked himself out of a job. They aren't even trying to make their rhetoric sound palatable anymore. "Your much-vaunted 'free speech' means nothing to us, and if we can destroy it in order to regain control of content distribution, we will. So, here's a hearty 'Fuck YOU!', America!" Now, that's exactly how you would expect a bunch of foreign-owned corporations to think ... I'm just surprised they're being that open about it. Well, they aren't: it's their paid mouthpieces (the RIAA and the MPAA) that are spewing this garbage on their behalf.
So, the next time you buy a DVD with Sony, Time Warner, Vivendi, Viacom or the name of any of the other major studios printed on the side, remember who you have to thank for it. This is no longer about shutting down torrent sites or suing file-sharers. This is about the ongoing destruction of the Supreme Law of our Land by foreign influences. Remember that when the Feds start blocking your favorite Web sites because some lawyer at the "Justice Department", or some member of Congress who just had his infidelity exposed, has them blacklisted.
Remember also that the top slots at the Justice Department are filled by ex-RIAA attorneys. They aren't going to fight this for you, they're not even going to register a complaint. This is about as direct an attack on the Constitution as we've seen in recent years. And yes, even if signed into law, it may very well be eventually struck down, but this is how they operate. Remember, they always ask for something completely unreasonable, fully expecting to fail, and then they ask for a law that is somewhat less obnoxious (but still awful) but which seems positively benign in comparison.
Pisano is INcorrect in saying "the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means". The First Amendment was/is intended as a shield for any US Citizen irrespective of their means. The First Amendment still applies to people that have committed a crime.
Yes. You may not be able to vote ... but you can still speak. The fundamental problem here is that law enforcement and the courts have, quite unreasonably in my opinion, failed to connect the dots. Information published on the Internet is still speech, even if the communications technology did not exist in the Founder's time. This attempt to create a false dichotomy between online activities and traditional physical activities is a smoke screen, no more and no less.
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Bob should just say this again, but replace VCR with Internet.
I'm sure glad the MPAA is here to tell me what the Founding Fathers intended!
Replace "Internet" with "any technology that we don't happen to like."
essentially foreign-owned criminal cartels illegally extending their influence into our Federal Government.
The problem is they are doing it legally. It's up to the people to fight it and convince politicians it's not in their best interest to accept **AA party lines or BS, and that we don't want it.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. The problem is, the people most able to call them on it (Congress and the Justice Department) have already been coopted. But you're right though: this is an issue where We the People had better take a stand.
Just think, so many Slashdotters were in favor of net neutrality. I bet the MPAA was ecstatic over the idea of lobbying friendly politicians to "regulate" torrent traffic.
As Gollum would no doubt ask, were he present: "What did he say?"
Addressing the free speech concerns, MPAA chief Bob Pisano dismissed the First Amendment issues, saying '...the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means.'"
That's how Mr. Pisano "addresses" free speech concerns? By dismissing them? I have news for you, bub ... you aren't speaking for the Founding Fathers when you mouth that garbage. The reality is, the First Amendment was not intended to be dismissed so lightly by what are essentially foreign-owned criminal cartels illegally extending their influence into our Federal Government.
Addressing the free speech concerns, MPAA chief Bob Pisano dismissed the First Amendment issues, saying '...the First Amendment was not intended as a shield for those who steal, irrespective of the means.'"
Well, of course he would say that. The reality is that the First Amendment was not intended to be dismissed so lightly by a cartel composed entirely of bloodsucking leeches.
I think one of the things people on /. tend to miss is that 99% of the population has no idea what you are talking about.
Well, I don't know as we miss it, so much as find the entire issue utterly overwhelming. There are only so many geeks, nerds and technojocks to go around, and probably a billion Internet users who all need effective protection. Ultimately, the solution (if any) is going to have to be in vastly more secure operating systems put into widespread use. That would pretty much mean dumping Windows, though: Microsoft has had a couple of decades and a few rewrites to get it right, and they still haven't. Not to the degree that, say, one of the BSDs would be, and that's where we need to be. The bar is nowhere near high enough yet.
"To be fair, the UK doesn't have a Section 7 in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect against this sort of thing like Canada does."
To be fair, the governments of the world usually don't follow the follows unless they're forced to follow the rules (or it's in their best interest to do so). If they can indoctrinate enough drones to believe that what they are doing is good, distract the drones with other petty endeavors, or merely inch their freedom-violating bills into effect so slowly that the average person won't find it worth the effort to take action, they can easily get around any rule that stands in their way.
Yes, boiling the frog slowly. The technical term for it is "incrementalism".
So we either use email and hope that no one is snooping, or we give it up.
Another option (and I have met a few people in this category over the years) is to learn how to defend yourself.
Some folks will spend years taking self-defense and martial arts classes, so they can be more secure in their physical person. Apply that same logic to network defense, and more people would be more secure. At least, if one is not a complete idiot about security, when asking that whiz kid to set up your server, you'll know if he's pulling the wool over your eyes.
Also, remember that in Canada, the people isn't sovereign, the Queen is. She is the root source of all authority and power of law.
She really isn't. She has no control over the courts - they operate in her name, but she has zero influence over them. She has no power to enact law unlaterally. Her assent is technically required to pass a law. But if the Queen decided to instruct the govenor general to withhold Royal assent to a law that had been passed by parliament and the senate -- in this day and age? We'd pretty much be in uncharted waters.
"uncharted waters" applies to pretty much any situation where the Queen's representatives don't do precisely what they are expected to do.
So, I'm guessing that the word "figurehead" is applicable here.
True, but it could also be secretly re-routed, scanned, and logged by any number of deviants in the middle.
AT&T, I'm looking at you.
Oh sure. That's the case no matter what you do, and if you really want your mail to be secure just encrypt it.
I just don't want my regular plaintext mail residing unnecessarily on anyone else's equipment, especially not my ISP's. Which, in my case, happens to be AT&T.
The lack of competence goes all the way to the top. Facebook is coasting on inertia at this point and surviving on the lack of a decent competitor. As far as I can tell the current business model is based upon taking away the features users like and adding ones they don't want. And somehow some businesses still advertise there.
Well, if that's true (and I've never been a Facebook user, so I'll take your word for it) it sounds like Facebook is ripe for the plucking. Other posters were wondering if Facebook would still be relevant five or ten years from now. I think somebody may steal Zuckerbert's thunder well before then: things happen fast in social-network time.
To be fair, the UK doesn't have a Section 7 in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect against this sort of thing like Canada does. Section 7 has upheld the right of Canadians to possess child pornography for "personal use". I have to imagine it'll protect Canadians' rights to have private passwords as well.
Well, I hope it stands up to your lawmakers ridiculous demands for more power and authority better than has our Constitution. Every time I hear the phrase "Constitutional Exception" I just cringe.
As always, the universal solution is end-to-end encryption.
No question there, so long as your country's legal system permits it.
Depends. With outgoing mail, my server attempts to connect directly to the target mail server
Unless you have a direct physical connection to the target mail server, your mail will almost certainly go through a number of other servers. This is true for any internet traffic, so if you're really concerned about your privacy you should encrypt your email, in which case you can keep on using webmail.
It will go through a number of routers, certainly. But that's not the same thing as saying it will be stored on a number of servers.
Troll, huh. Humorless bastards.
I thought that too -- always knew that I would disagree with BHO on most domestic issues but I had anticipated that he would restore some respect for civil liberties into the Federal Government. Instead we've learned that the Democrats are just as happy as the GOP to embrace security theater.
And were the President to actually take action and dismantle some of the security theater apparatus, you would howl that he was betraying the United States.
Well. I wouldn't. I don't know about the rest of them.
1. Access to the cockpit by the attackers.
This article sheds some light on the difficulties of securing a cockpit door