This is really the Selective Service admitting that the general draft program is in danger of being dropped because its rarely used, and technology exists so that a draft can quickly be formed from scratch since it's already possible to get a list of everybody in this nation aged 20-25 thanks to other projects. So, they're trying to find themselves new jobs.
The article gives an update as to where they stand right now. In the House, the bill is unlikely to be considered as it lacks support. In the Senate, only Slashdot foe Fritz Hollings has agreed to sponsor the bill.
The military isn't really behind this plan as much as the Selective Service is. What, would you expect the Selective Service to ever submit a proposal that says they should be disolved because they don't have a point anymore?
The male-only status of the draft is essentially still here because: A. It has the inertia of being the status-quo and B. The feminist movement isn't sure what to make of it, so nobody's asking for a change and C. The draft is an inactive system that is highly likely to never be called upon again, so this is likely to be a moot issue.
If they're drafting you for 'special skills' you're pretty unlikely to get stuck out someplace where you have a high chance of catching a bullet (or some high explosive.) This is probably far less true in the case of people with language skills, however.
Like, say, the Pentagon? Anywhere you put a gathering of people working on a military project, you create a target.
"Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam," Flahavan said. "But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft."
The Selective Service, as it exists now, will never be called upon again according to experts. Therefore, it risks being totally deleted from the budget. Only if they can sell Congress on a modified plan do the bureaucrats keep their jobs, so of course the bureaucrats have written a modifed plan and are trying to sell it.
The present operation of the US Selective Service is more or less trivial because the draft system not active, and it takes an Act of Congress in order to activate it. However, an Act of Congress can also totally rewrite the rules,
The draft in its present form is also very unconstitutional because it discrimates between men and women. In this day and age, that makes it a political untouchable. To require women to register will spark protests, but to not require them to do so would lead to court injunctions halting the draft process.
Congresspeople also have learned something from the Vietnam war. If a war is so unpopular that we are out of "weekend warrior" reserves and we can't convince people to join on their own, as a politician you should be voting to force a withdrawl rather allow the war to continue. To be depleted to the point that a draft is needed in modern times is a sign that we've already lost and just can't admit it.
The only people in Congress who called for a draft during recent years have been those who oppose the president's military plans. By rolling out a draft, or even raising the possiblity of a draft, a war effort suddenly becomes less popular.
Bottom line... the Selective Service exists only as a tool to be used in a doomsday situation, just like all of the city fallout shelters that were built in the USA during the cold war to be prepared for a nuclear bomb that never came. I'd consider anything new we hear from the Selective Service to be a rarely-used bureaucracy trying to justify its existance because in tight budgets, cutting the Selective Service's staff is always a low-pain cut.
I think MySQL realizes that their license is restricting some distributions that they'd rather allow, and they're working on ways fix their license so such things are allowed. Nice to see a license-writer who's admitting mistakes and patching up the damage...
As much as there are some FSF fans wish that the GPL was the only software license, it's not the one-size-fits-all solution for everybody. That's why the LGPL exists. That's why Creative Commons exists. That's why many common open-source programs have forked the GPL to make it their own.
We can debate the finer points of whether such changes should be made or not, but let's not treat the GPL like it's a religion. It's not perfect.
The copyright holder of a product that is released under the GPL is not required to use the GPL as the only license. It's hard to attach a license more restrictive than the GPL to already GPLed software, but it's very easy to attach a less restrictive license.
The copyright holder can also craft exceptions to the GPL simply by making an add-on license that promises a certain violation of their GPL rights will be tolerated, and that includes a situation under which distribution without the GPL is allowed.:)
Cell phone provider locking is a software based tie to a particular network. Basically it serves two purposes:
A: Making sure a user doesn't accidently "roam" onto a competiting provider's network because it's stronger when there's a perfectly acceptable in-network tower they should be using instead. A truely unlocked phones "sees" all networks it has the technical ability to reach, and a user could use the network screen to hit the wrong company. B: To prevent phone cloning. New unlocked phones are almost presumed to be headed for somebody who's going to try to steal service, because nearly all consumers would want the subsudized phones anyway. Yeah, there are people who want an unlocked phone for a legit reason, but they're a minority compared to fraudsters. C: To trap users into staying with a company because they'll have to purchase a new phone to move to another company, which means re-entry of contacts lists and other setup hassles.
In the USA, it's nearly impossible to buy a cell phone without a subsidy that ties it to a provider with the lock, and also a cancelation fee for not staying with the service.
The first sentance of the article you didn't read is...
Cory Doctorow is the Nerd Prince of Blogging: co-editor of the popular BoingBoing.net, acclaimed science fiction author, and advocate for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He's a tech writer and a pretty good tech pundit. He makes frequent appearances on TechTV's The Screen Savers.
Is there anybody anywhere in North America selling a GSM phone that isn't locked to a provider? You'd think that true road warriors would want to either chip-swap or have multiple chips and enough brains to suggest which network to make a call on, or could be told by the user which one to use in software...
Yes, but then you start to compete with cell phones. You could sign a contract with a major cellular company even if they have no signal on your company campus. They'll come in and install enough "mini-towers" to cover your property, and maybe even find a place to put a real tower on the road between campus and the highways. Once off campus, you seamlessly move to the provider's main network which is practically everywhere.
I always thought an nice killer-app device would be a 2.4 GHz / Cell Phone hybrid that could seamlessly move a call from your landline to the cell network as you left your neighborhood.:)
If DARPA came out with a revision to IP that sugessts all packets pass through Langley, VA, I doubt very many people will trust it and most users will stick with the old stuff. They're not gonna be that stupid.
The OSI Networking Model is a 7-layer system that can be used interchangably, layers run on top of each other... for example, HTTP specifies that it use TCP which wraps around IP over any physical protocol. It doesn't care if you're using WiFi or a hardwired connection.
So, what this is saying is that IPv4, and even IPv6 are protocols that were written with wires and not wireless in mind. There are tweaks that can be made to the next version of the Internet Protocol and maybe even TCP and UDP to make them work better when on wireless without giving too much up when used on a wired physical link. This is the process of figuring out what changes should be made for next time.
Easier activity tracing, easier monitoring, easing censorship of "bad" websites, easier disabling of internet access to undesirables.
That gives as much as it takes. If it's harder to by anonymous online, then that also means it's going to be easier to locate and disable the access of spammers and pedophiles.
Accountability tools are very good things when properly applied. The hard part is making sure they're not abused.
True, but we're not talking about the "last mile" but really the "last inches". A wireless VoIP phone could have all of the VoIP stuff a fixed point base station, and then use analog 2.4 GHz to get to the headset and end user.
Really, the main use of this device is environments where 2.4 GHz is allready being used by WiFi so that there'd be conflicts if anything else is on that band.
Slashdot Mirror
This is really the Selective Service admitting that the general draft program is in danger of being dropped because its rarely used, and technology exists so that a draft can quickly be formed from scratch since it's already possible to get a list of everybody in this nation aged 20-25 thanks to other projects. So, they're trying to find themselves new jobs.
The article gives an update as to where they stand right now. In the House, the bill is unlikely to be considered as it lacks support. In the Senate, only Slashdot foe Fritz Hollings has agreed to sponsor the bill.
So, this is really dead legislation walking.
The military isn't really behind this plan as much as the Selective Service is. What, would you expect the Selective Service to ever submit a proposal that says they should be disolved because they don't have a point anymore?
The male-only status of the draft is essentially still here because: A. It has the inertia of being the status-quo and B. The feminist movement isn't sure what to make of it, so nobody's asking for a change and C. The draft is an inactive system that is highly likely to never be called upon again, so this is likely to be a moot issue.
If they're drafting you for 'special skills' you're pretty unlikely to get stuck out someplace where you have a high chance of catching a bullet (or some high explosive.) This is probably far less true in the case of people with language skills, however.
Like, say, the Pentagon? Anywhere you put a gathering of people working on a military project, you create a target.
"Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam," Flahavan said. "But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft."
The Selective Service, as it exists now, will never be called upon again according to experts. Therefore, it risks being totally deleted from the budget. Only if they can sell Congress on a modified plan do the bureaucrats keep their jobs, so of course the bureaucrats have written a modifed plan and are trying to sell it.
However, Congress doesn't seem to be buying.
Why would they need a draft if that was the case? It's not like military recruiters are hard to find...
The present operation of the US Selective Service is more or less trivial because the draft system not active, and it takes an Act of Congress in order to activate it. However, an Act of Congress can also totally rewrite the rules,
The draft in its present form is also very unconstitutional because it discrimates between men and women. In this day and age, that makes it a political untouchable. To require women to register will spark protests, but to not require them to do so would lead to court injunctions halting the draft process.
Congresspeople also have learned something from the Vietnam war. If a war is so unpopular that we are out of "weekend warrior" reserves and we can't convince people to join on their own, as a politician you should be voting to force a withdrawl rather allow the war to continue. To be depleted to the point that a draft is needed in modern times is a sign that we've already lost and just can't admit it.
The only people in Congress who called for a draft during recent years have been those who oppose the president's military plans. By rolling out a draft, or even raising the possiblity of a draft, a war effort suddenly becomes less popular.
Bottom line... the Selective Service exists only as a tool to be used in a doomsday situation, just like all of the city fallout shelters that were built in the USA during the cold war to be prepared for a nuclear bomb that never came. I'd consider anything new we hear from the Selective Service to be a rarely-used bureaucracy trying to justify its existance because in tight budgets, cutting the Selective Service's staff is always a low-pain cut.
I think MySQL realizes that their license is restricting some distributions that they'd rather allow, and they're working on ways fix their license so such things are allowed. Nice to see a license-writer who's admitting mistakes and patching up the damage...
As much as there are some FSF fans wish that the GPL was the only software license, it's not the one-size-fits-all solution for everybody. That's why the LGPL exists. That's why Creative Commons exists. That's why many common open-source programs have forked the GPL to make it their own.
We can debate the finer points of whether such changes should be made or not, but let's not treat the GPL like it's a religion. It's not perfect.
The copyright holder of a product that is released under the GPL is not required to use the GPL as the only license. It's hard to attach a license more restrictive than the GPL to already GPLed software, but it's very easy to attach a less restrictive license.
:)
The copyright holder can also craft exceptions to the GPL simply by making an add-on license that promises a certain violation of their GPL rights will be tolerated, and that includes a situation under which distribution without the GPL is allowed.
You can send your landline to your cell phone just by activating call forwarding with your landline company...
It's considered impolite to speak at a conference remotely. :)
Cell phone provider locking is a software based tie to a particular network. Basically it serves two purposes:
A: Making sure a user doesn't accidently "roam" onto a competiting provider's network because it's stronger when there's a perfectly acceptable in-network tower they should be using instead. A truely unlocked phones "sees" all networks it has the technical ability to reach, and a user could use the network screen to hit the wrong company.
B: To prevent phone cloning. New unlocked phones are almost presumed to be headed for somebody who's going to try to steal service, because nearly all consumers would want the subsudized phones anyway. Yeah, there are people who want an unlocked phone for a legit reason, but they're a minority compared to fraudsters.
C: To trap users into staying with a company because they'll have to purchase a new phone to move to another company, which means re-entry of contacts lists and other setup hassles.
This isn't on Cory's own site... it's some web-magazine that interviewed him.
In the USA, it's nearly impossible to buy a cell phone without a subsidy that ties it to a provider with the lock, and also a cancelation fee for not staying with the service.
The first sentance of the article you didn't read is...
Cory Doctorow is the Nerd Prince of Blogging: co-editor of the popular BoingBoing.net, acclaimed science fiction author, and advocate for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He's a tech writer and a pretty good tech pundit. He makes frequent appearances on TechTV's The Screen Savers.
Is there anybody anywhere in North America selling a GSM phone that isn't locked to a provider? You'd think that true road warriors would want to either chip-swap or have multiple chips and enough brains to suggest which network to make a call on, or could be told by the user which one to use in software...
Yes, but then you start to compete with cell phones. You could sign a contract with a major cellular company even if they have no signal on your company campus. They'll come in and install enough "mini-towers" to cover your property, and maybe even find a place to put a real tower on the road between campus and the highways. Once off campus, you seamlessly move to the provider's main network which is practically everywhere.
:)
I always thought an nice killer-app device would be a 2.4 GHz / Cell Phone hybrid that could seamlessly move a call from your landline to the cell network as you left your neighborhood.
If DARPA came out with a revision to IP that sugessts all packets pass through Langley, VA, I doubt very many people will trust it and most users will stick with the old stuff. They're not gonna be that stupid.
It's time to go back to basic networking class...
The OSI Networking Model is a 7-layer system that can be used interchangably, layers run on top of each other... for example, HTTP specifies that it use TCP which wraps around IP over any physical protocol. It doesn't care if you're using WiFi or a hardwired connection.
So, what this is saying is that IPv4, and even IPv6 are protocols that were written with wires and not wireless in mind. There are tweaks that can be made to the next version of the Internet Protocol and maybe even TCP and UDP to make them work better when on wireless without giving too much up when used on a wired physical link. This is the process of figuring out what changes should be made for next time.
Can I hear someone say IPv6?
Someone has not got enough to do....
IPv6 can go join IPv5 in the scrap heap now... bring on IPv7!
It seems like IPv6 has been so slow at coming out that it missed the boat... bring on IPv7!
Easier activity tracing, easier monitoring, easing censorship of "bad" websites, easier disabling of internet access to undesirables.
That gives as much as it takes. If it's harder to by anonymous online, then that also means it's going to be easier to locate and disable the access of spammers and pedophiles.
Accountability tools are very good things when properly applied. The hard part is making sure they're not abused.
True, but we're not talking about the "last mile" but really the "last inches". A wireless VoIP phone could have all of the VoIP stuff a fixed point base station, and then use analog 2.4 GHz to get to the headset and end user. Really, the main use of this device is environments where 2.4 GHz is allready being used by WiFi so that there'd be conflicts if anything else is on that band.