Today the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation to "preserve Internet freedom and competition". From the press release
H.R. 5417, the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act" will give certainty to entrepreneurs, investors, and others who seek to deliver innovative ideas to market that they may do so without fearing discrimination. Specifically, this bill would amend the Clayton Act to require that network providers: 1) interconnect with the facilities of other network providers on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis; 2) operate their network in a reasonable and nondiscriminatory manner such that non-affiliated providers of content, services and applications have an equal opportunity to reach consumers; and 3) refrain frominterfering with users' ability to choose the lawful content, services and applications they want to use.
Why don't you ask John Carmack sometime if it's okay that people download Doom 3 without paying him for the years of work he put into it? Carmack's a Slashdot hero around here...would be interesting to see people's reactions to his response.
1) Know the history of the nation (and world) in which they live 2) Be a master of the language that their country primarily speaks 3) Understand the scientific underpinnings of the world in which they live 4) Be able to think logically and use math to solve problems
Too bad the majority of people who graduate high school do not satisfy those requirements. Actually the vast majority of adults in the US do not satisfy them.
Obviously not true. The validity of an argument can be determined entirely from the sentences that form the argument. Who wrote them down is entirely irrelevant, as should be clear to anyone.
The validity of an argument is determined by the truth-values of the premises that comprise the argument and truth-value of the conclusion. We say an argument is valid if there is no truth-value assignment on which the premises are all true while the conclusion is false.
There are sentences where the truth-value is relative to the person who utters them. For example, "It is raining outside" or "I am Stalyn".
The GP talked about a difference in how the criticism is received not in the ultimate validity of the critique. We do tend to look towards criticism from "outsiders" different than criticism from "insiders".
For example imagine an uninvited outsider criticizes some aspect of your family. We tend to receive these types of criticism as threatening even though they may be true. If the criticism originated from a family member we tend to be more receptive.
Even in the scientific community, criticisms from non-scientists are often discarded. This is just a human phenomenon that may stem from our tribal past. We have to be at least sensitive to these issues while introducing directed critiques as an outsider.
However, constantly insisting that laws were broken only shows that you've never put any thought or research into the position you've taken and exposes you for a fool that is probably best ignored.
I think that's a little unfair to say that. There is widespread opinion in the legal community that what the NSA is doing is illegal. For example Kate Martin of the Center of National Security Studies. Also don't forget Qwest turned down the government's request because their own internal lawyers thought it was illegal.
We won't know the "offical" legality of the program until SCOTUS makes some sort of decision on it. If that ever happens....
Let's take my example again. You had three suspects, people who were doing suspicous things. You had no reason to connect them, nor any reason to ascribe any ulterior or conspiratorial motive to them. But, once you have the diagram, you notice that they each have one degree of seperation from a couple.
You get a warrant and get their phone records. You can do the same thing you describe without this NSA program. But again you need empirical evidence first, such as suspicious activity. In this case the NSA program did nothing on its own.
No, it won't. A terrorist cell is a different structure from a Boy Scout troop. A Boy Scout troop will have a cluster of well-connected dots -- everybody talks to everybody. A terrorist cell will have small clusters that link back to central people -- but they don't link amongst themselves.
Not really. The troop I was in when I was a boy,we seperated into 3 smaller groups with a leader each. Then troop had one main leader. The one leader communicated to the 3 sub-leaders and they talked those in their own groups. This is a hierarchical structure and it's prevalent in many social structures. From community groups, church groups, book clubs, political organizations...
That's why the government wants this technology so badly -- you can find cell organizations almost instantly.
I seriously doubt it . Terrorist cells are typically low-impact and probably use those 20 minute pre-pay cell phones you can use up and throw away. Also they most likely meet up more face to face and talk over important subjects. And use the the phone very sporadically. They might use the internet more and more. The fact remains you still need human intelligence to check up on these leads. And if the FBI is bogged down on checking up on every lead the NSA gives them, that could be a huge problem.
A priori this only provides relational connections. Which is meaningless. A terrorist cell relational structure will look the same as the structure between a boy scout troop. You still need empirical evidence. That was my point. You still need to know some information beforehand, who is a suspected terrorist and etc. If they are doing this on millions of Americans they must be pretty much in the dark.
Exactly these types of programs are only good when you know in advance who your targets are. When you have no clue the difference between a terrorist and a non-terrorist these programs are a waste of time and really just drown you in information. Before 911 we had enough information to connect the dots to prevent the attacks. But because of a state bureaucracy, incompetence and inability to sort out important information the US intelligence community failed.
What has the Bush administration done to prevent another attack? Installed more bureaucracy (DNI), hired more incompetent and corrupt officials (Goss, Foggo) and overwhelmed the intelligence community with too much information (NSA).
Because of that ruling several laws, like the ECPA were passed to prevent in essence what the government is doing. The Smith ruling just states that the 4th amendment by itself does not guarantee privacy from logging of phone activity. The ruling is based on the assumption that many people already expected records to exist because of phone company billing practices. So in response Congress passed a slew of legislation preventing access to these records by the Government without a court-order. Qwest, the only company to turn down the government's request did so because of the privacy portion within the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use --
GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: But the --
GEN. HAYDEN: That's what it says.
QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.
GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: But does it not say probable --
GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says --
QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard --
GEN. HAYDEN: -- unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, "we have probable cause."
And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?
GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.
Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.
Telecommunications Act and the Patriot Act which have been passed since 1979 and say you need a warrant for the type of information the government is collecting.
Then again we aren't even sure what the NSA is doing. Why do you need such a huge database if you aren't going to do searches for patterns or do data-mining? If the call records of individuals are easily available with a warrant within 24 hours what is the point of collecting records on millions of Americans?
Also the polls don't really mean anything. Do some research and you'll see the same type of response with Nixon. It wasn't until the consensus was reached that what he did was illegal that things turned around drastically.
Sure, the strongest union in the US is the NFLPA. And I have to admit since it's inception the talent pool in the NFL has really dropped. Pfffft!
It's more like union members foster mediocrity. If you want to build a union that rewards hard-work but protects its workers I'm sure that it is more than possible.
The traditional goal of unions was an avenue for workers to achieve political goals. The greatest asset a worker has is his labor. Even more so for those who are greatly skilled. In a time when the politicians put aside the interests of the people for the interests of big business the power of strong unions becomes more apparent.
For example I assume the vast majority of Tech workers are against the NSA spying program. If there was some organization within the Tech worker community they could speak with once voice. They could have a one-day walk-out in protest. Of course there might be a backlash, people would get angry because they can't use the Internet for one day or get their computer fixed. But that's what standing for something means. You stand for a belief in the face of risk and those who will go against you.
We used to have two trees being worked on concurrently. Where (x.y.z) if y was even it was the stable branch (just bug fixes and occasional new code for important hardware) and if y was odd is was the unstable/development branch. It might be a good idea to return to this development process.
Actually I'm in favor of just forking the unstable/development Linux tree into seperate trees maintained by different people. This is somewhat being done now as huge patchsets. Have Linus work on the super-tree or the official tree. Then maybe have Alan Cox have his own tree, Morton has his own tree, Kolivas have his own tree.. and etc. With git this is actually pretty easy.
Thanks, for some time I have been using the same type of misguided argument against Ulysses. Now I see the error of my ways. If I don't get it, that doesn't mean the art has less aesthetic quality, it just means I don't get it.
The wars of the future will be fought between smaller countries and the occasional conflict between a much larger power and a smaller one. China and the United States already have very close economic ties, so close that a prolonged war between us would devastate both our economies. If you want to prevent war you make your enemies your trading partners. The consolidation of economic powers as trading partners has all but eliminated large-scale land war between major powers.
No, we should be retooling our forces to fight guerilla conflicts. In Iraq we had to relearn many of the lessons from Vietnam at great economic and human cost. You cite Sudan and Iran as possible places of future conflict. Right now the US does not have the capacity or strategic acumen to fight the types of war that will arise. The US will become more of a police force, which will try to prop favorable governments and fight insurgents. An anti-satellite laser will do nothing in these conflicts.
Seriously, Wii is a good name. It's a playful name and I think that's what Nintendo was aiming for, the more you think about it the more the name makes sense. Yes, there is some sexual innuendo involved but that makes it even more fun. And also just because some of you might be shy about talking about your Wii doesn't mean you still won't play with it all the time. I mean come on.. this is Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't you ask John Carmack sometime if it's okay that people download Doom 3 without paying him for the years of work he put into it? Carmack's a Slashdot hero around here...would be interesting to see people's reactions to his response.
Before or after he GPLs the Doom 3 source?
1) Know the history of the nation (and world) in which they live
2) Be a master of the language that their country primarily speaks
3) Understand the scientific underpinnings of the world in which they live
4) Be able to think logically and use math to solve problems
Too bad the majority of people who graduate high school do not satisfy those requirements. Actually the vast majority of adults in the US do not satisfy them.
Obviously not true. The validity of an argument can be determined entirely from the sentences that form the argument. Who wrote them down is entirely irrelevant, as should be clear to anyone.
The validity of an argument is determined by the truth-values of the premises that comprise the argument and truth-value of the conclusion. We say an argument is valid if there is no truth-value assignment on which the premises are all true while the conclusion is false.
There are sentences where the truth-value is relative to the person who utters them. For example, "It is raining outside" or "I am Stalyn".
The GP talked about a difference in how the criticism is received not in the ultimate validity of the critique. We do tend to look towards criticism from "outsiders" different than criticism from "insiders".
For example imagine an uninvited outsider criticizes some aspect of your family. We tend to receive these types of criticism as threatening even though they may be true. If the criticism originated from a family member we tend to be more receptive.
Even in the scientific community, criticisms from non-scientists are often discarded. This is just a human phenomenon that may stem from our tribal past. We have to be at least sensitive to these issues while introducing directed critiques as an outsider.
Actually the Southern Poverty Law Center claims "a 33 percent growth in hate groups over a five-year period, from 602 in 2000 to 803 in 2005".
So really "hate speech" is alive and well.
However, constantly insisting that laws were broken only shows that you've never put any thought or research into the position you've taken and exposes you for a fool that is probably best ignored.
I think that's a little unfair to say that. There is widespread opinion in the legal community that what the NSA is doing is illegal. For example Kate Martin of the Center of National Security Studies. Also don't forget Qwest turned down the government's request because their own internal lawyers thought it was illegal.
We won't know the "offical" legality of the program until SCOTUS makes some sort of decision on it. If that ever happens....
I'm with Maher on this, I think we should impeach Bush on lying about catching a 7.5 pound perch (which he now says was a bass).
Let's take my example again. You had three suspects, people who were doing suspicous things. You had no reason to connect them, nor any reason to ascribe any ulterior or conspiratorial motive to them. But, once you have the diagram, you notice that they each have one degree of seperation from a couple.
,we seperated into 3 smaller groups with a leader each. Then troop had one main leader. The one leader communicated to the 3 sub-leaders and they talked those in their own groups. This is a hierarchical structure and it's prevalent in many social structures. From community groups, church groups, book clubs, political organizations...
You get a warrant and get their phone records. You can do the same thing you describe without this NSA program. But again you need empirical evidence first, such as suspicious activity. In this case the NSA program did nothing on its own.
No, it won't. A terrorist cell is a different structure from a Boy Scout troop. A Boy Scout troop will have a cluster of well-connected dots -- everybody talks to everybody. A terrorist cell will have small clusters that link back to central people -- but they don't link amongst themselves.
Not really. The troop I was in when I was a boy
That's why the government wants this technology so badly -- you can find cell organizations almost instantly.
I seriously doubt it . Terrorist cells are typically low-impact and probably use those 20 minute pre-pay cell phones you can use up and throw away. Also they most likely meet up more face to face and talk over important subjects. And use the the phone very sporadically. They might use the internet more and more. The fact remains you still need human intelligence to check up on these leads. And if the FBI is bogged down on checking up on every lead the NSA gives them, that could be a huge problem.
A priori this only provides relational connections. Which is meaningless. A terrorist cell relational structure will look the same as the structure between a boy scout troop. You still need empirical evidence. That was my point. You still need to know some information beforehand, who is a suspected terrorist and etc. If they are doing this on millions of Americans they must be pretty much in the dark.
Exactly these types of programs are only good when you know in advance who your targets are. When you have no clue the difference between a terrorist and a non-terrorist these programs are a waste of time and really just drown you in information. Before 911 we had enough information to connect the dots to prevent the attacks. But because of a state bureaucracy, incompetence and inability to sort out important information the US intelligence community failed.
What has the Bush administration done to prevent another attack? Installed more bureaucracy (DNI), hired more incompetent and corrupt officials (Goss, Foggo) and overwhelmed the intelligence community with too much information (NSA).
Because of that ruling several laws, like the ECPA were passed to prevent in essence what the government is doing. The Smith ruling just states that the 4th amendment by itself does not guarantee privacy from logging of phone activity. The ruling is based on the assumption that many people already expected records to exist because of phone company billing practices. So in response Congress passed a slew of legislation preventing access to these records by the Government without a court-order. Qwest, the only company to turn down the government's request did so because of the privacy portion within the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
FISA was passed in 1978 but the rest of the laws were after 1979.
Telecommunications Act and the Patriot Act which have been passed since 1979 and say you need a warrant for the type of information the government is collecting.
Then again we aren't even sure what the NSA is doing. Why do you need such a huge database if you aren't going to do searches for patterns or do data-mining? If the call records of individuals are easily available with a warrant within 24 hours what is the point of collecting records on millions of Americans?
Also the polls don't really mean anything. Do some research and you'll see the same type of response with Nixon. It wasn't until the consensus was reached that what he did was illegal that things turned around drastically.
We cut taxes. The economy improves. Therefore cutting taxes improves the economy. QED
Unions foster mediocrity.
Sure, the strongest union in the US is the NFLPA. And I have to admit since it's inception the talent pool in the NFL has really dropped. Pfffft!
It's more like union members foster mediocrity. If you want to build a union that rewards hard-work but protects its workers I'm sure that it is more than possible.
The traditional goal of unions was an avenue for workers to achieve political goals. The greatest asset a worker has is his labor. Even more so for those who are greatly skilled. In a time when the politicians put aside the interests of the people for the interests of big business the power of strong unions becomes more apparent.
For example I assume the vast majority of Tech workers are against the NSA spying program. If there was some organization within the Tech worker community they could speak with once voice. They could have a one-day walk-out in protest. Of course there might be a backlash, people would get angry because they can't use the Internet for one day or get their computer fixed. But that's what standing for something means. You stand for a belief in the face of risk and those who will go against you.
Slashdot's success has nothing to do with design. Actually it was an accident, now that's evolutionary!
We used to have two trees being worked on concurrently. Where (x.y.z) if y was even it was the stable branch (just bug fixes and occasional new code for important hardware) and if y was odd is was the unstable/development branch. It might be a good idea to return to this development process.
Actually I'm in favor of just forking the unstable/development Linux tree into seperate trees maintained by different people. This is somewhat being done now as huge patchsets. Have Linus work on the super-tree or the official tree. Then maybe have Alan Cox have his own tree, Morton has his own tree, Kolivas have his own tree.. and etc. With git this is actually pretty easy.
if that link doesnt work try this one
Thanks, for some time I have been using the same type of misguided argument against Ulysses. Now I see the error of my ways. If I don't get it, that doesn't mean the art has less aesthetic quality, it just means I don't get it.
linkage
The wars of the future will be fought between smaller countries and the occasional conflict between a much larger power and a smaller one. China and the United States already have very close economic ties, so close that a prolonged war between us would devastate both our economies. If you want to prevent war you make your enemies your trading partners. The consolidation of economic powers as trading partners has all but eliminated large-scale land war between major powers.
No, we should be retooling our forces to fight guerilla conflicts. In Iraq we had to relearn many of the lessons from Vietnam at great economic and human cost. You cite Sudan and Iran as possible places of future conflict. Right now the US does not have the capacity or strategic acumen to fight the types of war that will arise. The US will become more of a police force, which will try to prop favorable governments and fight insurgents. An anti-satellite laser will do nothing in these conflicts.
Seriously, Wii is a good name. It's a playful name and I think that's what Nintendo was aiming for, the more you think about it the more the name makes sense. Yes, there is some sexual innuendo involved but that makes it even more fun. And also just because some of you might be shy about talking about your Wii doesn't mean you still won't play with it all the time. I mean come on.. this is Slashdot.