This "We the People" petition about investigating Dodd promises to be very entertaining. The Administration practically condemned the SCOTUS for the Citizens United ruling, where it was decided people could actually use their own property make political statements. I can't wait to watch them try to weasel out of investigating their former college and his Hollywood buddies for possible bribery in the form of campaign contributions, while insisting they are on some moral high ground. The response should be one incredible bit of writing.
Corruption comes from two sources; power and being unaccountable.
If you have to few people in government you have corrupt folks because they are able to act with impunity and nobody can do anything about even when everyone does they guilty as sin itself.
You also get corruption when government gets to big; nobody is ever accountable, no not even in our world where everything is recorded and logged. Once you get a government as big as ours its almost always the case that crimes even consistent and repeated ones go unnoticed lost in the noise, crimes can't be addressed because there is always a bigger fish to investigate, and nothing can be made to stick because there is so many others for the perp to point the finger at and say oh "well...I...but for...."
The solution is not no government (Somalia is staw man) nor is the solution more government, solution is SMALL TIERED government. You want to have a handful of people closely accountable to electorate so we all no their names, each fairly direct, clear, and knowable responsibilities.
All they have to do is turn it around. Like this: "It is not illegal to withdraw support for a senator/representative because they have not supported your chosen policy. It is expected that controversial decisions would upset some campaign contributors. Mr. Dodd is free to remind his peers of this fact."
And all that is perfectly true if its the outcome of the investigation. I would accept that as a perfectly valid outcome of an otherwise above board looking investigation. The issue statements like the one Dodd made are a little careless for someone in his specific position. They could imply a defined quid pro quo relationship exists or existed and that would be improper.
I don't think there is anything wrong with an interest group widthdrawing support from a politician or politicians they don't feel represent them. I don't even think there is anything wrong with someone openly pointing out that sort of thing might happen. There is nothing Dodd said on Sunday that is criminal, but coming from one in his position and with his experience its highly suggestive; and the petition is reasonably asking for Dodd to be investigated, not jumping to the conclusion Dodd should be tared and feathered.
I don't know, if you read either of the concurring options in yesterdays rulings on the GPS tracking, it looks like there are a few on the court that want to create some expectations of electronic privacy. I don't especially agree with the content of those regarding the case which was before the court. The GPS thing was a pretty strait forward private property, 4th amendment question in my mind, I think the majority opinion was most correct. Which is good because that has the most legal weight.
Still if my understanding of the court is correct if anyone justice wants to put something on the docket they pretty much can. So I think its very possible the court would take up a case like this now.
Providing an encryption key is the state effectively asking you to help them interpret evidence. Suppose they grab your appointment book.
The next thing you know you are in court and the prosecution is demanding you explain how all the entries for yoga class, and dinner with Sarah, are really codes for drug deliveries and pickups?
Really its pretty simple, they have data and they want YOU to explain how to transform it into evidence you have committed a crime. Its CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
It is a gray area somewhat. I think as a judge though my opinion would be this:
The state can subpoena the harddrive, can collect any evidence from they can. Demanding the defendant provide the encryption key is effectively asking the defendant to assist the state interpreting the content of the harddrive. That should be protected under the 5th.
Because the manufacturing process is not perfect. The "bigger" the chip the grater the chance something will be wrong with it. For most applications if there were a defect in any part you'd have to toss that entire thing. That is allot of very expensive Si wafer to throw away. That and it would make bench tests very complicated as you might not have access direct to the subsystems.
What you are talking about is called a "system on chip" or SoC, and Intel actually is building one, for tablets and smart phones. There are lots of ARM SoCs from a variety of vendors.
Don't expect to see "high performance" stuff in SoC configurations. The yields on those parts are typically even lower so the entire thing would be just to cost prohibitive.
If you do something that you know is criminal just because your boss tells you to, yes you should go to jail. Your boss should also goto jail as s?he is a conspirator to the crime.
I guess the bit about kiddie porn is a response to the grandparent post, as to my post your argument seems to be stretched.
If I understand correctly you are saying that if MegaUpload gets a take down request from rights holder, its okay they only removed the specific link, because they have no way to know it was not the rights holder who uploaded the content elsewhere on their site.
I suppose it could happen but really down any of those artists using MegaUpload to distribute their stuff were the ones sending DMCA take down requests and if they were I would expect they would note that they were okay with MegaUpload distributing the file on another part of the site. Again MegaUpload knew this was the same content they deduped it! Its not like say it was another file, upload by someone else with a different name, they were pretty willfully continuing to push the same content after getting a take down request.
I really don't think the safe harbor was intended to protect that sort of behavior.
Not only did MegaUpload not delete the actual files when sent DMCA notices (but did when sent abuse letters about illegal content like child porn)
This is not necessary. If you read the DMCA it is enough to simply remove *access* to the content.
The trouble is in what constitutes removing access. There are documented cases where MegaUpload had multiple URIs pointing at the file, they used a form of dedupe if you will. When they got a complaint about the file, they only removed the URI in the complaint, when they knew or reasonably could have known they were still making the same content available on another part of their site.
As much as I hate to argue on behalf of the syndicate, I think one could honestly interpret that as not complying with the DMCA, especially because a complaining content owner no simple way to know there exist many links to their same supposed IP elsewhere on MegaUpload.
The media are not picking up on it but the "social media" is. The White House thought these petition were a good way to hoodwink the public into thinking someone cared but for the most part the serious ones like this one have been met with either "no comment" or some tired old saw we have been hearing for the last twenty years. No new arguments, no recognition times have perhaps changed, no attempt to justify why the old arguments still apply. Its all status quo, forever.
I think people are seeing it. My guess is they'd pull this We the People thing down in a hot second if they thought that it would do anything other than make them look even worse. Its backfired big. "Hope and Change" was a vapid and empty promise; the trouble the other major political machine is churning out equally empty and hypocritical pandering.
Ron Paul is nearly 80 years old and he is the youth candidate this year! I tend to agree with him on philosophical level for the most part myself but I think he actually is getting quite allot of support this year from those who don't. Why would people support a candidate they don't agree with? I will tell you they recognize the system is broken, the nation is in serious trouble, and something has to change. What Washington is doing is not working, better to take chance on ideas they don't necessarily agree with than to simply continue, what they see failing all over the place each and every day.
Except that Malthus was wrong then and has been proven wrong over and over and over again in the time that has passed.
Each and every time we have found a away to crash through every imaginary barrier to a growing population anyone has supposed existed. There are booms and busts, and every time there is a bust some people go around thinking the "end is neigh, the great culling is upon us". The next thing that happens is we have a little war, which lowers the population a little bit, gets people focused on solving problems again. We address the challenges of the day and soar to new heights.
That is been the pattern with just about every technological advance, that ends up enabling higher densities.
Technology gets developed in the lower populated more affluent nations, and eventually works its way to places where the population is currently at its max, due to food supply, or disease. Then that technology enables that maximum to rise a little bit and the population follows.
Next the war/famine/disease start up again, until some new technology is introduced. I know this sounds harsh but what exactly would you do about it? I think the ethical problems associated with every "solution" I have ever heard are right up there with doing nothing!
S?He says positing to website, on a computer that is many orders of magnitude faster than what existed at any price when h(er|is) father was a similar age.
Total cost in dollars might be zero, but there you are paying a price. You now separated from your friends and family, presumably you had at least one of those groups before. You now how no possessions, most of have a few things we like and derive please from which we would not want to part with. I would call those things costs. Finally I find it unlikely you can replace the furniture and other items you will eventually need for less than you sold it for, so the dollar cost is actually non zero as well long term.
Don't misunderstand. You did the right thing, you needed a job and you took personal responsibility and did what you had to do to get one. We all play the hand we are dealt. You are a better person and a better citizen than most, who would have sat on their ass and collected unemployment when as you have proven they really could go get a job. Still you should recognize the price was actually high and pat yourself on the back.
Right Islam is a violent faith based in hate. It always was, right from its beginnings but for some reasons we are required to ignore history both ancient and recent to be politically correct.
Personally I think we should declare war on Islam, and the best part is nobody needs to get hurt or killed! At least not by our hands, though they may do those things to each other. If there is one thing certain proven by their own fear of it, its that our modern American culture is viral, pervasive, and addicting.
What we should do is install directional transmitters in any friendly territory near the Muslim world with so much envelope power they can't jam it easily, or if they can it makes their own communications equally useless.
Then we take our high altitude bombers and drop Hollywood productions, clothing, pamphlets, etc on every major city every night; extolling American values, American products, and American propaganda. It will probably cost less than the munitions we dump on them now. We don't have to send soldiers into die, we don't have detain children in camps and we don't have to harm anyone. I bet there will be next to nothing left of Islam inside of 20 years.
Exactly, it may be true that our justice system committing these sorts of abuses less frequently than say the Iranians, but its the same capriciousness and ethical emptiness seen there.
It absolutely needs to be pointed out now while its still possible to do something about, that does not require firearms.
Right security is about people. I agree not every single device needs to be hardened like a fort. I think this is actually a trap many security folks, especially geeks fall into. Its wrong because it ends up frustrating everyone else, and they start not cooperating, circumventing security controls and opening wide holes than existed in the first place.
The most important thing is that everyone understands what things are. If its well known that say some industrial control app is thin on input validation, does simple clear text unauthenticated communications with other devices, and has a configuration interface with a password dialog easily bypassed by rigging up a specific query string, all that might be okay. There might even be very solid reasons for it. It keeps the code base small, easily understood, might offer performance advantages on limited hardware, etc. Hardware hardened for industrial applications is often limited and expensive. You might ask why even bother with the login screen if its so easy to defeat, well its a lock for honest people, it might help oh This is Isle 3A bay 15, I am supposed to be making this change on 3B-15, oops sort of mistakes.
Clearly such devices are designed for use on closed networks, as long as everyone understands that there is no reason to make things harder for people. Its when usb sticks and laptops start getting plugged in, or someone connects it to a larger network you see problems. Manufactures need to be upfront about these things being designed for a specific ecosystem. "Yes it password protected, but its human interface feature not a security control..."
Thanks to this effort we are much closer to being able to run a traditional GNU/X.org userland on these devices if desired. Just work out the details of the radio hardware and it should be possible to roll your own mobile distro pretty soon without having to be hardware expert
The trouble is most people are not covered not because they can't afford it but because they naively believe it can't happen to them, they are ignorant, or reckless.
Before the affordable care act it was estimated that 25% of the people without coverage already qualified for a federal or state program, that would cover them. They simply were not participating out of ignorance and laziness.
The rest of the folks most likely could get high deductible policies that would in fact cover them if disaster struck for less then $100 a month. Folks who did not fall into the first group most likely could afford this; even if it might be hardship. They simply choose to chance it instead, while some might be putting that money into a rainy day fund my guess is most are spending it on things that are not strictly needs.
Then there is the "pre-existing condition" group, who are only their by virtue of their own failure to put themselves into groups one or two.
The actual number of people who lack coverage through no fault of their own is vanishingly small. Which is not say there are not lots and lots of people who go without coverage; but you make your choices and you take your lumps. That is how its supposed to work.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea know he already has left office and already is an industry lobbyist right?
This "We the People" petition about investigating Dodd promises to be very entertaining. The Administration practically condemned the SCOTUS for the Citizens United ruling, where it was decided people could actually use their own property make political statements. I can't wait to watch them try to weasel out of investigating their former college and his Hollywood buddies for possible bribery in the form of campaign contributions, while insisting they are on some moral high ground. The response should be one incredible bit of writing.
Corruption comes from two sources; power and being unaccountable.
If you have to few people in government you have corrupt folks because they are able to act with impunity and nobody can do anything about even when everyone does they guilty as sin itself.
You also get corruption when government gets to big; nobody is ever accountable, no not even in our world where everything is recorded and logged. Once you get a government as big as ours its almost always the case that crimes even consistent and repeated ones go unnoticed lost in the noise, crimes can't be addressed because there is always a bigger fish to investigate, and nothing can be made to stick because there is so many others for the perp to point the finger at and say oh "well...I...but for...."
The solution is not no government (Somalia is staw man) nor is the solution more government, solution is SMALL TIERED government. You want to have a handful of people closely accountable to electorate so we all no their names, each fairly direct, clear, and knowable responsibilities.
All they have to do is turn it around. Like this:
"It is not illegal to withdraw support for a senator/representative because they have not supported your chosen policy. It is expected that controversial decisions would upset some campaign contributors. Mr. Dodd is free to remind his peers of this fact."
And all that is perfectly true if its the outcome of the investigation. I would accept that as a perfectly valid outcome of an otherwise above board looking investigation. The issue statements like the one Dodd made are a little careless for someone in his specific position. They could imply a defined quid pro quo relationship exists or existed and that would be improper.
I don't think there is anything wrong with an interest group widthdrawing support from a politician or politicians they don't feel represent them. I don't even think there is anything wrong with someone openly pointing out that sort of thing might happen. There is nothing Dodd said on Sunday that is criminal, but coming from one in his position and with his experience its highly suggestive; and the petition is reasonably asking for Dodd to be investigated, not jumping to the conclusion Dodd should be tared and feathered.
At most conferences I've been to, I'd be grateful just to be able to get on any access point.
I hope you have a ssh thumbprint to verify of any hosts you plant to connect directly to, and tunnel everything else!
I don't know, if you read either of the concurring options in yesterdays rulings on the GPS tracking, it looks like there are a few on the court that want to create some expectations of electronic privacy. I don't especially agree with the content of those regarding the case which was before the court. The GPS thing was a pretty strait forward private property, 4th amendment question in my mind, I think the majority opinion was most correct. Which is good because that has the most legal weight.
Still if my understanding of the court is correct if anyone justice wants to put something on the docket they pretty much can. So I think its very possible the court would take up a case like this now.
Providing an encryption key is the state effectively asking you to help them interpret evidence. Suppose they grab your appointment book.
The next thing you know you are in court and the prosecution is demanding you explain how all the entries for yoga class, and dinner with Sarah, are really codes for drug deliveries and pickups?
Really its pretty simple, they have data and they want YOU to explain how to transform it into evidence you have committed a crime. Its CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
It is a gray area somewhat. I think as a judge though my opinion would be this:
The state can subpoena the harddrive, can collect any evidence from they can. Demanding the defendant provide the encryption key is effectively asking the defendant to assist the state interpreting the content of the harddrive. That should be protected under the 5th.
Because the manufacturing process is not perfect. The "bigger" the chip the grater the chance something will be wrong with it. For most applications if there were a defect in any part you'd have to toss that entire thing. That is allot of very expensive Si wafer to throw away. That and it would make bench tests very complicated as you might not have access direct to the subsystems.
What you are talking about is called a "system on chip" or SoC, and Intel actually is building one, for tablets and smart phones. There are lots of ARM SoCs from a variety of vendors.
Don't expect to see "high performance" stuff in SoC configurations. The yields on those parts are typically even lower so the entire thing would be just to cost prohibitive.
If you do something that you know is criminal just because your boss tells you to, yes you should go to jail. Your boss should also goto jail as s?he is a conspirator to the crime.
I guess the bit about kiddie porn is a response to the grandparent post, as to my post your argument seems to be stretched.
If I understand correctly you are saying that if MegaUpload gets a take down request from rights holder, its okay they only removed the specific link, because they have no way to know it was not the rights holder who uploaded the content elsewhere on their site.
I suppose it could happen but really down any of those artists using MegaUpload to distribute their stuff were the ones sending DMCA take down requests and if they were I would expect they would note that they were okay with MegaUpload distributing the file on another part of the site. Again MegaUpload knew this was the same content they deduped it! Its not like say it was another file, upload by someone else with a different name, they were pretty willfully continuing to push the same content after getting a take down request.
I really don't think the safe harbor was intended to protect that sort of behavior.
Not only did MegaUpload not delete the actual files when sent DMCA notices (but did when sent abuse letters about illegal content like child porn)
This is not necessary. If you read the DMCA it is enough to simply remove *access* to the content.
The trouble is in what constitutes removing access. There are documented cases where MegaUpload had multiple URIs pointing at the file, they used a form of dedupe if you will. When they got a complaint about the file, they only removed the URI in the complaint, when they knew or reasonably could have known they were still making the same content available on another part of their site.
As much as I hate to argue on behalf of the syndicate, I think one could honestly interpret that as not complying with the DMCA, especially because a complaining content owner no simple way to know there exist many links to their same supposed IP elsewhere on MegaUpload.
The media are not picking up on it but the "social media" is. The White House thought these petition were a good way to hoodwink the public into thinking someone cared but for the most part the serious ones like this one have been met with either "no comment" or some tired old saw we have been hearing for the last twenty years. No new arguments, no recognition times have perhaps changed, no attempt to justify why the old arguments still apply. Its all status quo, forever.
I think people are seeing it. My guess is they'd pull this We the People thing down in a hot second if they thought that it would do anything other than make them look even worse. Its backfired big. "Hope and Change" was a vapid and empty promise; the trouble the other major political machine is churning out equally empty and hypocritical pandering.
Ron Paul is nearly 80 years old and he is the youth candidate this year! I tend to agree with him on philosophical level for the most part myself but I think he actually is getting quite allot of support this year from those who don't. Why would people support a candidate they don't agree with? I will tell you they recognize the system is broken, the nation is in serious trouble, and something has to change. What Washington is doing is not working, better to take chance on ideas they don't necessarily agree with than to simply continue, what they see failing all over the place each and every day.
What makes you think we will still be confined to the Earth? I expect our solar system can support 1 trillion people just fine
Except that Malthus was wrong then and has been proven wrong over and over and over again in the time that has passed.
Each and every time we have found a away to crash through every imaginary barrier to a growing population anyone has supposed existed. There are booms and busts, and every time there is a bust some people go around thinking the "end is neigh, the great culling is upon us". The next thing that happens is we have a little war, which lowers the population a little bit, gets people focused on solving problems again. We address the challenges of the day and soar to new heights.
That is been the pattern with just about every technological advance, that ends up enabling higher densities.
Technology gets developed in the lower populated more affluent nations, and eventually works its way to places where the population is currently at its max, due to food supply, or disease. Then that technology enables that maximum to rise a little bit and the population follows.
Next the war/famine/disease start up again, until some new technology is introduced. I know this sounds harsh but what exactly would you do about it? I think the ethical problems associated with every "solution" I have ever heard are right up there with doing nothing!
Fuck technology
S?He says positing to website, on a computer that is many orders of magnitude faster than what existed at any price when h(er|is) father was a similar age.
Total cost in dollars might be zero, but there you are paying a price. You now separated from your friends and family, presumably you had at least one of those groups before. You now how no possessions, most of have a few things we like and derive please from which we would not want to part with. I would call those things costs. Finally I find it unlikely you can replace the furniture and other items you will eventually need for less than you sold it for, so the dollar cost is actually non zero as well long term.
Don't misunderstand. You did the right thing, you needed a job and you took personal responsibility and did what you had to do to get one. We all play the hand we are dealt. You are a better person and a better citizen than most, who would have sat on their ass and collected unemployment when as you have proven they really could go get a job. Still you should recognize the price was actually high and pat yourself on the back.
Right Islam is a violent faith based in hate. It always was, right from its beginnings but for some reasons we are required to ignore history both ancient and recent to be politically correct.
Personally I think we should declare war on Islam, and the best part is nobody needs to get hurt or killed! At least not by our hands, though they may do those things to each other. If there is one thing certain proven by their own fear of it, its that our modern American culture is viral, pervasive, and addicting.
What we should do is install directional transmitters in any friendly territory near the Muslim world with so much envelope power they can't jam it easily, or if they can it makes their own communications equally useless.
Then we take our high altitude bombers and drop Hollywood productions, clothing, pamphlets, etc on every major city every night; extolling American values, American products, and American propaganda. It will probably cost less than the munitions we dump on them now. We don't have to send soldiers into die, we don't have detain children in camps and we don't have to harm anyone. I bet there will be next to nothing left of Islam inside of 20 years.
Exactly, it may be true that our justice system committing these sorts of abuses less frequently than say the Iranians, but its the same capriciousness and ethical emptiness seen there.
It absolutely needs to be pointed out now while its still possible to do something about, that does not require firearms.
Actually lots of this stuff is hardened x86 machines running DOS, and some Windows 3.x and 4.x (Windows '95 '98 etc) stuff as well.
Right security is about people. I agree not every single device needs to be hardened like a fort. I think this is actually a trap many security folks, especially geeks fall into. Its wrong because it ends up frustrating everyone else, and they start not cooperating, circumventing security controls and opening wide holes than existed in the first place.
The most important thing is that everyone understands what things are. If its well known that say some industrial control app is thin on input validation, does simple clear text unauthenticated communications with other devices, and has a configuration interface with a password dialog easily bypassed by rigging up a specific query string, all that might be okay. There might even be very solid reasons for it. It keeps the code base small, easily understood, might offer performance advantages on limited hardware, etc. Hardware hardened for industrial applications is often limited and expensive. You might ask why even bother with the login screen if its so easy to defeat, well its a lock for honest people, it might help oh This is Isle 3A bay 15, I am supposed to be making this change on 3B-15, oops sort of mistakes.
Clearly such devices are designed for use on closed networks, as long as everyone understands that there is no reason to make things harder for people. Its when usb sticks and laptops start getting plugged in, or someone connects it to a larger network you see problems. Manufactures need to be upfront about these things being designed for a specific ecosystem. "Yes it password protected, but its human interface feature not a security control..."
Thanks to this effort we are much closer to being able to run a traditional GNU/X.org userland on these devices if desired. Just work out the details of the radio hardware and it should be possible to roll your own mobile distro pretty soon without having to be hardware expert
The trouble is most people are not covered not because they can't afford it but because they naively believe it can't happen to them, they are ignorant, or reckless.
Before the affordable care act it was estimated that 25% of the people without coverage already qualified for a federal or state program, that would cover them. They simply were not participating out of ignorance and laziness.
The rest of the folks most likely could get high deductible policies that would in fact cover them if disaster struck for less then $100 a month. Folks who did not fall into the first group most likely could afford this; even if it might be hardship. They simply choose to chance it instead, while some might be putting that money into a rainy day fund my guess is most are spending it on things that are not strictly needs.
Then there is the "pre-existing condition" group, who are only their by virtue of their own failure to put themselves into groups one or two.
The actual number of people who lack coverage through no fault of their own is vanishingly small. Which is not say there are not lots and lots of people who go without coverage; but you make your choices and you take your lumps. That is how its supposed to work.
Just insert a really big wick