DirectTV is the company that's been extorting thousands of dollars from everybody who ever bought one - regardless of whether they ever used them, or intended to use them, to rip off DirecTV's signals.
When did we stop boycotting people who use extortionist threats to block techies from getting access to technological devices?
Are we all going to start doing business with SCO while we're at it?
... the decline and fall of the empire... was followed by about a thousand years of technological stagnation
"wrong."
The so-called dark ages had their fair share of innovations and change.
I believe you misunderstood my use of the word "stagnation". I don't claim technology stopped dead for a thousand years - any more than an economist claims that in a period of "stagnation" all the factories, power stations, and farms shut down and we all starve and freeze in the dark.
But I do claim that it was a LOT slower than it could have been - and than it has been since immediately after the grip of "the church" was loosened.
There was a lot of improvement during that time: Crossbows, better armor, the horse collar, improved wind & water powered mills, etc.
But for crying out loud, look how little we have to show for a THOUSAND YEARS of effort!
And much of what little progress was made wasn't the result of innovation in the Christian parts of Europe, but was imported (largely from the Muslums, who were having their scientific / technological golden age during part of that period.)
If you want to know an advantage, how about Dish never sued any of their customers or started filing blanket lawsuits against anyone with a completely legal and legitimate ISO card programmer.
That wasn't Dish. That was DirecTV.
I remember it because they did it JUST after I signed up with 'em for a year's service.
I'd picked Direc rather than Dish because Dish has funded anti-gun organizations. But using the courts to penalize purchasers of equipment that COULD be used to steal their signal (but has other legitimate uses) is one of the same issues as passing laws hindering the possession of guns, which COULD be used to harm people (but have other legitimate uses). And their improper behavior is more direct and immediate.
I don't think it's unfair to expect Dish to try and block out that kind of obvious bullshit.... Viacom is trying to play ignorant consumers against Dish Network by manipulating them with half-truths and menacing terms. I see nothing wrong with Dish trying to defend itself from these flagrant attacks by blotting the messages out.
Still censorship.
Dish should have added their OWN scrolling reply, explaining their side of the argument, rather than blocking Viacom's.
... there was an ambiguity in your title ("More violence doesn't mean better"), to wit: What is the definition of "better"? [...] I was addressing the ambiguity, segueing into a point in the free speech argument by way of ilustration.
But the REAL reason for my post was to show a situation where more, and more gratuitous, violence might be defined as "better": Propagating warrior virtues and mindsets.
And it might be strongly argued that propagating warrior "virtues" IS a valid purpose for games. Consider the Roman gladiatorial contests again.
The Roman games lasted until 404 AD, at which time a switch to a different government-mandated moral code resulted in their cancelation. This coincided with the decline and fall of the empire, which was followed by about a thousand years of technological stagnation (though little, if any, less carnage), until events (notably plagues) brought THAT mandated moral code into enough doubt and revision to lead to first the false, then the true, renaissance.
Granted the Romans mostly used their army to conquer, loot, and kill-or-enslave essentially all of the accessable world. Not my preferred foreign policy. But given that at the time the likely result of a weaker army was to be conquered, looted, and killed-or-enslaved yourself, "warrior virtues" had a bit to recommend them.
Foreign policies have finally changed, thanks mainly to the potential of nuclear annihilation. But competent warriors are still necessary even if the US Isn't bent on world conquest. The US military has already noticed that video game players tended to be better pilots and gunners, and has commissioned games with more realistic equipment behavior parameters.
So it could be argued that, here and now just as in roman times, training the population to be better warriors might be a vaild purpose for games. If that's the case, "better" for such games might appropriately include more, rather than less, graphic violence.
I'm pretty sure I wasn't making a free speech argument.
You weren't. You were making a market argument (with the implication for the free speech argument that there is no problem, because market forces are already penalizing gratuitous sex and violence.)
But there was an ambiguity in your title ("More violence doesn't mean better"), to wit: What is the definition of "better"? This is especially problematic, given that the usual result of hand-wringing about videogame violence content is a call for censorship, followed by a debate about WHAT and how MUCH to censor, with "none at all" being portrayed as an "extreme" position.
So I was addressing the ambiguity, segueing into a point in the free speech argument by way of ilustration.
This proves that more violence doesn't necessarily make a game better.
Well, that doesn't address the issue of what the game is FOR, now does it?
If the purpose is to make money, "better" means "make more money". Violence is a tool to attract male teenagers with pocket change in the "young warrior" stage of maturation. So the profit maximization function may include putting as much violence in as possible without getting banned from the arcade.
If the purpose is to propagandize the player, then it depends on what you want to propagandize him WITH. Violence remains a tool to attract players. But now it must be tied to a propaganda message. Which can be done by the effects of use of violence in gameplay and the situations where using it improves, rather than harms, the score.
But then the issue becomes "what message do you want to propagate"? Political Correctness? The current legal system's rules? How to be a better warrior?
The Roman Games were viewed, by the rulers at the time, as a way to (in modern terms) desensitize the Roman population to violent death, in order to make them better soldiers.
Which brings us back to the fundamentals of US law.
The choice of "message" in any form of communication or art is a free speech issue. As such it's very heavily protected by the First Amendment. This is because government selection of moral codes is, in the view of the country's founders, more dangerous to the population than letting them select for themselves.
Violence in video games may not be "nice" according to some moral codes. But limiting communication to a particular set of moral codes is NOT within the government's power.
Choicepoint requires that you have a business license to run a small business to use this software. However, as users of these services are rarely audited or asked to produce their business license, the purchaser can potentially conduct criminal background checks, Social Security number identification and other checks on anyone for a small fee.
What's so magic about a "licensed business", that limiting the data to them would do anything useful?
Crooks license businesses all the time, as do pathologically-lying psychopathic scumbags that manage to stay barely within the law.
Look at a used-car lot some time. Or nearly ANY sales organization. Or the executive suite of any corporation. Or middle-management at a job near you.
And tightening up the requirements for business licenses, or enforcing business-license requirements for disclosure of the data, will do no good and much harm. The crooks, who do their crookery for a living, will still have the time and incentive to hop through any hoops set up, or to skate around them. (As by setting up a business to sell the info under-the-table to their hands-on bretheren.)
Increasing the threshold for access, while still leaving it available to "licensed businesses", just further increases the subjugation of the general population. Why should any seller on E-Bay have less access to credit information on his potential customers (whom he has NEVER seen) than your local five-and-dime? Why should you be unable to check what the company is saying about YOU when asked by a "licensed business", and have to TRUST them to keep your data correct, and to give you the same info they give paying customers if you ask for a check?
The problem is not that it's "too easy" to "fake" being a "licensed business".
The problem is that the information is available to businesses AT ALL.
Privacy advocates are cautioning that making background-check software a consumer product could easily put personal information into the wrong hands.
That's just another aspect of the general empowerment of both the little guy and the big guy by the technological revolution.
Invasion of privacy has had limited impact before automation because it was so costly that it could only be applied rarely and selectively - typically only by government. Now it's cheap. So perhaps we need to protect it explicitly when we could mostly let it slide before, largely protected, like sheep, by fading into a large visually-identical crowd.
But if it needs protecting it needs EQUAL protection from ALL players (including government). Making it available only to "licensed businesses", thus giving it to the crooks while keeping it from the honest individuals and raising the cost-of-entry and/or risk-of-entry for small businesses, just won't cut it.
If it's public record, anybody should be able to see it. If it's not, nobody should. Then focus on defining and enforcing THAT.
I haven't read a single comment that is at the heart of this issue. The reason the Sheriffs department considers it extortion, is because they claim they own the content.
And the guy who did the website, on the other hand, has claimed that HE owns the content all along, because he WROTE it.
It's not "work for hire" because there's no contract provision to that effect.
And he put a copyright notice naming himself/his company on it from day one.
A LOT of companies have been burned by this - hiring a company or developer to put together a website, then discovering (when they want to move elsewhere for better service or lower costs) that, like a photographer owning the negatives to your wedding pictures and the right to make copies, the website developer owns the copyright on the website - and thus only he can make changes without an additional contract.
They might have provided the information. But HE wrote the HTML, scripts, etc.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in court.
And whether any authorship or "content-provider" trade organizations will come to his aid, to prevent the establishment of a precedent that will weaken their hold on their own output. B-)
I've just been doing some research, and it seems (I could be wrong) as though the Korean War was not declared. President Truman seems to have set the precedent for unilateral action by a commander in chief.
Right. "State of Emergency" - which can be unilaterally declared by the Pres under a law passed by the congress. "Police Action" - not "war". (Was under UN auspices, too.)
But that's just off the top of my head. I haven't studied the details of what, if any, explicit congressional authorization was given.
This was during the "cold war" era - and there were a lot of laws put on the books during WW II or in anticipation of WW III started by a Soviet nuclear first-strike. Many of these (such as Title II of the McCarran Act) have since been repealed, modified, or superceeded by later legislation.
Among this legislation is the War Powers Act, which explicitly spells out authorization and limits on the president's use of military force before explicit authorization by congress, and provides mechanisms for congress to authorize armed conflicts without explicitly declaring war.
IMHO these need a supreme court test, since the "armed conflicts" amount to war, yet the authorization doesn't meet the constitutional standard for a war declaration.
Yet the Rosenbergs were executed for being Communist spies.
Spying, at the time, carried the death penalty, even in the absense of a declaration of war. (A declaration of emergency enhanced penalties for security violations, too, and there were several in effect at the time.)
In fact, I think there are several STILL in effect from before 9/11, possibly including the one declared for the Korean "Police Action". There was a move (by that nasty old "right wing" mainly) for legislation to put limits and automatic expirations on such emergency declarations, but I didn't hear that it ever got anywhere.
I'll buy the one that makes my phone sound like it's losing the connection so I can get out of boring conversations easily.
Just hit the "end" button in the middle of a sentence.
Then turn the phone off for a couple minutes, call 611 and listen to the nice voicemail system, or just hit the "shut up" button if it rings, so they go directly to voicemail if they call back
Now consider the case of Al Qaeda. Exactly what 'nation' can we defeat that would assure that the members of Al Qaeda would lay down their arms and disengage, fascilitating the release of prisoners? I don't think I am assuming to much to point out that if captured Al Qaeda were released, they would immediately resume their hostilities. This is a stark contrast to the prisoners of WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, all of which were allowed to return to their respective countries and live their lives in peace.
A fatwa (ruling of religious interpretation) by a mulla they respect from a madhab (school of religious interpretation) they identify with, or a set of such fatwas by a set of such mullas, could form the basis for an end to the hostilities.
Unfortunately that's unlikely to be forthcoming any time soon. Also the terrorists are mostly Wahabis a splinter that stresses personal interpretation rather than scholarly authority. Even if most of their authority figures came around you'd likely have some who wouldn't go along.
(Perhaps something could be done by the rest of the Islamic world to bring some pressure to bear, despite an ideology that tries to avoid direct criticism of other Muslums.)
Any "cesation of hostitilies" will take a major improvement in relations between the US and much of the Muslum world. (There does seem to be some motion in that direction, partly thanks to the US' response to the 9/11 attack and its behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq. But there's a long way to go.)
Looks like they're stuck for the forseeable future.
... parroting the right-wing "guilty until proven innocent" mentality.
I object to your characterization of that mentality as right-wing.
The right has no monopoly on it. It's characteristic of ALL authoritarian political leanings, and quite as prevalant (if not more so) among the PC crowd as it is among the knee-jerk branch of the right.
I don't dismiss the trackability of GSM phones at all, but on the practical side how does it change things for anyone who wants to remain anonymous? It doesn't, and here's why:
You missed a point about the previous post. Your system DOESN'T give you total anonymity and HERE's why:
- Buy your phone cash, no price plan attached, or second hand (GSM phone aren't simlocked, ie. tied to an operator/price plan, for the most part here except those sold with... a prepaid card for cheap). Anyway, your name isn't attached to the phone in any way.
So far, so good.
- Use a prepaid card, change it often. Each time a new phone number nobody knows about.
That's where it breaks.
You see, an agency that's monitoring the call gets both the card number and the phone number. When you change the card, they see the NEW card number attached to the phone number, and tie that to the OLD card number in their database. Thus, all the calls you made on that phone, all the cards you used in it, and any OTHER phones you used those cards in, get tied together as an identity.
Once they have the cluster, they can identify you by getting a leak from ANY ONE of your correspondents - or by identifying you by observation as the only person using a phone at a particular place and time.
Now you can call anyone totally anonymously. If you block your ID from the phone, your correspondent won't even get your number. How much more anonymous can you get?
But the monitor WILL get it. That's probably how he got onto your "anonymous" phone in the first place: ONE of the people you called was already being watched. You called him with an unregistered phone and card, so now that phone and card, and everything else they touch, are being watched.
To make your scheme work you'd need to get a separate PHONE AND CARD PAIR for each of the people you call. You can "gas up" a card. But never switch it to another phone (especially one identified with you) and never call any other party on that particular phone OR card. THEN your end of each link is disconnected from your end of each other link. (But they still might be able to tie them together if you make or receive calls from the same location on different phone/card pairs, especially if you do so in rapid succession.)
Expensive. But organizations like Al Quada have billions.
the thing the babybells are fighting is the fact they have to sell these UNEs at a LOSS...you can't maintain these lines for very long if you are losing money with each sell
That's what they say. Some would argue that the stuff that's already in place costs much less than the UNE price to simply turn on and maintain.
I don't think there's any argument that, if they are out of previously installed equipment and have to add more, the UNE price for the new stuff is less than it costs to install it. Which means the baby bells drag their feet big time about rolling out any new stuff.
And of course they don't want to rent the existing stuff at below new-stuff cost and then have to turn around and install new stuff for the next customer because all the spare old stuff is being rented to their competitors at below replacement cost.
And they SURE don't want to install new stuff for their competitors, in places where the old stuff already ran out, and rent it below cost.
This is one reason the incumbents don't want to roll out any new services while the UNE regs are in place.
... why should owners of a network be required to open it up to someone else? If I build a network for a location, I don't want to let others onto it unless it makes me extra money and doesn't hurt my income. Shouldn't the free market and not the government dictate something like this?
The issue is that the "Incumbent carriers" already have billions of bucks worth of copper wire (and miscelaneous other stuff) in the ground and strung on poles. That was all subsidized by government-enforced monopoly prices over decades. A new competitor would have to dig up cities (more expensive now than it was back then) and bury his own wires - then try to compete with somebody who already HAS the wires, pretty much already paid off by money extorted from customers while the government enforced the monopoly.
EVENTUALLY they'll have to go to an open market. Like when the already-buried wire is running out and new stuff will have to be installed no matter who is providing the service. (Even then an established company will be ahead, only having to do incremental upgrades.) But right now the incumbent players have a major edge - thanks to past government favors at the consumer's expense. The FCC is trying to level that playing field.
And the court is trying to keep the FCC within the law as written.
Fortunately, the FCC seems to be honestly working for the consumer's interest (as they perceive it) this time, rather than rubber-stamping the industry players' recommendations. And the court also seems to be trying to do that as well (as part of its job of interpreting the law). They just have this little difference of opinion about whether one of the regulations is legit.
kidn't this same ruling that forced the bells to share, allow them to be Long Distance carriers
I believe so.
and if that law has been repealed, doesn't that mean they can no longer be long distance carriers? as in- no more verizon long distance?
Nope.
1) It wasn't a "law". It was a regulation. 2) It wasn't "repealed". A part of it was "struck down" by the courts. 3) Only the part that required the baby bells to open their local lines at regulated cost was struck. The rest of the reg - letting them go into the long distance market - is still there.
It's a "victory for competition" only in the sense that it deregulates more of the market. Net result (if this holds) is that everybody is playing equally in the future.
Which means that the people with government-subsidized copper already in the ground and the people who have to bury new stuff and wire a city are "on an equal footing".
I guess some are more equal than others. B-(
Fortunately, if you have to dig up the streets to wire a town in order to reach your customers, you might as well wire it with glass fiber. B-)
What on earth does AT&T do these days, anyway?... they don't do much local phone service
AT&T hasn't done much local phone service since the courts split them up.
AT&T was the part that got the nationwide long-distance network (along with the other miscelaneous stuff, like UNIX), going head-to-head with the upstarts like MCI and sprint. The part that did the local service was spun off as a double-handfull of regional "Baby Bell" local telephone companies.
It's only lately that AT&T has been allowed to even THINK about playing in the local service area.
If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system,
Argh! I was THINKING BSD while TYPING about X. Guess I'm not being cluefull today. B-(
But the point is still valid - finding out about a windowing system that's portable across other operating systems could help lead to conversion to the other op systems - and weaning from MSware.
If you have reached a level of cluefulness where you need to find information on Xfree86 then you are using Google as well.
Not necessarily.
If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system, what is the first thing you need to do to BECOME clueful? Look it up. Right?
So you look it up, using the tool you know. And the tool refuses, and tells you it's something pornographic.
So you decide somebody's playing a joke on you and forget about it.
And you never DO become cluefull enough to download it and try it out.
Really? Is that why the executive branch is growing in power at the expense of the Judicial and Legislative branches? Is that why the Executive Branch seems to think that it go to war without permission from Congress even though the Constitution gives the sole authority to declare war to Congress? And before I ge modded flamebait I'm not talking about George W. -- every US President since FDR has done this. Truman (D) and Ike (R) did it in Korea, JFK (D), LBJ (D) and Nixon (R) did it in Vietnam, Reagan (R) did it with Libya, Bush Sr. (R) did it with Iraq, Clinton (D) did it with Yugoslavia (not counting the little air strikes on Iraq, the Sudan and Afghanistan either) and Bush Jr. (R) did it with Afghanistan and Iraq.
And in each case they did it either under the authority of the War Powers Act or explicit resolutions of congress.
For instance, Vietnam was under the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Bushes Sr and Jr both got resolutions from congress. And so on.
Now I agree with you that they SHOULD have gotten a declaration of war. (Especially before using draftees Viet Nam, for starters.) If nothing else it would have given them something to use against Jane Fonda. B-) And if they COULDN'T get it, they SHOULDN'T have been off there fighting.
But let's not dilute our arguments with a false image of wars fought totally on the word of the president without a peep from congress.
Actually there is a system which will meet both the proponent's and opponents' needs: manual marking of electronicaly tallied ballots.
That works. But it loses some of the advantages of the touchscreen systems:
- Automatic checking that the ballot is voted correctly before it is cast. (Yes the system you described can do that, too, but it isn't as helpful.)
- Tallying of complicated voting system. (I.e. preferential voting.)
- Ease-of-use for people with physical handicaps.
- Efficient handling of LARGE ballots.
- Presentation of voting options in a way that minimizes confusion and mistakes.
Only a MINOR tweak is needed to, say, Diebold's system to meet the objections - and perhaps make it the best voting system available: It is ALREADY capable of:
- Pretty-formatting a voted ballot.
- Printing an output record.
Just:
- combine these functions, printing a hardcopy of the voted ballot for each voter.
- give the voter one more option: to accept or reject the printed ballot's correctness. (It can sit in the printer and have the tail-end marked to validate or invalidate it after he makes the choice.)
- have the voter turn in the printed copy to be dropped into a ballot box.
- define the PRINTED ballot to be the official one in the case of dispute (and the machine tally to be equivalent to a human tally if there is no dispute)
Slashdot Mirror
DIRECTV was already a great choice
Remember Smartcard Reader/Writers?
DirectTV is the company that's been extorting thousands of dollars from everybody who ever bought one - regardless of whether they ever used them, or intended to use them, to rip off DirecTV's signals.
When did we stop boycotting people who use extortionist threats to block techies from getting access to technological devices?
Are we all going to start doing business with SCO while we're at it?
"wrong."
The so-called dark ages had their fair share of innovations and change.
I believe you misunderstood my use of the word "stagnation". I don't claim technology stopped dead for a thousand years - any more than an economist claims that in a period of "stagnation" all the factories, power stations, and farms shut down and we all starve and freeze in the dark.
But I do claim that it was a LOT slower than it could have been - and than it has been since immediately after the grip of "the church" was loosened.
There was a lot of improvement during that time: Crossbows, better armor, the horse collar, improved wind & water powered mills, etc.
But for crying out loud, look how little we have to show for a THOUSAND YEARS of effort!
And much of what little progress was made wasn't the result of innovation in the Christian parts of Europe, but was imported (largely from the Muslums, who were having their scientific / technological golden age during part of that period.)
It's a big solid continuous sheet, not a bunch of little individual elements.
So BUILD it as an array!
Geez...
If you want to know an advantage, how about Dish never sued any of their customers or started filing blanket lawsuits against anyone with a completely legal and legitimate ISO card programmer.
That wasn't Dish. That was DirecTV.
I remember it because they did it JUST after I signed up with 'em for a year's service.
I'd picked Direc rather than Dish because Dish has funded anti-gun organizations. But using the courts to penalize purchasers of equipment that COULD be used to steal their signal (but has other legitimate uses) is one of the same issues as passing laws hindering the possession of guns, which COULD be used to harm people (but have other legitimate uses). And their improper behavior is more direct and immediate.
I currently plan to switch once the year's up.
I don't think it's unfair to expect Dish to try and block out that kind of obvious bullshit. ... Viacom is trying to play ignorant consumers against Dish Network by manipulating them with half-truths and menacing terms. I see nothing wrong with Dish trying to defend itself from these flagrant attacks by blotting the messages out.
Still censorship.
Dish should have added their OWN scrolling reply, explaining their side of the argument, rather than blocking Viacom's.
... there was an ambiguity in your title ("More violence doesn't mean better"), to wit: What is the definition of "better"? [...] I was addressing the ambiguity, segueing into a point in the free speech argument by way of ilustration.
But the REAL reason for my post was to show a situation where more, and more gratuitous, violence might be defined as "better": Propagating warrior virtues and mindsets.
And it might be strongly argued that propagating warrior "virtues" IS a valid purpose for games. Consider the Roman gladiatorial contests again.
The Roman games lasted until 404 AD, at which time a switch to a different government-mandated moral code resulted in their cancelation. This coincided with the decline and fall of the empire, which was followed by about a thousand years of technological stagnation (though little, if any, less carnage), until events (notably plagues) brought THAT mandated moral code into enough doubt and revision to lead to first the false, then the true, renaissance.
Granted the Romans mostly used their army to conquer, loot, and kill-or-enslave essentially all of the accessable world. Not my preferred foreign policy. But given that at the time the likely result of a weaker army was to be conquered, looted, and killed-or-enslaved yourself, "warrior virtues" had a bit to recommend them.
Foreign policies have finally changed, thanks mainly to the potential of nuclear annihilation. But competent warriors are still necessary even if the US Isn't bent on world conquest. The US military has already noticed that video game players tended to be better pilots and gunners, and has commissioned games with more realistic equipment behavior parameters.
So it could be argued that, here and now just as in roman times, training the population to be better warriors might be a vaild purpose for games. If that's the case, "better" for such games might appropriately include more, rather than less, graphic violence.
I'm pretty sure I wasn't making a free speech argument.
You weren't. You were making a market argument (with the implication for the free speech argument that there is no problem, because market forces are already penalizing gratuitous sex and violence.)
But there was an ambiguity in your title ("More violence doesn't mean better"), to wit: What is the definition of "better"? This is especially problematic, given that the usual result of hand-wringing about videogame violence content is a call for censorship, followed by a debate about WHAT and how MUCH to censor, with "none at all" being portrayed as an "extreme" position.
So I was addressing the ambiguity, segueing into a point in the free speech argument by way of ilustration.
This proves that more violence doesn't necessarily make a game better.
Well, that doesn't address the issue of what the game is FOR, now does it?
If the purpose is to make money, "better" means "make more money". Violence is a tool to attract male teenagers with pocket change in the "young warrior" stage of maturation. So the profit maximization function may include putting as much violence in as possible without getting banned from the arcade.
If the purpose is to propagandize the player, then it depends on what you want to propagandize him WITH. Violence remains a tool to attract players. But now it must be tied to a propaganda message. Which can be done by the effects of use of violence in gameplay and the situations where using it improves, rather than harms, the score.
But then the issue becomes "what message do you want to propagate"? Political Correctness? The current legal system's rules? How to be a better warrior?
The Roman Games were viewed, by the rulers at the time, as a way to (in modern terms) desensitize the Roman population to violent death, in order to make them better soldiers.
Which brings us back to the fundamentals of US law.
The choice of "message" in any form of communication or art is a free speech issue. As such it's very heavily protected by the First Amendment. This is because government selection of moral codes is, in the view of the country's founders, more dangerous to the population than letting them select for themselves.
Violence in video games may not be "nice" according to some moral codes. But limiting communication to a particular set of moral codes is NOT within the government's power.
Choicepoint requires that you have a business license to run a small business to use this software. However, as users of these services are rarely audited or asked to produce their business license, the purchaser can potentially conduct criminal background checks, Social Security number identification and other checks on anyone for a small fee.
What's so magic about a "licensed business", that limiting the data to them would do anything useful?
Crooks license businesses all the time, as do pathologically-lying psychopathic scumbags that manage to stay barely within the law.
Look at a used-car lot some time. Or nearly ANY sales organization. Or the executive suite of any corporation. Or middle-management at a job near you.
And tightening up the requirements for business licenses, or enforcing business-license requirements for disclosure of the data, will do no good and much harm. The crooks, who do their crookery for a living, will still have the time and incentive to hop through any hoops set up, or to skate around them. (As by setting up a business to sell the info under-the-table to their hands-on bretheren.)
Increasing the threshold for access, while still leaving it available to "licensed businesses", just further increases the subjugation of the general population. Why should any seller on E-Bay have less access to credit information on his potential customers (whom he has NEVER seen) than your local five-and-dime? Why should you be unable to check what the company is saying about YOU when asked by a "licensed business", and have to TRUST them to keep your data correct, and to give you the same info they give paying customers if you ask for a check?
The problem is not that it's "too easy" to "fake" being a "licensed business".
The problem is that the information is available to businesses AT ALL.
Privacy advocates are cautioning that making background-check software a consumer product could easily put personal information into the wrong hands.
That's just another aspect of the general empowerment of both the little guy and the big guy by the technological revolution.
Invasion of privacy has had limited impact before automation because it was so costly that it could only be applied rarely and selectively - typically only by government. Now it's cheap. So perhaps we need to protect it explicitly when we could mostly let it slide before, largely protected, like sheep, by fading into a large visually-identical crowd.
But if it needs protecting it needs EQUAL protection from ALL players (including government). Making it available only to "licensed businesses", thus giving it to the crooks while keeping it from the honest individuals and raising the cost-of-entry and/or risk-of-entry for small businesses, just won't cut it.
If it's public record, anybody should be able to see it. If it's not, nobody should. Then focus on defining and enforcing THAT.
I haven't read a single comment that is at the heart of this issue. The reason the Sheriffs department considers it extortion, is because they claim they own the content.
And the guy who did the website, on the other hand, has claimed that HE owns the content all along, because he WROTE it.
It's not "work for hire" because there's no contract provision to that effect.
And he put a copyright notice naming himself/his company on it from day one.
A LOT of companies have been burned by this - hiring a company or developer to put together a website, then discovering (when they want to move elsewhere for better service or lower costs) that, like a photographer owning the negatives to your wedding pictures and the right to make copies, the website developer owns the copyright on the website - and thus only he can make changes without an additional contract.
They might have provided the information. But HE wrote the HTML, scripts, etc.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in court.
And whether any authorship or "content-provider" trade organizations will come to his aid, to prevent the establishment of a precedent that will weaken their hold on their own output. B-)
I've just been doing some research, and it seems (I could be wrong) as though the Korean War was not declared. President Truman seems to have set the precedent for unilateral action by a commander in chief.
Right. "State of Emergency" - which can be unilaterally declared by the Pres under a law passed by the congress. "Police Action" - not "war". (Was under UN auspices, too.)
But that's just off the top of my head. I haven't studied the details of what, if any, explicit congressional authorization was given.
This was during the "cold war" era - and there were a lot of laws put on the books during WW II or in anticipation of WW III started by a Soviet nuclear first-strike. Many of these (such as Title II of the McCarran Act) have since been repealed, modified, or superceeded by later legislation.
Among this legislation is the War Powers Act, which explicitly spells out authorization and limits on the president's use of military force before explicit authorization by congress, and provides mechanisms for congress to authorize armed conflicts without explicitly declaring war.
IMHO these need a supreme court test, since the "armed conflicts" amount to war, yet the authorization doesn't meet the constitutional standard for a war declaration.
Yet the Rosenbergs were executed for being Communist spies.
Spying, at the time, carried the death penalty, even in the absense of a declaration of war. (A declaration of emergency enhanced penalties for security violations, too, and there were several in effect at the time.)
In fact, I think there are several STILL in effect from before 9/11, possibly including the one declared for the Korean "Police Action". There was a move (by that nasty old "right wing" mainly) for legislation to put limits and automatic expirations on such emergency declarations, but I didn't hear that it ever got anywhere.
I'll buy the one that makes my phone sound like it's losing the connection so I can get out of boring conversations easily.
Just hit the "end" button in the middle of a sentence.
Then turn the phone off for a couple minutes, call 611 and listen to the nice voicemail system, or just hit the "shut up" button if it rings, so they go directly to voicemail if they call back
Now consider the case of Al Qaeda. Exactly what 'nation' can we defeat that would assure that the members of Al Qaeda would lay down their arms and disengage, fascilitating the release of prisoners? I don't think I am assuming to much to point out that if captured Al Qaeda were released, they would immediately resume their hostilities. This is a stark contrast to the prisoners of WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, all of which were allowed to return to their respective countries and live their lives in peace.
A fatwa (ruling of religious interpretation) by a mulla they respect from a madhab (school of religious interpretation) they identify with, or a set of such fatwas by a set of such mullas, could form the basis for an end to the hostilities.
Unfortunately that's unlikely to be forthcoming any time soon. Also the terrorists are mostly Wahabis a splinter that stresses personal interpretation rather than scholarly authority. Even if most of their authority figures came around you'd likely have some who wouldn't go along.
(Perhaps something could be done by the rest of the Islamic world to bring some pressure to bear, despite an ideology that tries to avoid direct criticism of other Muslums.)
Any "cesation of hostitilies" will take a major improvement in relations between the US and much of the Muslum world. (There does seem to be some motion in that direction, partly thanks to the US' response to the 9/11 attack and its behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq. But there's a long way to go.)
Looks like they're stuck for the forseeable future.
Padilla is getting it easy: he deserves the firing squad. That is what treason gets you.
Treason is tightly defined by the constitution. It can't exist except in time of DECLARED war (which we DON'T have at the moment.)
This is why Jane Fonda got to marry a billionaire rather than twist slowly at the end of a noose.
... parroting the right-wing "guilty until proven innocent" mentality.
I object to your characterization of that mentality as right-wing.
The right has no monopoly on it. It's characteristic of ALL authoritarian political leanings, and quite as prevalant (if not more so) among the PC crowd as it is among the knee-jerk branch of the right.
I don't dismiss the trackability of GSM phones at all, but on the practical side how does it change things for anyone who wants to remain anonymous? It doesn't, and here's why :
You missed a point about the previous post. Your system DOESN'T give you total anonymity and HERE's why:
- Buy your phone cash, no price plan attached, or second hand (GSM phone aren't simlocked, ie. tied to an operator/price plan, for the most part here except those sold with... a prepaid card for cheap). Anyway, your name isn't attached to the phone in any way.
So far, so good.
- Use a prepaid card, change it often. Each time a new phone number nobody knows about.
That's where it breaks.
You see, an agency that's monitoring the call gets both the card number and the phone number. When you change the card, they see the NEW card number attached to the phone number, and tie that to the OLD card number in their database. Thus, all the calls you made on that phone, all the cards you used in it, and any OTHER phones you used those cards in, get tied together as an identity.
Once they have the cluster, they can identify you by getting a leak from ANY ONE of your correspondents - or by identifying you by observation as the only person using a phone at a particular place and time.
Now you can call anyone totally anonymously. If you block your ID from the phone, your correspondent won't even get your number. How much more anonymous can you get?
But the monitor WILL get it. That's probably how he got onto your "anonymous" phone in the first place: ONE of the people you called was already being watched. You called him with an unregistered phone and card, so now that phone and card, and everything else they touch, are being watched.
To make your scheme work you'd need to get a separate PHONE AND CARD PAIR for each of the people you call. You can "gas up" a card. But never switch it to another phone (especially one identified with you) and never call any other party on that particular phone OR card. THEN your end of each link is disconnected from your end of each other link. (But they still might be able to tie them together if you make or receive calls from the same location on different phone/card pairs, especially if you do so in rapid succession.)
Expensive. But organizations like Al Quada have billions.
the thing the babybells are fighting is the fact they have to sell these UNEs at a LOSS...you can't maintain these lines for very long if you are losing money with each sell
That's what they say. Some would argue that the stuff that's already in place costs much less than the UNE price to simply turn on and maintain.
I don't think there's any argument that, if they are out of previously installed equipment and have to add more, the UNE price for the new stuff is less than it costs to install it. Which means the baby bells drag their feet big time about rolling out any new stuff.
And of course they don't want to rent the existing stuff at below new-stuff cost and then have to turn around and install new stuff for the next customer because all the spare old stuff is being rented to their competitors at below replacement cost.
And they SURE don't want to install new stuff for their competitors, in places where the old stuff already ran out, and rent it below cost.
This is one reason the incumbents don't want to roll out any new services while the UNE regs are in place.
... why should owners of a network be required to open it up to someone else? If I build a network for a location, I don't want to let others onto it unless it makes me extra money and doesn't hurt my income. Shouldn't the free market and not the government dictate something like this?
The issue is that the "Incumbent carriers" already have billions of bucks worth of copper wire (and miscelaneous other stuff) in the ground and strung on poles. That was all subsidized by government-enforced monopoly prices over decades. A new competitor would have to dig up cities (more expensive now than it was back then) and bury his own wires - then try to compete with somebody who already HAS the wires, pretty much already paid off by money extorted from customers while the government enforced the monopoly.
EVENTUALLY they'll have to go to an open market. Like when the already-buried wire is running out and new stuff will have to be installed no matter who is providing the service. (Even then an established company will be ahead, only having to do incremental upgrades.) But right now the incumbent players have a major edge - thanks to past government favors at the consumer's expense. The FCC is trying to level that playing field.
And the court is trying to keep the FCC within the law as written.
Fortunately, the FCC seems to be honestly working for the consumer's interest (as they perceive it) this time, rather than rubber-stamping the industry players' recommendations. And the court also seems to be trying to do that as well (as part of its job of interpreting the law). They just have this little difference of opinion about whether one of the regulations is legit.
kidn't this same ruling that forced the bells to share, allow them to be Long Distance carriers
I believe so.
and if that law has been repealed, doesn't that mean they can no longer be long distance carriers? as in- no more verizon long distance?
Nope.
1) It wasn't a "law". It was a regulation.
2) It wasn't "repealed". A part of it was "struck down" by the courts.
3) Only the part that required the baby bells to open their local lines at regulated cost was struck. The rest of the reg - letting them go into the long distance market - is still there.
It's a "victory for competition" only in the sense that it deregulates more of the market. Net result (if this holds) is that everybody is playing equally in the future.
Which means that the people with government-subsidized copper already in the ground and the people who have to bury new stuff and wire a city are "on an equal footing".
I guess some are more equal than others. B-(
Fortunately, if you have to dig up the streets to wire a town in order to reach your customers, you might as well wire it with glass fiber. B-)
What on earth does AT&T do these days, anyway? ... they don't do much local phone service
AT&T hasn't done much local phone service since the courts split them up.
AT&T was the part that got the nationwide long-distance network (along with the other miscelaneous stuff, like UNIX), going head-to-head with the upstarts like MCI and sprint. The part that did the local service was spun off as a double-handfull of regional "Baby Bell" local telephone companies.
It's only lately that AT&T has been allowed to even THINK about playing in the local service area.
If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system,
Argh! I was THINKING BSD while TYPING about X. Guess I'm not being cluefull today. B-(
But the point is still valid - finding out about a windowing system that's portable across other operating systems could help lead to conversion to the other op systems - and weaning from MSware.
If you have reached a level of cluefulness where you need to find information on Xfree86 then you are using Google as well.
Not necessarily.
If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system, what is the first thing you need to do to BECOME clueful? Look it up. Right?
So you look it up, using the tool you know. And the tool refuses, and tells you it's something pornographic.
So you decide somebody's playing a joke on you and forget about it.
And you never DO become cluefull enough to download it and try it out.
And thus you never wean yourself from MSware.
And you keep buying upgrades from MS.
Multiply by millions.
Multiply by hundreds of bucks each.
Sounds like a GREAT marketing ploy.
Really? Is that why the executive branch is growing in power at the expense of the Judicial and Legislative branches? Is that why the Executive Branch seems to think that it go to war without permission from Congress even though the Constitution gives the sole authority to declare war to Congress? And before I ge modded flamebait I'm not talking about George W. -- every US President since FDR has done this. Truman (D) and Ike (R) did it in Korea, JFK (D), LBJ (D) and Nixon (R) did it in Vietnam, Reagan (R) did it with Libya, Bush Sr. (R) did it with Iraq, Clinton (D) did it with Yugoslavia (not counting the little air strikes on Iraq, the Sudan and Afghanistan either) and Bush Jr. (R) did it with Afghanistan and Iraq.
And in each case they did it either under the authority of the War Powers Act or explicit resolutions of congress.
For instance, Vietnam was under the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Bushes Sr and Jr both got resolutions from congress. And so on.
Now I agree with you that they SHOULD have gotten a declaration of war. (Especially before using draftees Viet Nam, for starters.) If nothing else it would have given them something to use against Jane Fonda. B-) And if they COULDN'T get it, they SHOULDN'T have been off there fighting.
But let's not dilute our arguments with a false image of wars fought totally on the word of the president without a peep from congress.
At least with paperless voting you need something more sofisticated and educated that a horde of gorillas that can barely read and write their names
And with an AUDITABLE electronic system you need BOTH an army of gorillas AND a team of crackers. And they have to be synchronized.
Actually there is a system which will meet both the proponent's and opponents' needs: manual marking of electronicaly tallied ballots.
That works. But it loses some of the advantages of the touchscreen systems:
- Automatic checking that the ballot is voted correctly before it is cast. (Yes the system you described can do that, too, but it isn't as helpful.)
- Tallying of complicated voting system. (I.e. preferential voting.)
- Ease-of-use for people with physical handicaps.
- Efficient handling of LARGE ballots.
- Presentation of voting options in a way that minimizes confusion and mistakes.
Only a MINOR tweak is needed to, say, Diebold's system to meet the objections - and perhaps make it the best voting system available: It is ALREADY capable of:
- Pretty-formatting a voted ballot.
- Printing an output record.
Just:
- combine these functions, printing a hardcopy of the voted ballot for each voter.
- give the voter one more option: to accept or reject the printed ballot's correctness. (It can sit in the printer and have the tail-end marked to validate or invalidate it after he makes the choice.)
- have the voter turn in the printed copy to be dropped into a ballot box.
- define the PRINTED ballot to be the official one in the case of dispute (and the machine tally to be equivalent to a human tally if there is no dispute)
and you're done.