Look at it this way. You are, presumably, not particularly trained or educated in the technology of signals intelligence. You're a smart guy, but that's just not your area of expertise.
And yet you have a guess about how the system works.
Trust me on this one. You have no idea how the system works. It's big, and it's very, very complicated, and voiceprint identification isn't worth a damn anyway. Even under totally controlled conditions, voiceprint identification only works about 70% of the time anyway. Over a highly compressed cell phone connection with lots of background noise? Forget it.
You don't know how this system works.
All the rest of the things aren't those that you should expect privacy about. Phone communications, you should.
Would you have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you held a conversation in a public place? Of course not. You're sending your words out into the air with no measures at all in place to make sure nobody is overhearing them. Telephones, and most especially cell phones, are exactly the same.
...has the capacity to become a form of political control in the not so distant future.
Yawn. Everything has the capacity to become a form of political control. The fact that a piece of technology could be used for evil is not a sufficient argument to outweigh the fact that it will be used for good.
Hoo boy. Your idea is noble, but ultimately flawed. While you might choose to believe that rights are gifts to us from God, and many people do, that's not a terribly useful position when trying to deal with real-world problems.
In the real world, rights are guarantees. That's all. The Bill of Rights says that Congress is prohibited from making a law abridging the freedom of speech. That's a guarantee to the people of the United States that their federal government won't interfere with their liberty when it comes to expressing themselves. It's not a recognition of a divine right; it's merely a guarantee.
The reason I say your position isn't useful is this: of the people who subscribe to your theory, every one has a different idea of what rights his creator has endowed him with. Some people think they have a right to refuse to pay income taxes; hardly anybody agrees with them. "But this right is inalienable," they say. Nobody listens. So the position that rights-- whatever you think your rights might be-- are divine in nature and origin just won't get you very far.
Please forgive my picking nits, but I really don't like it when people express this idea incorrectly.;-)
Yes, it's always a race. But in the case of the race for the atomic bomb, it was more-or-less even. We had smarter scientists on our side of the pond, but that wasn't much of an advantage. It was a surprisingly close thing. A year's delay on our part and that bomb might have exploded over London instead of Hiroshima.
In this case, however, the NSA is so far ahead of the rest of the world in signals intelligence that it's not really fair to call it a race. If we dismantled the NSA today, it would still be years before the rest of the world could catch up to our capabilites.
Funny how the US is ready to spend many, many billions of dollars to disarm... but wouldn't on the best day stop to ponder committing that level of resource to investigating defenses...
In other words, it's funny how we're willing to actually accomplish something, as opposed to just thinking about accomplishing something. Neat-o.
Besides, if we were to deploy an NMD (national meteor defense) system, we'd just get left-wing nuts arguing that it's un-American to wage preemptive war against innocent asteroids just because they might, someday, hit Earth, and besides, what about bin Laden?
Without a doubt, ReaderWare , a book, DVD & CD cataloging suite that has absolutely saved my life...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the scourge of the 20th century: hyperbole.
Unless you'd care to post some kind of fascinating tale of adventure and suspense in which your book database saved you from certain doom, curb your enthusiasm a little, okay?
Mind citing your basis that ideas are protected by copyright?
I never said that they are or aren't. You're making assumptions about what I'm talking about. Your assumptions, while interesting, are not applicable. Neither I nor Erris made any mention of copyrights or copyright laws.
In short, I think you're kind of missing our respective points.
I repeat myself: no matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true. You can rationalize all you like, and say that ideas should be common property, but unless you reject the idea of private ownership wholesale-- some people obviously do-- then ideas are owned just like anything else.
I have to admit I'd love to see Cryptonomicon, Ringworld, A Fire Upon The Deep, Neuromancer, and dozens of other stories as movies, but only if they were done right.
None of those books would make good movies. Movies and books are competely different art forms. It's like saying, "I have to admit I'd love to see Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a painting, but only if it was done right.
But the lesson from The Lord Of The Rings is that will never happen.
Actually, the lesson from The Lord of the Rings is that a good book has to be adapted in order to make it a good movie. Unless your idea of the perfect Lord of the Rings movie would have been forty-one hours of Tolkein himself sitting in a chair reading the book to you.
When you get into a purchase this big, nobody buys based on name-brand alone. When you're looking at spending a minimum of about $10,000, you darn well do the math to figure cost per terabyte and you compare features and serviceability and whatnot.
What concerns me greatly is the fact that you probably believe everything you just wrote. While the fact that you are unable to distinguish between the US and the UK and a terrorist organization is a good thing-- it means you have never actually encountered a terrorist organization, which is a privilege I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy-- the degree to which you are unaware of your own ignorance gives me pause.
Incidentally, citing "Chonsky" never buys you any credibility with those who are familiar with his work. Great linguist; abyssmal student of international policy.
I'm pretty sure if you don't already know how to use a Mac and the relevant software, the best thing you're going to be able to do with that PowerBook is brain the nearest enemy soldier with it.
In which case, yes, the Panasonic would have been a better choice, being that it's both bigger and heavier than the PowerBook. But you've gotta make some compromises, you know?
Yeah, see, that's why I asked. Pre-med doesn't mean anything. Pre-med isn't a description of your qualifications; it's a description of your intentions. My girlfriend got her degree in biology, then went on to take her MCATs and go to medical school. All "I'm pre-med" means is, "I'm going to go to medical school after college."
The thing is many non-Americans are already hacked off about the wastebasket being renamed 'trash'...
It seems to me that many non-Americans need to get a hobby or something. Sounds like they don't have enough to worry about in their lives....the lack of offline printing support for iPhoto.
What lack of offline printing support? Export your JPEGs from iPhoto and send 'em to the printer of your choice through whatever means that service provides.
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
No, seriously. I appreciate the fact that you went out of your way to post something that acknowledges that we are trying to balance two different sets of interests here: on the one hand, the rights of the artists and publishers, and on the other hand the liberty of everybody else. Both of them have to give up something. The only question is who has to sacrifice what.
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But I think my guess is a good one.
Look at it this way. You are, presumably, not particularly trained or educated in the technology of signals intelligence. You're a smart guy, but that's just not your area of expertise.
And yet you have a guess about how the system works.
Trust me on this one. You have no idea how the system works. It's big, and it's very, very complicated, and voiceprint identification isn't worth a damn anyway. Even under totally controlled conditions, voiceprint identification only works about 70% of the time anyway. Over a highly compressed cell phone connection with lots of background noise? Forget it.
You don't know how this system works.
All the rest of the things aren't those that you should expect privacy about. Phone communications, you should.
Would you have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you held a conversation in a public place? Of course not. You're sending your words out into the air with no measures at all in place to make sure nobody is overhearing them. Telephones, and most especially cell phones, are exactly the same.
...has the capacity to become a form of political control in the not so distant future.
Yawn. Everything has the capacity to become a form of political control. The fact that a piece of technology could be used for evil is not a sufficient argument to outweigh the fact that it will be used for good.
Hoo boy. Your idea is noble, but ultimately flawed. While you might choose to believe that rights are gifts to us from God, and many people do, that's not a terribly useful position when trying to deal with real-world problems.
;-)
In the real world, rights are guarantees. That's all. The Bill of Rights says that Congress is prohibited from making a law abridging the freedom of speech. That's a guarantee to the people of the United States that their federal government won't interfere with their liberty when it comes to expressing themselves. It's not a recognition of a divine right; it's merely a guarantee.
The reason I say your position isn't useful is this: of the people who subscribe to your theory, every one has a different idea of what rights his creator has endowed him with. Some people think they have a right to refuse to pay income taxes; hardly anybody agrees with them. "But this right is inalienable," they say. Nobody listens. So the position that rights-- whatever you think your rights might be-- are divine in nature and origin just won't get you very far.
Please forgive my picking nits, but I really don't like it when people express this idea incorrectly.
Yes, it's always a race. But in the case of the race for the atomic bomb, it was more-or-less even. We had smarter scientists on our side of the pond, but that wasn't much of an advantage. It was a surprisingly close thing. A year's delay on our part and that bomb might have exploded over London instead of Hiroshima.
In this case, however, the NSA is so far ahead of the rest of the world in signals intelligence that it's not really fair to call it a race. If we dismantled the NSA today, it would still be years before the rest of the world could catch up to our capabilites.
Funny how the US is ready to spend many, many billions of dollars to disarm... but wouldn't on the best day stop to ponder committing that level of resource to investigating defenses...
In other words, it's funny how we're willing to actually accomplish something, as opposed to just thinking about accomplishing something. Neat-o.
Besides, if we were to deploy an NMD (national meteor defense) system, we'd just get left-wing nuts arguing that it's un-American to wage preemptive war against innocent asteroids just because they might, someday, hit Earth, and besides, what about bin Laden?
Boy, did you ever miss the point. Go back and read again. I said that nobody buys a big-ticket item like this on brand name alone.
Without a doubt, ReaderWare , a book, DVD & CD cataloging suite that has absolutely saved my life...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the scourge of the 20th century: hyperbole.
Unless you'd care to post some kind of fascinating tale of adventure and suspense in which your book database saved you from certain doom, curb your enthusiasm a little, okay?
This feature had been open to editors, so that they could catch mistakes.
And since it worked so astoundingly well for that, the powers that be decided to open it up for paying customers, too.
Having worked with three out of four of those companies, coincidentally, I can tell you that $10,000 is a very big sum to them.
To paraphrase the Simpsons, you don't get to be the biggest companies in the world by writing a bunch of checks.
$10k is not much money to a company.
Can you email me the name and address of your company, please? I'd like to send them a resume.
Mind citing your basis that ideas are protected by copyright?
I never said that they are or aren't. You're making assumptions about what I'm talking about. Your assumptions, while interesting, are not applicable. Neither I nor Erris made any mention of copyrights or copyright laws.
In short, I think you're kind of missing our respective points.
Ideas are not like bricks or cabbages.
I repeat myself: no matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true. You can rationalize all you like, and say that ideas should be common property, but unless you reject the idea of private ownership wholesale-- some people obviously do-- then ideas are owned just like anything else.
That's just how the world is.
If you'll look carefully, you'll see that nobody was talking about US copyright law.
Not that you're a Niven fan or anything, eh, Cadmann Weyland?
No one owns an idea.
No matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true.
I have to admit I'd love to see Cryptonomicon, Ringworld, A Fire Upon The Deep, Neuromancer, and dozens of other stories as movies, but only if they were done right.
None of those books would make good movies. Movies and books are competely different art forms. It's like saying, "I have to admit I'd love to see Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a painting, but only if it was done right.
But the lesson from The Lord Of The Rings is that will never happen.
Actually, the lesson from The Lord of the Rings is that a good book has to be adapted in order to make it a good movie. Unless your idea of the perfect Lord of the Rings movie would have been forty-one hours of Tolkein himself sitting in a chair reading the book to you.
When you get into a purchase this big, nobody buys based on name-brand alone. When you're looking at spending a minimum of about $10,000, you darn well do the math to figure cost per terabyte and you compare features and serviceability and whatnot.
What concerns me greatly is the fact that you probably believe everything you just wrote. While the fact that you are unable to distinguish between the US and the UK and a terrorist organization is a good thing-- it means you have never actually encountered a terrorist organization, which is a privilege I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy-- the degree to which you are unaware of your own ignorance gives me pause.
Incidentally, citing "Chonsky" never buys you any credibility with those who are familiar with his work. Great linguist; abyssmal student of international policy.
I'll make sure I vote real careful next time.
Um. You know, I don't mean to be a wise-ass or anything (on this occasion) but shouldn't you vote "real careful" every time?
I'm pretty sure if you don't already know how to use a Mac and the relevant software, the best thing you're going to be able to do with that PowerBook is brain the nearest enemy soldier with it.
In which case, yes, the Panasonic would have been a better choice, being that it's both bigger and heavier than the PowerBook. But you've gotta make some compromises, you know?
Its kind of like Pre-Med
Yeah, see, that's why I asked. Pre-med doesn't mean anything. Pre-med isn't a description of your qualifications; it's a description of your intentions. My girlfriend got her degree in biology, then went on to take her MCATs and go to medical school. All "I'm pre-med" means is, "I'm going to go to medical school after college."
The thing is many non-Americans are already hacked off about the wastebasket being renamed 'trash'...
...the lack of offline printing support for iPhoto.
It seems to me that many non-Americans need to get a hobby or something. Sounds like they don't have enough to worry about in their lives.
What lack of offline printing support? Export your JPEGs from iPhoto and send 'em to the printer of your choice through whatever means that service provides.
Eventually we'll just all have to leave the country and practice freedom from afar.
Tell you what. You go on ahead and find a good place to set up, and drop the rest of us a line when you get things started. We'll be right behind you.
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
No, seriously. I appreciate the fact that you went out of your way to post something that acknowledges that we are trying to balance two different sets of interests here: on the one hand, the rights of the artists and publishers, and on the other hand the liberty of everybody else. Both of them have to give up something. The only question is who has to sacrifice what.
So, let me see if as a fourth-year pre-law undergrad...
What is "pre-law," exactly?