If I buy a shirt from China, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't produced by PoliticalPrisonCo
On the other hand, if you buy clothing manufactured in the US, how do you know it wasn't done by prisoners arrested for non-violent crimes? Prison Blues is one such company that uses quasi-slave labor drawn from an Oregon medium-security prison. (Medium-security prisons are for mostly non-violent offenders, for those who don't know.)
They're quite open about it, too. From their own site, prison laborers get paid "6.68 per hour to well over $8.00," with 80% of the money being kept by the State of Oregon. So essentially they're working almost for free.
It's the perfect system. Arrest people for non-violent "crimes" such as drug use. Then put them to work in the textile factories so that they pay for their own imprisonment. The State of Oregon makes money. The prison guards make money. Prison Blues, Inc. makes money. (Incidentally, according to the site, "Prison Blues® brand . . . was started with a federal government grant funded by drug money seizures.")
So next time you accuse the Chinese of using prison labor, keep in mind that our country does it too.
(By the way, if you're wondering where all those previously highly-paid textile mill jobs went, they didn't all go to Mexico. Many of the jobs went to our prisons.)
Remember that the Army in 1932 was a professional one, not the same as the one that had fought in 1918. But anyway, I hope you're right. My exerience with the modern Army is the opposite, i.e., that it's the biggest bastion of authoritarianism in US society. Certainly there's little democracy in the military. However, it's interesting that military folks are getting upset about the VA budget cuts from last March, so maybe there could be a repeat of the Bonus Army.
If in 2011 the military is sent in to police public demonstrations then that's not the country I feel like living in. You can have it.
And lest anyone thinks that's impossible, keep in mind that it's happened before. In the summer of 1932, World War One veterans were demonstrating in Washington, D.C., for the benefits that had been promised to them by Congress. (Google the "Bonus Army" if you want to read more about it.) Soldiers of the 12th Infantry Regiment and 3rd Cavalry Regiment did not hesitate to forcefully break up the demonstration. In fact, General Douglas MacArthur exceeded President Hoover's orders by torching the tents outside the city that the WWI vets were camping out in.
And those were war veterans, for crying out loud. If US troops have no problem attacking vets, then average everyday citizens would be completely fucked if the military were used on them. As history has shown, troops blindly follow orders, even when the orders are to attack unarmed US citizens.
Victories by people without millions to lobby congress with? You've got to be joking.
Good point. I have to put in a plug for my favorite site. Whenever our wonderful elected government makes a decision, it's interesting to check out what sorts of bribes made it happen.
For example, check out what the fat cats in corporate media gave to our beloved government servants in Washington. Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry would be so proud!
I am not seeing exactly "where" the abuses could be applied on this one to any extent
Suppose you decide to go downtown and get a few drinks. You get very drunk and go into a gay bar, where you act like a fool.
"But that's okay," you think. "None of the people there knew me. I'll just forget it ever happened and vow never to go drinking again in that part of town."
However--Big Brother's cameras caught your license plate number. How much would it be worth to you to not have your friends/co-workers/neighbors/parents find out that you went to the gay bar?
Or suppose instead of wanting money, a tax collector comes up to you and says, "Your boss had a suspicious tax return this year. Go steal some
of his files for us, and this whole gay bar incident will go away. Thanks for your cooperation."
Blackmail and other governmental abuses have happened before, time and time again. Read up on the history of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI crimes in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Suppose you meet an old girlfriend and the two of you stay at a motel near her house. Not that you two did anything; you just talked. But still, you don't want your wife to know about it.
Unfortunately, the roadside cameras recorded your license plate #s. Do you think nobody in the government would want to have that info? How much would you be willing to pay to not have your wife find out about the motel? Ever heard of America's J. Edgar Hoover?
Re:Some must-read modern classics for geeks
on
A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 1
As long as you're recommending 1984, I'd like to add Brave New World (author, anybody? I can't remember) and Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano.
Yes! Brave New World (by Aldous Huxley) is excellent. IMHO, it should be required reading for people who are involved with the issues of human cloning, genetic engineering, and even fetal tissue research. Whether you're for or against those issues (I'm undecided myself), Brave New World at least gets you thinking about possible worst-case scenarios.
I haven't read Player Piano, but I'll definitely need to. Good suggestion! I googled it, and apparently it's about what the future's like when computers do everything for us.
Free on PG and it's about time we, as a collective, got a little more broad in our selections.
I couldn't agree more. Gulliver's Travels raises many fascinating philosophical questions, in the form of a historical satire. (Jonathan Swift intended the book as a complex satire on 18th century morals and thought.) Ah, if only Swift were alive today, imagine what he would write on things like:
- the university system in the US
- the crazy US government and its Total Information Awareness, War on Drugs/Terror/Whatever, Iraqi Freedom(TM), etc.
- all the outsourcing of tech jobs.
- Kind-hearted Micro$oft and the RIAA. Amazon's nice, well-deserved patents.
The possibilities for Gullver Travels Version 2003 are endless!
Some must-read modern classics for geeks
on
A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams -- a hilarious take on Sci-Fi, the Hitchhiker's Guide has been read by many of the most influential hackers. (I'm using that term in its good sense.)
Then there's that little sci fi novel by George Orwell called 1984 -- which is important for geeks who want to be informed citizens
then what is the benefit to having better visual skills? I'm not trying to be a troll, since I myself have wasted many years of my life playing video games and computer games.
But let's look at it this way. Do a cost-benefit analysis of video games.
Benefits:
- Boost in visual skills
- Games teach problem-solving abilities, perseverance, pattern recognition, hypothesis testing, estimating skills, inductive skills, resource management, logistics, mapping, memory, quick thinking, and reasoned judgements. (Click here for the source of that info.)
- Games boost self-esteem. (Here again is the source for that.)
Drawbacks:
- Massive amount of time spent playing. I can't count how many times I've at my computer from 6 PM to 8 AM playing Civilization III. (The time spent playing could have been better spent studying, reading, exercising, getting to enjoy the world, travelling, etc.)
- The solitariness of most games. There seems to be a self-perpetuating cycle in which a socially-isolated person plays games in order to avoid having to be around other people. But then the act of being alone playing games makes you even more socially isolated. I wasted most of my childhood with Nintendo when I should have been outside playing. My college years were similarly wasted with computer games.
I guess the main point about games is, don't the drawbacks outweigh the benefits? (BTW, I'm on week number 3 of overcoming my computer game addiction. I had to go cold turkey. Good luck to others if you're in the same boat.)
Friends, ever heard of hand-eye coordination? It's just another way of saying "visual skills." Hand-eye coordination was first hyped in the 80s as a benefit of videogaming. Here is a USA Today article that makes mention of that "benefit." (BTW, I'm putting the word in quotation marks because I'm wondering how important it is to have good visual skills/hand-eye coordination. Does that benefit truly outweigh all the damn time we hard-core gamers waste?)
Only with the exception that he even states in the article that he primarily used relays outside of the US.
Legally, that's irrelevant. The crime still took place in the US when the American email user received the mail with forged IPs. Look at it this way: if you are standing just over the Canadian border and shoot someone on the Minnesota side, you'd better believe the state of Minnesota can and will prosecute you for murder.
At the risk of getting myself declared an "enemy combatant," I urge my fellow Americans to bookmark this site if you are interested in finding refuge in the free state to our north. Canada is looking for skilled workers. Take this handy self-assessment tool to see if you qualify. You get points for having an advanced degrees. Also, knowledge of French gets you some credit.
You have to act fast, however, since Canda is tightening its immigration requirements. A few years ago you could score a 70 on the test and be admitted. Today the threshold is 75 and rising.
Why would you want to immigrate to Canada? Because not only do Canadians have civil liberties, but people in the bottom 55% of incomes have higher after-tax incomes than the bottom 55% of Americans (which is most of us). Indeed, the average after-tax income for the middle class of most industrialized countries is higher than in the United States. (SOURCE: Up From Conservatism by Michael Lind.) Americans in the top 10%-20% are by the most affluent in the world, but the rest of us have fallen behind, since our jobs have gone to India and Taiwan. Not only do we have lower after-tax incomes, but we also have more crime (which is paradoxical since US law enforcement is dangerous and out of control), worse public education, and far costlier health care.
The only bad part (from my understanding of how Freenet works) is that if nobody is requesting the songs.... they "disappear" from the network. Popular files get replicated over and over. The nice part about searching for MP3s is that you can find old, rare, and unusual stuff [at least in the Napster and AudioGalaxy days]. But, if nobody is requesting this stuff.... you can't find it on Freenet. Another problem is that Freenet is a network, not a P2P app. You need something like Frost to actually search for MP3s and movies.
There are several sites on Freenet that have plenty of songs that don't get radio airplay. Seriously, you should check it out. You won't be disappointed.
No...these "kids" wrote samba (windows network share) spidering/indexing programs that made it easier to find files that might be located on open shares on your network.
Getting sued for making a search program. You gotta love American corporations.
Use Freenet, folks, not Kazaa. Go here and download the program. Start the program and read through the help files. It's much more complicated than Kazaa but far more rewarding.
Freenet is an anonymous, completely free (free speech and free beer) Internet world. It's nearly impossible for monster mega-corporations or oppressive governments to find out your IP address.
Re:Got a whole lotta hype
on
Brain Privacy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Punishment has always depended upon one's thoughts. If I start a fight with somebody and kill them, it makes a big difference in my punishment whether I was planning to kill them them prior to the fight, or just did it on the spur of them moment.
You're confusing intent with motive, which legally are two entirely different things. The classic example (from first-year law school) is stealing. If someone robs a bank in order to feed their starving family, they are just as guilty as someone who robs it out of greed. Both had the same intent of absconding with someone else's property.
Throughout the entire history of Anglo-Saxon common law, motivate has always been irrelevant. A crime was a crime, and it didn't matter why the criminal did his deed. Hate crimes legislation has overturned that, however, by saying motive does matter.
Re:Got a whole lotta hype
on
Brain Privacy
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You can sit around and hate whoever you like, it's when you act on it by assaulting others that it becomes a crime.
If you assault someone without hating them for their race, you get the standard punishment. But if you do the exact same assault and feel hatred, you get an additional punishment.
In some cases this can get absurd. Here in Pennsylvania a couple years ago, two ignorant pranksters put racist stickers on a sign outside a Martin Luther King memorial. Normally, such vandalism would been a misdemeanor, giving the punks a fine and comunity service. But in their case, it was a felony due to additional hate crimes penalties.
Is that good? Maybe so, since we all hate racists. But what if someone vandalizes a Microsoft billboard because they hate monopolistic corporations, and then they get a felony for having the wrong motives when they did the crime? If everyone doesn't have freedom of thought, then none of us do.
Punish people's crimes; don't punish their thoughts.
And since the thoughts of a person in a free society are no one's business but their own, the government needs to stay out of our brains and stop conccerning itself with our thoughts.
Seriously, are Republicans happy about this shit? The Bush Administration was bribed by the RIAA to the tune of $201,355.
Gore, who is also a corporate stooge, received a similar bribe, so I'm not saying he would have been any better. But I'm just wondering if Republicans are happy about Bush based on this outright bribery that he received. It certainly doesn't reflect well on his honesty and character.
According to OpenSecrets.org, RIAA spent big money for Bush's favorable decision.
Isn't it wonderful what kind of republic we live in? We Americans should all be proud!
(By the way, the RIAA gave a similar bribe to the Democrats, so Gore would most likely have sided with them just like Bush did.)
I'd like to know what happened to this Iraqi's web blog [blogspot.com]. It was an interesting read at the beginning of the war.
The Baghdad telecommunications got wiped out on the 25th, according to news reports. And as of last night, Baghdad still didn't have electicity. (Also keep in mind that as of today, the US only controls half the city, according to the latest from CNN.)
So it could be awhile. I sure hope Salam is surviving the looting and anarchy. (He lives in a wealthy part of Baghdad.) It will be fascinating to see what he says when he is able to post again.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, if you buy clothing manufactured in the US, how do you know it wasn't done by prisoners arrested for non-violent crimes? Prison Blues is one such company that uses quasi-slave labor drawn from an Oregon medium-security prison. (Medium-security prisons are for mostly non-violent offenders, for those who don't know.)
They're quite open about it, too. From their own site, prison laborers get paid "6.68 per hour to well over $8.00," with 80% of the money being kept by the State of Oregon. So essentially they're working almost for free.
It's the perfect system. Arrest people for non-violent "crimes" such as drug use. Then put them to work in the textile factories so that they pay for their own imprisonment. The State of Oregon makes money. The prison guards make money. Prison Blues, Inc. makes money. (Incidentally, according to the site, "Prison Blues® brand . . . was started with a federal government grant funded by drug money seizures.")
So next time you accuse the Chinese of using prison labor, keep in mind that our country does it too.
(By the way, if you're wondering where all those previously highly-paid textile mill jobs went, they didn't all go to Mexico. Many of the jobs went to our prisons.)
Remember that the Army in 1932 was a professional one, not the same as the one that had fought in 1918. But anyway, I hope you're right. My exerience with the modern Army is the opposite, i.e., that it's the biggest bastion of authoritarianism in US society. Certainly there's little democracy in the military. However, it's interesting that military folks are getting upset about the VA budget cuts from last March, so maybe there could be a repeat of the Bonus Army.
And lest anyone thinks that's impossible, keep in mind that it's happened before. In the summer of 1932, World War One veterans were demonstrating in Washington, D.C., for the benefits that had been promised to them by Congress. (Google the "Bonus Army" if you want to read more about it.) Soldiers of the 12th Infantry Regiment and 3rd Cavalry Regiment did not hesitate to forcefully break up the demonstration. In fact, General Douglas MacArthur exceeded President Hoover's orders by torching the tents outside the city that the WWI vets were camping out in.
And those were war veterans, for crying out loud. If US troops have no problem attacking vets, then average everyday citizens would be completely fucked if the military were used on them. As history has shown, troops blindly follow orders, even when the orders are to attack unarmed US citizens.
Couldn't piracy also have fallen because of the sharp rise of open source software?
Good point. I have to put in a plug for my favorite site. Whenever our wonderful elected government makes a decision, it's interesting to check out what sorts of bribes made it happen.
For example, check out what the fat cats in corporate media gave to our beloved government servants in Washington. Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry would be so proud!
Suppose you decide to go downtown and get a few drinks. You get very drunk and go into a gay bar, where you act like a fool.
"But that's okay," you think. "None of the people there knew me. I'll just forget it ever happened and vow never to go drinking again in that part of town."
However--Big Brother's cameras caught your license plate number. How much would it be worth to you to not have your friends/co-workers/neighbors/parents find out that you went to the gay bar?
Or suppose instead of wanting money, a tax collector comes up to you and says, "Your boss had a suspicious tax return this year. Go steal some of his files for us, and this whole gay bar incident will go away. Thanks for your cooperation."
Blackmail and other governmental abuses have happened before, time and time again. Read up on the history of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI crimes in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Unfortunately, the roadside cameras recorded your license plate #s. Do you think nobody in the government would want to have that info? How much would you be willing to pay to not have your wife find out about the motel? Ever heard of America's J. Edgar Hoover?
Yes! Brave New World (by Aldous Huxley) is excellent. IMHO, it should be required reading for people who are involved with the issues of human cloning, genetic engineering, and even fetal tissue research. Whether you're for or against those issues (I'm undecided myself), Brave New World at least gets you thinking about possible worst-case scenarios.
I haven't read Player Piano, but I'll definitely need to. Good suggestion! I googled it, and apparently it's about what the future's like when computers do everything for us.
Hmmmm . . . maybe I will!
I couldn't agree more. Gulliver's Travels raises many fascinating philosophical questions, in the form of a historical satire. (Jonathan Swift intended the book as a complex satire on 18th century morals and thought.) Ah, if only Swift were alive today, imagine what he would write on things like:
- the university system in the US
- the crazy US government and its Total Information Awareness, War on Drugs/Terror/Whatever, Iraqi Freedom(TM), etc. - all the outsourcing of tech jobs.
- Kind-hearted Micro$oft and the RIAA. Amazon's nice, well-deserved patents.
The possibilities for Gullver Travels Version 2003 are endless!
Then there's that little sci fi novel by George Orwell called 1984 -- which is important for geeks who want to be informed citizens
Benefits:
- Boost in visual skills
- Games teach problem-solving abilities, perseverance, pattern recognition, hypothesis testing, estimating skills, inductive skills, resource management, logistics, mapping, memory, quick thinking, and reasoned judgements. (Click here for the source of that info.)
- Games boost self-esteem. (Here again is the source for that.)
Drawbacks:
- Massive amount of time spent playing. I can't count how many times I've at my computer from 6 PM to 8 AM playing Civilization III. (The time spent playing could have been better spent studying, reading, exercising, getting to enjoy the world, travelling, etc.)
- The solitariness of most games. There seems to be a self-perpetuating cycle in which a socially-isolated person plays games in order to avoid having to be around other people. But then the act of being alone playing games makes you even more socially isolated. I wasted most of my childhood with Nintendo when I should have been outside playing. My college years were similarly wasted with computer games.
I guess the main point about games is, don't the drawbacks outweigh the benefits? (BTW, I'm on week number 3 of overcoming my computer game addiction. I had to go cold turkey. Good luck to others if you're in the same boat.)
Friends, ever heard of hand-eye coordination? It's just another way of saying "visual skills." Hand-eye coordination was first hyped in the 80s as a benefit of videogaming. Here is a USA Today article that makes mention of that "benefit." (BTW, I'm putting the word in quotation marks because I'm wondering how important it is to have good visual skills/hand-eye coordination. Does that benefit truly outweigh all the damn time we hard-core gamers waste?)
for people who are least likely able to fix it themselves. What a mighty POS is Micro$oft Windoze XP.
I recently discovered that post office vending machines accept pennies. So you could use them to buy stamps.
Legally, that's irrelevant. The crime still took place in the US when the American email user received the mail with forged IPs. Look at it this way: if you are standing just over the Canadian border and shoot someone on the Minnesota side, you'd better believe the state of Minnesota can and will prosecute you for murder.
You have to act fast, however, since Canda is tightening its immigration requirements. A few years ago you could score a 70 on the test and be admitted. Today the threshold is 75 and rising.
Why would you want to immigrate to Canada? Because not only do Canadians have civil liberties, but people in the bottom 55% of incomes have higher after-tax incomes than the bottom 55% of Americans (which is most of us). Indeed, the average after-tax income for the middle class of most industrialized countries is higher than in the United States. (SOURCE: Up From Conservatism by Michael Lind.) Americans in the top 10%-20% are by the most affluent in the world, but the rest of us have fallen behind, since our jobs have gone to India and Taiwan. Not only do we have lower after-tax incomes, but we also have more crime (which is paradoxical since US law enforcement is dangerous and out of control), worse public education, and far costlier health care.
There are several sites on Freenet that have plenty of songs that don't get radio airplay. Seriously, you should check it out. You won't be disappointed.
No...these "kids" wrote samba (windows network share) spidering/indexing programs that made it easier to find files that might be located on open shares on your network. Getting sued for making a search program. You gotta love American corporations.
Freenet is an anonymous, completely free (free speech and free beer) Internet world. It's nearly impossible for monster mega-corporations or oppressive governments to find out your IP address.
You're confusing intent with motive, which legally are two entirely different things. The classic example (from first-year law school) is stealing. If someone robs a bank in order to feed their starving family, they are just as guilty as someone who robs it out of greed. Both had the same intent of absconding with someone else's property.
Throughout the entire history of Anglo-Saxon common law, motivate has always been irrelevant. A crime was a crime, and it didn't matter why the criminal did his deed. Hate crimes legislation has overturned that, however, by saying motive does matter.
If you assault someone without hating them for their race, you get the standard punishment. But if you do the exact same assault and feel hatred, you get an additional punishment.
In some cases this can get absurd. Here in Pennsylvania a couple years ago, two ignorant pranksters put racist stickers on a sign outside a Martin Luther King memorial. Normally, such vandalism would been a misdemeanor, giving the punks a fine and comunity service. But in their case, it was a felony due to additional hate crimes penalties.
Is that good? Maybe so, since we all hate racists. But what if someone vandalizes a Microsoft billboard because they hate monopolistic corporations, and then they get a felony for having the wrong motives when they did the crime? If everyone doesn't have freedom of thought, then none of us do.
Punish people's crimes; don't punish their thoughts.
And since the thoughts of a person in a free society are no one's business but their own, the government needs to stay out of our brains and stop conccerning itself with our thoughts.
Gore, who is also a corporate stooge, received a similar bribe, so I'm not saying he would have been any better. But I'm just wondering if Republicans are happy about Bush based on this outright bribery that he received. It certainly doesn't reflect well on his honesty and character.
(By the way, the RIAA gave a similar bribe to the Democrats, so Gore would most likely have sided with them just like Bush did.)
The Baghdad telecommunications got wiped out on the 25th, according to news reports. And as of last night, Baghdad still didn't have electicity. (Also keep in mind that as of today, the US only controls half the city, according to the latest from CNN.)
So it could be awhile. I sure hope Salam is surviving the looting and anarchy. (He lives in a wealthy part of Baghdad.) It will be fascinating to see what he says when he is able to post again.