Half the time when you looked for something obscure, nobody had posted anything at all about it. That's the problem . . . in the "good old days" it was easy to find what was there, and there were no pop-ups to interfere with our kickin' new 33.6kbps modem connections (actually, New Mexico State had a crappy 14.4 dial-up back then), but half the time it seemed like you couldn't find much useful info.
These days, there's a ton of information, but we have to wade through 6 tons of crap to find it, dodging pr0n pop-ups every step of the way -- on top of that, there's so much apocryphal (sp?) info out there that you have to double-check your sources.
Either way, things aren't really all that great, except it was new and exciting back then (MUDding from home, for example). However, you'll never be able to get me to go back to overnight downloads for a couple of megs of data, or trying to get Netscape 1.2 to play nice with Windows 3.11.
Constitutional rights, and cause a severe drain on the defendant. Imagine being wrongfully accused, and then sent up and down the legal system to try to vindicate yourself, becoming bankrupt in the process. That really would create a system where justice is what you can afford.
As a prosecutor, I have no problem with the *general* lack of ability to appeal. There are limited circumstances in which we do get another bite, but it requires special circumstances. For me, trials are fun, but for a criminal defendant the uncertainty, the court appearances, and the stigma must be quite unpleasant. I don't think I'd like to be part of a process which just beats a defendant down with government appeals until he's all out of fight, money, or both.
With the resources available to us, we (the State) can usually convict the guilty if we do our jobs right. Sometimes they get away, but that's how our justice system is set up -- the Framers wanted to have a system where we risk a few guilty individuals going free, but we minimize the risk of convicting the innocent.
In France, I believe, there is no Miranda as we know it. The police can question a suspect for 48 hours with no right to counsel. It would make my job easier, but it doesn't make it a system that I want to live under or be a part of. If it works in Norway, that's their business, but we don't need to pick up all of the bad habits of the "Old Country," just because it works for them.
Most places have standard terms that the judge wants to see for probation. Where I am, even misdemeanor pleas have as a condition that you can't use drugs, associate with bad people, you must maintain steady employment, etc. The drug and alcohol testing/evaluation are present in most types of pleas also. We don't assume people are evil; I just want the probation officer to be able to check on this sort of thing, in case the person has a problem.
I think it also makes the probation a little more "real" for people who are in trouble for the first time. Of course, "excessive" is a very subjective term, so I'm not exactly sure how you prove that up at the Motion to Revoke hearing.
I like how a program that uses 1 MB of physical memory when it isn't even being used is supposed to be something we accept.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still hoard every precious byte of free memory I can, probably a throw-back to the days when I felt super-cool having 4 megs of RAM. I strive valiantly to kill every unnecessary process, in hopes that I can squeeze just one more frame per second out of my games, and these jokers are busy trying to write to my boot sector and bury me under TSRs.
It isn't really that Intuit's actions were evil on their own, but if we just rolled over and accepted this type of scheme, every software publisher would think it's okay to toss in their own piece of chaff to clog up our PCs. Memory may be cheap, but I buy it for ME, not for some hobo who sees every consumer only as a potential pirate.
for law enforcement, it is very much open to abuse. As a prosecutor, I like having a business that is cooperative and open in response to legitimate queries.
However, I really don't like the idea of the authorities being able to make casual inquiries via fax. At the very least, issue a subpoena in which you state a legitimate law enforcement purpose for the inquiry. For this, you only have to get the approval of your police legal advisor or a prosecutor.
The way this looks right now, cops can "browse" through anyone they want to check on, just to see if they can find anything suspicious. While this is certainly not the behavior most of us would engage in, there are always those willing to abuse this kind of device.
Those with a legitimate purpose can easily obtain the information with just a little bit of extra effort, whereas those who are just casually cruising through users (say, randomly checking any high-volume ebayers) may be discouraged by having to articulate a legitimate law enforcement purpose for each case.
As to self-policing on the part of ebay, I have absolutely no problem with that. Just like the Pawn shop owner who sees someone coming in with car stereos all the time, ebay has an ethical duty (in my opinion, with which you may disagree) to report people they believe may be engaging in criminal activity.
I think part of the problem is that we grew up accustomed to copying records and CDs to tape, and occaisionally giving them to our friends (I know we ALL didn't do it, but we know who 'we' are). The record companies gave up on trying to enforce it, and really, who would rather have a scratchy cassette tape than a CD or LP?
Now, MP3s are spreading this stuff all over the globe, and it takes just a couple of minutes to download a song; the quality isn't that bad, and you don't need to buy blank tapes or anything like that. Publishers are scared, and they're lashing out at everybody and everything in sight.
I agree that piracy is a problem, and I think we sometimes get wrapped up into thinking it isn't that bad to download a few songs. But I also think that the RIAA and the MPAA don't want to stop at ending piracy.
I believe that they want total control over their music and movies, and they want 'fair use' to mean you get to watch it on the medium they send you, with no backup copies, no shift to viewing on a PC, and maybe no transferability at all (see the earlier TurboTax fun, with the one PC/First PC type of licensing and protection).
That's why we need dissent. We need to fight against unacceptable encroachment upon our rights, while they fight for theirs. Sometimes they have a better bargaining position, but if they go too far, we put that much more effort into defeating their schemes. I can already evision people 'modding' Palladium chips to fight the power, and the endless cycle shall continue . . .
The current plan on British Airways is $25 per flight, which isn't worth it for me, but might be cool if your company was picking up the bill for a business trip. What I want to know is whether you get a reliable-enough connection to play UT or Quake.
I can just imagine every piece of software writing its particular attempt to defeat piracy in our boot sectors; finally, we'd have a regular mosh-pit of games and apps regularly crashing our systems and giving virus-checkers fits of apoplexy. Bravo to Intuit for being a trendsetter .
My first inclination was for non-regulation as well, but we sometimes tend to jump rather quickly when we personally feel the weight of governmental oversight. As VoIP becomes more widespread, it has the potential to eventually become yet another vector for marketers to bombard us with undesired filth--all without having to follow the same rules which limit their already rapacious intrusions into our lives.
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These days, there's a ton of information, but we have to wade through 6 tons of crap to find it, dodging pr0n pop-ups every step of the way -- on top of that, there's so much apocryphal (sp?) info out there that you have to double-check your sources.
Either way, things aren't really all that great, except it was new and exciting back then (MUDding from home, for example). However, you'll never be able to get me to go back to overnight downloads for a couple of megs of data, or trying to get Netscape 1.2 to play nice with Windows 3.11.
As a prosecutor, I have no problem with the *general* lack of ability to appeal. There are limited circumstances in which we do get another bite, but it requires special circumstances. For me, trials are fun, but for a criminal defendant the uncertainty, the court appearances, and the stigma must be quite unpleasant. I don't think I'd like to be part of a process which just beats a defendant down with government appeals until he's all out of fight, money, or both.
With the resources available to us, we (the State) can usually convict the guilty if we do our jobs right. Sometimes they get away, but that's how our justice system is set up -- the Framers wanted to have a system where we risk a few guilty individuals going free, but we minimize the risk of convicting the innocent.
In France, I believe, there is no Miranda as we know it. The police can question a suspect for 48 hours with no right to counsel. It would make my job easier, but it doesn't make it a system that I want to live under or be a part of. If it works in Norway, that's their business, but we don't need to pick up all of the bad habits of the "Old Country," just because it works for them.
I think it also makes the probation a little more "real" for people who are in trouble for the first time. Of course, "excessive" is a very subjective term, so I'm not exactly sure how you prove that up at the Motion to Revoke hearing.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still hoard every precious byte of free memory I can, probably a throw-back to the days when I felt super-cool having 4 megs of RAM. I strive valiantly to kill every unnecessary process, in hopes that I can squeeze just one more frame per second out of my games, and these jokers are busy trying to write to my boot sector and bury me under TSRs.
It isn't really that Intuit's actions were evil on their own, but if we just rolled over and accepted this type of scheme, every software publisher would think it's okay to toss in their own piece of chaff to clog up our PCs. Memory may be cheap, but I buy it for ME, not for some hobo who sees every consumer only as a potential pirate.
"This will revolutionize your desktop!"
However, I really don't like the idea of the authorities being able to make casual inquiries via fax. At the very least, issue a subpoena in which you state a legitimate law enforcement purpose for the inquiry. For this, you only have to get the approval of your police legal advisor or a prosecutor.
The way this looks right now, cops can "browse" through anyone they want to check on, just to see if they can find anything suspicious. While this is certainly not the behavior most of us would engage in, there are always those willing to abuse this kind of device.
Those with a legitimate purpose can easily obtain the information with just a little bit of extra effort, whereas those who are just casually cruising through users (say, randomly checking any high-volume ebayers) may be discouraged by having to articulate a legitimate law enforcement purpose for each case.
As to self-policing on the part of ebay, I have absolutely no problem with that. Just like the Pawn shop owner who sees someone coming in with car stereos all the time, ebay has an ethical duty (in my opinion, with which you may disagree) to report people they believe may be engaging in criminal activity.
Now, MP3s are spreading this stuff all over the globe, and it takes just a couple of minutes to download a song; the quality isn't that bad, and you don't need to buy blank tapes or anything like that. Publishers are scared, and they're lashing out at everybody and everything in sight.
I agree that piracy is a problem, and I think we sometimes get wrapped up into thinking it isn't that bad to download a few songs. But I also think that the RIAA and the MPAA don't want to stop at ending piracy.
I believe that they want total control over their music and movies, and they want 'fair use' to mean you get to watch it on the medium they send you, with no backup copies, no shift to viewing on a PC, and maybe no transferability at all (see the earlier TurboTax fun, with the one PC/First PC type of licensing and protection).
That's why we need dissent. We need to fight against unacceptable encroachment upon our rights, while they fight for theirs. Sometimes they have a better bargaining position, but if they go too far, we put that much more effort into defeating their schemes. I can already evision people 'modding' Palladium chips to fight the power, and the endless cycle shall continue . . .
The current plan on British Airways is $25 per flight, which isn't worth it for me, but might be cool if your company was picking up the bill for a business trip. What I want to know is whether you get a reliable-enough connection to play UT or Quake.
I can just imagine every piece of software writing its particular attempt to defeat piracy in our boot sectors; finally, we'd have a regular mosh-pit of games and apps regularly crashing our systems and giving virus-checkers fits of apoplexy. Bravo to Intuit for being a trendsetter .
My first inclination was for non-regulation as well, but we sometimes tend to jump rather quickly when we personally feel the weight of governmental oversight. As VoIP becomes more widespread, it has the potential to eventually become yet another vector for marketers to bombard us with undesired filth--all without having to follow the same rules which limit their already rapacious intrusions into our lives.