From the post: "Sen. John McCain wants to require a la carte pricing on digital cable"
Analog would presumably still come in bundles. Since most (all?) digital includes analog service, I assume that this would only apply to digital only stations. Of course, I didn't RTFA either.
"By using the the materials (program, source code, documentation, etc.), you are agreeing to the restrictions imposed and the rights granted."
No, you aren't. You only need to agree to the restrictions if you *distribute* the software. You can use it without agreeing to *anything*. The GPL is not a EULA, because it does not govern use by end users in any way, just redistribution.
The granting of rights and privileges is irrelevant. That can be done in *any* agreement (in fact, it must be done if the agreement is expected to hold up in court). The difference between a EULA and the GPL is that a EULA governs *use* (and potentially distribution) and the GPL governs *distribution*. End Users must agree to EULAs; distributors must agree to the GPL (or whatever distribution license).
"You don't see other popular licenses being 'tested in court'."
Microsoft's EULA was not only tested in court, it lost. EULA's that prohibited archival copies have been tested...and lost.
Of course, the GPL is not a EULA; it is a distribution license. It does not require acceptance to use the software (even if obtained illegally!), only to redistribute it. To rule against it the way that Microsoft's EULA was invalidated would require someone to claim that redistribution was a natural right which they were being denied. Current copyright law would pretty much squelch that. Absent the GPL or another distribution license, the receiver should not expect to be able to redistribute it. It allows personal use of any kind, so the archival issue does not come up (personal archival is certainly allowed).
A better comparison would be the license for video tapes that prohibited rental (which was tested and lost). However, the GPL is much more careful about what it allows and does not allow. In particular, the GPL does not try to restrict use at all. It is the act of transferring a form of the software to another person that it covers. The original copy could be redistributed without any further liability (modifications have to include the modifying source; it's still illegal to distribute *copies* of videotapes to others, so this is actually more permissive than the video tape situation--unmodified copies can be redistributed under the terms of the license). Further, the GPL lifts restrictions that would otherwise be there.
"So, what's wrong with [grandparent's] logic about binary drivers?"
Probably nothing. Linus exempted them. Drivers (and other software) may make kernel calls just as if the kernel were LGPLed. This is exclusive to the Linux kernel, not something generally available with GPLed software. If it weren't for the exemption, binary drivers *would* have to be open source (as they use kernel routines covered by the GPL).
With a binary patch, the problem is that the patch does not stand alone, i.e. it is not meaningful to use the patch without the original software. You may *not* distribute a binary patch of a binary built from GPLed source code without meeting the terms of the GPL (offering source).
"But, think of how many fraudulent mail order businesses break US law every year with impunity."
To select (i.e. suspected gullible) audiences. How many letters do you get from them? One a year? I would doubt it was significantly more. If I could get spam down to one a week (including those caught by filtering after receipt; i.e. I don't care if I read it or not, I want to average less than one spam a week using my bandwidth, etc.), I would be reasonably happy. Sure, hard core scammers will continue to spam. Radio personalities still swear over the air, despite the FCC. However, it is rare behavior.
Anonymizers (which can be blacklisted as well), forged mail headers, and compromised mailers can be countered with things like SPF ( http://spf.pobox.com ). It's pretty difficult to spoof an IP across the internet (much easier before hubs replaced switches).
Truckers don't send out an identification number (IP number) every time they talk over the radio. Also, there is no way to prevent truckers from talking over a CB if they fake their identity (SPF: http://spf.pobox.com ).
When I was driving a tow truck, there was an incident where one of the dispatchers was worried that he would get fined for swearing. Fortunately, it turned out that he cut off the transmission in time. However, if it had gone through, he (or AAA) could have been fined. Unlike a trucker, he was identifiable and broadcasting from a defined place.
Same thing with television and radio, they keep the language within the guidelines because they can be prosecuted, fined, and/or suspended.
Open proxies and off shoring are more of a worry, but if they are selling in the US, some part of the transaction must take place in the US. That can be detected (they have to tell people how in the email or someplace accessible from the email) and blocked.
A better question (IMO) is "Did CAN-SPAM's legalization of formerly illegal spamming methods *increase* spam?" Remember that several state laws were weakened by passage of CAN-SPAM.
In CAN-SPAM's defense, the real test of the law will be if it pulls spammers out of circulation. Most of them were breaking the law prior to CAN-SPAM (for example, joe jobs are illegal). The mere presence of the law won't change that. It will take a couple years for the punishments to go through.
"Why did the "splitting MS up into multiple companies"-approach get dumped completely a few years back?"
Bush replaced Clinton. That's it. Microsoft lost the lawsuit until the Bush administration settled it. Until an anti-monopoly administration comes in, the government is not going to do anything to Microsoft.
You can't block with a firewall
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Paid To Spam
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· Score: 1
Forget emailing themselves, blocking with a firewall is functionally equivalent to not plugging in the network cable. The SMTP connection won't get through. If they aren't at least checking that you *can* spam (i.e. that you can make network connections), then they are pretty pathetic.
Sending all the spam to a local machine that just answers on port 25 for any IP (suggested elsewhere) would probably work, but is easily found out by the spammer including emails to themselves. If they aren't checking, this would be a good use of that 386 machine with network for which you can't find any other use. Note that one gets paid by the CPU hour, so the slowest PC is best.
"while the perl stunt was the first mass-posting of any kind"
Nope, not even that. It was the first automated cross post that spammed *all* the newsgroups without actually using the crosspost mechanism (some redundancy in this statement). I.e. you can send messages to multiple newsgroups by putting multiple groups in the appropriate field. People had been using that regularly in 1994, leading to clients that would block messages crossposted to more than x newsgroups (where x could be anything from 1 up). The Perl script got around the crosspost blocking mechanism.
It was a milestone, but it wasn't much of a first. It is purely arbitrary picking it as an anniversary. It was not the first commercial post, nor the first sent to all the newsgroups. It did not send to private emails, nor did it forge headers (at least I don't think that it did), etc. Personally, I would consider the first automated UCE sent to email addresses to be the first spam. No idea what that is though.
There are any number of situations in which I would *like* to be recorded. For example, under current law, I can call an insurer and record my description of an accident. If recordings were *not* allowed, I would have to go into the insurer's office to sign a written report, further slowing an already slow process.
When I call an organization that records all conversations, I know that not only am *I* being recorded but that they are as well. Thus, I am protected from them misrepresenting my statements or their own.
That's not to say that there are not abuses. I'm sure that there are. However, there would be abuses if the information was missing as well. Consider the case of an unrecorded conversation that would explicitly clear me of something and reveal that the other party did it. Or a revised agreement that could have been recorded but wasn't; offer withdrawn before signing. So on and so forth. There are a lot of babies flying out with that bathwater.
I keep all my email and chat transcripts. Partly for the record and partly so that I have access to that info for future conversations (I have emailed someone an excerpt from a chat to save reformulating the info after they forgot). I do a lot of my work to spec, so I spend a lot of time with printouts of email marking off things that are done, making notes, etc.
As I read it, any place where logging is normal is not included. I.e./. is not included because one's posts are normally kept (implicit permission). ICQ is not included because logging is the default (however, if someone told you that logging was off, I think that they would be bound by that in a two party consent state; further, you could turn off logging on your end so that at least your own logs could not be used against you).
AIM (the client involved here) might be included because logging is off by default. Further, in this case (I did not RTFA, but others who claim they did posted about this), it was a *video* of the chat session. For obvious reasons, video is not a normal method of recording a chat session, much less something that could be claimed as a default.
I don't think that open necessarily means anything. As I read it, consent is the important issue. I don't think that there is any particular right to record available in public versus private situations in a state with the laws as described. Even in public, you would have to consent to the recording AFAICT. If you want to log a public but transient conversation, you would need to alert the participants that you are logging it first and let them know that posting implicitly gives you the right to do so.
How does someone send you an email without implicitly giving you permission to save it? The only way that I could see would be to explicitly tell you not to save it, but then how would you read it? At best, the law would prohibit *forwarding* the email without their consent.
Same thing with the IP. I am implicitly giving you the ability to use the IP by telling it to you. Otherwise, a TCP/IP connection simply doesn't work. Otoh, I can't record the *contents* of the connection without added permission. This would prevent parties in between from publishing the IP, as they have no permission to use it for anything except pass through unless you consent (e.g. your ISP could require your consent and therefore track what you send/receive but not who to/from).
With AIM, the assumption is that AIM will forget the message after you close the window. Making a copy of it in the meantime is illegal. With ICQ, the conversation is logged by default, so it is admissible.
You have no fundamental right not to be recorded. What you have is a right to *know* that you are being recorded when you are. The two party consent guarantees that both parties *know* that they are being recorded (or at least could be). The consent isn't giving anything away. It is just registering your knowledge of the situation.
The point is to keep people from being caught by such things as "Can you please read the following document?" where the document seems to be a fictional passage but when replayed in court later, it sounds like you are admitting some crime. Other examples exist as well (e.g. orally agreeing to something and changing one's mind later; with the recording, the oral agreement is a contract; without it, it's just air).
A written record of what happened is different. It does not bear the same weight as the recording in someone's own voice (although modern audio edit facilities may make this overblown, i.e. a recording might be faked almost as easily as a written transcript).
IANAL, and I don't have any knowledge about how this works in other countries, but in the US, I don't think that will fly in a court of law. The employee is an agent of the company. If the employee fails to get the permission, an agent of the company failed to get permission. Therefore, it's the company's fault (respondeat superior). I.e. companies are responsible for hiring employees, so they are responsible for the employees' actions.
I know that after knee surgery my father was not able to return to work when he felt ready because they were concerned that he might reinjure his knee on work time (the original injury was not work related). Even if *he* had been at fault, they would have been liable if he was on work time.
CYA of this sort only works inside a corporation. It has no weight in a court case, AFAIK.
A better solution is to simply automatically inform anyone who connects that the conversation is being recorded (in the log file) and direct them to other methods of conversation if this is unacceptable. A buddy list request response might be able to handle this (if you only accept messages from someone on your buddy list; those not on it have to send you a request to be on it).
DO you give implicit permission to record buddy requests that you make? If not, then how could they add you to the buddy list (doesn't that record it)?
My theory is similar. I think that taking the time to reframe the basics of the problem (which you need to do to explain it to someone else) is what does it. All of a sudden, you are reexamining the beginning, when previously you had been concentrating on the end of your thinking.
There is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) issue that is similar. There are some kinds of algorithms that search for the correct answer by picking a point, checking it, and then jumping to a different point. They can get stuck at sub peaks where they are at the highest local point (any close point is worse than the one where they are), but the highest *overall* point is somewhere totally different. Sometimes, they need to jump far away (essentially restarting from the beginning) to see if they end up at the same place.
I also think that explaining things to someone else causes you to reexamine your assumptions. This can be good if you made an assumption early (before you really understood the problem) that doesn't hold up over time. Without having to explain it, you might never reexamine that assumption and recognize that it is incorrect.
"But it's still a question wether or not this will in the long term reduce the standard of living of the US to make it more in parity with other contries..."
No, that's not how it works. Our standard of living is set by how much we get. Trading with another country can't reduce our ability to get stuff, only increase it (we still retain the ability to make more stuff by employing the unemployed).
If you want to worry about something decreasing our standard of living, worry about something that will *decrease* imports. That could happen by a fall in exports (people become less interested in buying our stuff) or if we stop producing the world currency (we get a certain amount of free imports because we produce the world currency; same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank always runs a surplus).
Imports are problems for companies, as domestic companies compete with foreign companies for sales (note though that domestic companies also get benefits from imports, as they have to purchase stuff too). In terms of the country as a whole, they are good, as they transfer stuff to us. Exports are bad (except in that they fund imports) as they transfer stuff away from us.
Imports are a tiny part of our economy. Focusing on them just takes away resources that could be spent looking for ways to produce more stuff for us. Especially important are areas that are currently expensive: housing, oil, etc. Falling prices in those areas would allow the Fed to pump more money into the economy, which would provide more funds for companies to use to hire workers...including IT workers.
Not only that, but according to http://www.ncpa.org/iss/tra/2004/pd031504b.html the US remains (after the shift to India) a net exporter of services. If we would end outsourcing worldwide, it would *hurt* us. Even assuming that importing is bad for us (remember, when we import, we purchase with *our* currency; either the other country buys stuff from us, or they are giving us goods and/or services for free; reducing imports would reduce our average standard of living), outsourcing is overall good for the US as a country.
It's still a sucky time to be in IT though, even for those of us fortunate enough to remain employed. In my side business (i.e. the one that I do in my spare time), I seriously consider outsourcing to India every couple months: too many customers expect to get work done at ridiculously low prices. My bookkeeper tells me that I need to charge more (she is scrabbling to write checks), but potential customers tell me I'm too expensive. Should I outsource to pick up the extra business?
I stopped reading ScriptLance because the market is too low priced. If I'm not going to make more than $7/hour, I might as well go get a job at McDonald's to make extra cash; don't they offer free employee meals? Programming jobs are cash only. Pizza Hut offers employee meals and a 20% discount (when not working).
"I'm sure many parents will love this though. Now they can just sit their kids in front of the tube and not worry their little heads over whether their kids are seeing inappropriate material."
My mother would love this. She would much prefer to watch the television version of movies (without the cussing, nekkidness, and gore). If she could buy DVDs that came with the television version of the movies, she would.
It has nothing to do with protecting her children (none of whom are still children anyway). She was rather liberal in what she allowed her children to watch (I saw Tom Hanks' Bachelor Party movie in my early teens). The issue is that *she* doesn't like the "naughty" bits and would rather not see/hear them.
Most of them are done for the shock/titillation value anyway. I've never understood why movie companies did not release "TV" versions of the movie (on VHS or DVD). My mother is by no means unique in her preferences. Since they are not filling this market niche, third parties are stepping in to fill the void.
"We should pressure India to open up its markets and provide the SAME AMOUNT of trade from the US."
According to http://www.ncpa.org/iss/tra/2004/pd031504b.html that is what is currently happening. The US currently exports $131 billion worth of services. We only import (outsource) $77 billion. Thus, we have a $54 billion trade *surplus* in services. All increased outsourcing does is bring us back into *balance*.
I will say it again: the problem is not that foreigners are taking American jobs. The problem is that in the *US* there has been a drop in consumption of IT services. This leaves many IT workers unemployed. To fix this, we need either a boom in IT demand *in the US* or we need to move some IT workers into other industries (to make more stuff for us). Relying on foreigners to fix this for us is just silly.
"your current auto is no less safe tomorrow as it is today because of this technology"
Actually, you're safer. Less likely to be rammed by a sleepy rich person. Not every traffic fatality is the fault of the person who dies.
I once almost hit a trailer (i.e. mobile home) because I fell asleep for a second, woke up, thought I missed my turn, and turned hard right...a hundred feet early. Of course, this system might not have helped with that much as the first two (falling asleep and waking immediately) still could have happened...with buzzing, etc. to further distract me (which might have made the situation worse).
Maybe while the rich road test this for the rest of us, they will find out that it's like air bags. Marginal help when it works, but fatal when something goes wrong (e.g. air bag decapitation).
Btw, did anyone post a "I only travel by foot, you insenstive clod!" yet? Despite their ubiquity in the US, etc., most people in the world still don't own cars.
I was using the parent's definition: the rich are people who have a high rate of investment. I don't particularly care what the mark off is (e.g. 10% of income invested). My point is that there are *already* tax breaks for investments. The claim was that the "Fair Tax" system taxes the "poor" more than the "rich" because the "poor" consume more of their income (it's a consumption tax).
I am neglecting the income taxed at 0 or negative rates (Earned Income Tax Credit), as that continues under the "Fair Tax" system.
The real issue with the Fair Tax system is that its exemptions mean that the rate is probably too low. Currently, we need marginal rates from 28-50% (including Social Security and Medicare) to produce an effective rate between 20-25% (probably 23%, that's usually how they pick flat tax rates; when federal taxes were 19%, that was the suggested flat rate). Therefore, to maintain current tax collections, the rate would need to be higher, perhaps 27% to start with a 10% surcharge for "higher" income earners (higher being set at whatever level makes the numbers work).
The part about consumption taxes that I like best is that they fix the capital gains system. Since it doesn't adjust for inflation, capital gains taxes use too broad a base. As a result, the government lowers the rate, which doesn't really fix the problem. A consumption tax automatically adjusts for inflation, because the original principal goes untaxed.
Use a VAT to tax corporate income. Replace the personal income and wage taxes with a consumption tax (money invested is not taxed until it is pulled out for consumption). The nature of a VAT is to pay tax on *everything* but credit tax already paid (i.e. if you pay $10+VAT for a piece of wood, you get to credit the VAT you paid against the VAT you charge on the bookcase you make from the wood).
A VAT is very hard to game. The only deductible expenses are tax already paid. The biggest concern is using business resources for personal use. Even that can be legislated away; enforcement is just tricky.
Remember, a new system doesn't have to be perfect. Just better than the current system, which is a bizarre and ever changing mix of taxable, partially taxable, and non-taxable items.
The lowest marginal tax rate (federal, including Social Security and Medicare) is about 28%. Overall, taxes make up between 20% and 25% of national income, so effective taxes (the majority of which are paid by the "rich") are lower than even the lowest marginal rate.
Special rates on capital gains, tax free interest, foundations, etc. leave those who invest (the ones who pay the least under a consumption tax) also paying the least under the current system.
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From the post: "Sen. John McCain wants to require a la carte pricing on digital cable"
Analog would presumably still come in bundles. Since most (all?) digital includes analog service, I assume that this would only apply to digital only stations. Of course, I didn't RTFA either.
"By using the the materials (program, source code, documentation, etc.), you are agreeing to the restrictions imposed and the rights granted."
No, you aren't. You only need to agree to the restrictions if you *distribute* the software. You can use it without agreeing to *anything*. The GPL is not a EULA, because it does not govern use by end users in any way, just redistribution.
The granting of rights and privileges is irrelevant. That can be done in *any* agreement (in fact, it must be done if the agreement is expected to hold up in court). The difference between a EULA and the GPL is that a EULA governs *use* (and potentially distribution) and the GPL governs *distribution*. End Users must agree to EULAs; distributors must agree to the GPL (or whatever distribution license).
"You don't see other popular licenses being 'tested in court'."
Microsoft's EULA was not only tested in court, it lost. EULA's that prohibited archival copies have been tested...and lost.
Of course, the GPL is not a EULA; it is a distribution license. It does not require acceptance to use the software (even if obtained illegally!), only to redistribute it. To rule against it the way that Microsoft's EULA was invalidated would require someone to claim that redistribution was a natural right which they were being denied. Current copyright law would pretty much squelch that. Absent the GPL or another distribution license, the receiver should not expect to be able to redistribute it. It allows personal use of any kind, so the archival issue does not come up (personal archival is certainly allowed).
A better comparison would be the license for video tapes that prohibited rental (which was tested and lost). However, the GPL is much more careful about what it allows and does not allow. In particular, the GPL does not try to restrict use at all. It is the act of transferring a form of the software to another person that it covers. The original copy could be redistributed without any further liability (modifications have to include the modifying source; it's still illegal to distribute *copies* of videotapes to others, so this is actually more permissive than the video tape situation--unmodified copies can be redistributed under the terms of the license). Further, the GPL lifts restrictions that would otherwise be there.
"So, what's wrong with [grandparent's] logic about binary drivers?"
Probably nothing. Linus exempted them. Drivers (and other software) may make kernel calls just as if the kernel were LGPLed. This is exclusive to the Linux kernel, not something generally available with GPLed software. If it weren't for the exemption, binary drivers *would* have to be open source (as they use kernel routines covered by the GPL).
With a binary patch, the problem is that the patch does not stand alone, i.e. it is not meaningful to use the patch without the original software. You may *not* distribute a binary patch of a binary built from GPLed source code without meeting the terms of the GPL (offering source).
"But, think of how many fraudulent mail order businesses break US law every year with impunity."
To select (i.e. suspected gullible) audiences. How many letters do you get from them? One a year? I would doubt it was significantly more. If I could get spam down to one a week (including those caught by filtering after receipt; i.e. I don't care if I read it or not, I want to average less than one spam a week using my bandwidth, etc.), I would be reasonably happy. Sure, hard core scammers will continue to spam. Radio personalities still swear over the air, despite the FCC. However, it is rare behavior.
Anonymizers (which can be blacklisted as well), forged mail headers, and compromised mailers can be countered with things like SPF ( http://spf.pobox.com ). It's pretty difficult to spoof an IP across the internet (much easier before hubs replaced switches).
Truckers don't send out an identification number (IP number) every time they talk over the radio. Also, there is no way to prevent truckers from talking over a CB if they fake their identity (SPF: http://spf.pobox.com ).
When I was driving a tow truck, there was an incident where one of the dispatchers was worried that he would get fined for swearing. Fortunately, it turned out that he cut off the transmission in time. However, if it had gone through, he (or AAA) could have been fined. Unlike a trucker, he was identifiable and broadcasting from a defined place.
Same thing with television and radio, they keep the language within the guidelines because they can be prosecuted, fined, and/or suspended.
Open proxies and off shoring are more of a worry, but if they are selling in the US, some part of the transaction must take place in the US. That can be detected (they have to tell people how in the email or someplace accessible from the email) and blocked.
A better question (IMO) is "Did CAN-SPAM's legalization of formerly illegal spamming methods *increase* spam?" Remember that several state laws were weakened by passage of CAN-SPAM.
In CAN-SPAM's defense, the real test of the law will be if it pulls spammers out of circulation. Most of them were breaking the law prior to CAN-SPAM (for example, joe jobs are illegal). The mere presence of the law won't change that. It will take a couple years for the punishments to go through.
"Why did the "splitting MS up into multiple companies"-approach get dumped completely a few years back?"
Bush replaced Clinton. That's it. Microsoft lost the lawsuit until the Bush administration settled it. Until an anti-monopoly administration comes in, the government is not going to do anything to Microsoft.
Forget emailing themselves, blocking with a firewall is functionally equivalent to not plugging in the network cable. The SMTP connection won't get through. If they aren't at least checking that you *can* spam (i.e. that you can make network connections), then they are pretty pathetic.
Sending all the spam to a local machine that just answers on port 25 for any IP (suggested elsewhere) would probably work, but is easily found out by the spammer including emails to themselves. If they aren't checking, this would be a good use of that 386 machine with network for which you can't find any other use. Note that one gets paid by the CPU hour, so the slowest PC is best.
"while the perl stunt was the first mass-posting of any kind"
Nope, not even that. It was the first automated cross post that spammed *all* the newsgroups without actually using the crosspost mechanism (some redundancy in this statement). I.e. you can send messages to multiple newsgroups by putting multiple groups in the appropriate field. People had been using that regularly in 1994, leading to clients that would block messages crossposted to more than x newsgroups (where x could be anything from 1 up). The Perl script got around the crosspost blocking mechanism.
It was a milestone, but it wasn't much of a first. It is purely arbitrary picking it as an anniversary. It was not the first commercial post, nor the first sent to all the newsgroups. It did not send to private emails, nor did it forge headers (at least I don't think that it did), etc. Personally, I would consider the first automated UCE sent to email addresses to be the first spam. No idea what that is though.
There are any number of situations in which I would *like* to be recorded. For example, under current law, I can call an insurer and record my description of an accident. If recordings were *not* allowed, I would have to go into the insurer's office to sign a written report, further slowing an already slow process.
When I call an organization that records all conversations, I know that not only am *I* being recorded but that they are as well. Thus, I am protected from them misrepresenting my statements or their own.
That's not to say that there are not abuses. I'm sure that there are. However, there would be abuses if the information was missing as well. Consider the case of an unrecorded conversation that would explicitly clear me of something and reveal that the other party did it. Or a revised agreement that could have been recorded but wasn't; offer withdrawn before signing. So on and so forth. There are a lot of babies flying out with that bathwater.
I keep all my email and chat transcripts. Partly for the record and partly so that I have access to that info for future conversations (I have emailed someone an excerpt from a chat to save reformulating the info after they forgot). I do a lot of my work to spec, so I spend a lot of time with printouts of email marking off things that are done, making notes, etc.
As I read it, any place where logging is normal is not included. I.e. /. is not included because one's posts are normally kept (implicit permission). ICQ is not included because logging is the default (however, if someone told you that logging was off, I think that they would be bound by that in a two party consent state; further, you could turn off logging on your end so that at least your own logs could not be used against you).
AIM (the client involved here) might be included because logging is off by default. Further, in this case (I did not RTFA, but others who claim they did posted about this), it was a *video* of the chat session. For obvious reasons, video is not a normal method of recording a chat session, much less something that could be claimed as a default.
I don't think that open necessarily means anything. As I read it, consent is the important issue. I don't think that there is any particular right to record available in public versus private situations in a state with the laws as described. Even in public, you would have to consent to the recording AFAICT. If you want to log a public but transient conversation, you would need to alert the participants that you are logging it first and let them know that posting implicitly gives you the right to do so.
How does someone send you an email without implicitly giving you permission to save it? The only way that I could see would be to explicitly tell you not to save it, but then how would you read it? At best, the law would prohibit *forwarding* the email without their consent.
Same thing with the IP. I am implicitly giving you the ability to use the IP by telling it to you. Otherwise, a TCP/IP connection simply doesn't work. Otoh, I can't record the *contents* of the connection without added permission. This would prevent parties in between from publishing the IP, as they have no permission to use it for anything except pass through unless you consent (e.g. your ISP could require your consent and therefore track what you send/receive but not who to/from).
With AIM, the assumption is that AIM will forget the message after you close the window. Making a copy of it in the meantime is illegal. With ICQ, the conversation is logged by default, so it is admissible.
You have no fundamental right not to be recorded. What you have is a right to *know* that you are being recorded when you are. The two party consent guarantees that both parties *know* that they are being recorded (or at least could be). The consent isn't giving anything away. It is just registering your knowledge of the situation.
The point is to keep people from being caught by such things as "Can you please read the following document?" where the document seems to be a fictional passage but when replayed in court later, it sounds like you are admitting some crime. Other examples exist as well (e.g. orally agreeing to something and changing one's mind later; with the recording, the oral agreement is a contract; without it, it's just air).
A written record of what happened is different. It does not bear the same weight as the recording in someone's own voice (although modern audio edit facilities may make this overblown, i.e. a recording might be faked almost as easily as a written transcript).
"well you can probably blame the employee"
IANAL, and I don't have any knowledge about how this works in other countries, but in the US, I don't think that will fly in a court of law. The employee is an agent of the company. If the employee fails to get the permission, an agent of the company failed to get permission. Therefore, it's the company's fault (respondeat superior). I.e. companies are responsible for hiring employees, so they are responsible for the employees' actions.
I know that after knee surgery my father was not able to return to work when he felt ready because they were concerned that he might reinjure his knee on work time (the original injury was not work related). Even if *he* had been at fault, they would have been liable if he was on work time.
CYA of this sort only works inside a corporation. It has no weight in a court case, AFAIK.
A better solution is to simply automatically inform anyone who connects that the conversation is being recorded (in the log file) and direct them to other methods of conversation if this is unacceptable. A buddy list request response might be able to handle this (if you only accept messages from someone on your buddy list; those not on it have to send you a request to be on it).
DO you give implicit permission to record buddy requests that you make? If not, then how could they add you to the buddy list (doesn't that record it)?
My theory is similar. I think that taking the time to reframe the basics of the problem (which you need to do to explain it to someone else) is what does it. All of a sudden, you are reexamining the beginning, when previously you had been concentrating on the end of your thinking.
There is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) issue that is similar. There are some kinds of algorithms that search for the correct answer by picking a point, checking it, and then jumping to a different point. They can get stuck at sub peaks where they are at the highest local point (any close point is worse than the one where they are), but the highest *overall* point is somewhere totally different. Sometimes, they need to jump far away (essentially restarting from the beginning) to see if they end up at the same place.
I also think that explaining things to someone else causes you to reexamine your assumptions. This can be good if you made an assumption early (before you really understood the problem) that doesn't hold up over time. Without having to explain it, you might never reexamine that assumption and recognize that it is incorrect.
"But it's still a question wether or not this will in the long term reduce the standard of living of the US to make it more in parity with other contries..."
No, that's not how it works. Our standard of living is set by how much we get. Trading with another country can't reduce our ability to get stuff, only increase it (we still retain the ability to make more stuff by employing the unemployed).
If you want to worry about something decreasing our standard of living, worry about something that will *decrease* imports. That could happen by a fall in exports (people become less interested in buying our stuff) or if we stop producing the world currency (we get a certain amount of free imports because we produce the world currency; same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank always runs a surplus).
Imports are problems for companies, as domestic companies compete with foreign companies for sales (note though that domestic companies also get benefits from imports, as they have to purchase stuff too). In terms of the country as a whole, they are good, as they transfer stuff to us. Exports are bad (except in that they fund imports) as they transfer stuff away from us.
Imports are a tiny part of our economy. Focusing on them just takes away resources that could be spent looking for ways to produce more stuff for us. Especially important are areas that are currently expensive: housing, oil, etc. Falling prices in those areas would allow the Fed to pump more money into the economy, which would provide more funds for companies to use to hire workers...including IT workers.
Not only that, but according to http://www.ncpa.org/iss/tra/2004/pd031504b.html the US remains (after the shift to India) a net exporter of services. If we would end outsourcing worldwide, it would *hurt* us. Even assuming that importing is bad for us (remember, when we import, we purchase with *our* currency; either the other country buys stuff from us, or they are giving us goods and/or services for free; reducing imports would reduce our average standard of living), outsourcing is overall good for the US as a country.
It's still a sucky time to be in IT though, even for those of us fortunate enough to remain employed. In my side business (i.e. the one that I do in my spare time), I seriously consider outsourcing to India every couple months: too many customers expect to get work done at ridiculously low prices. My bookkeeper tells me that I need to charge more (she is scrabbling to write checks), but potential customers tell me I'm too expensive. Should I outsource to pick up the extra business?
I stopped reading ScriptLance because the market is too low priced. If I'm not going to make more than $7/hour, I might as well go get a job at McDonald's to make extra cash; don't they offer free employee meals? Programming jobs are cash only. Pizza Hut offers employee meals and a 20% discount (when not working).
"I'm sure many parents will love this though. Now they can just sit their kids in front of the tube and not worry their little heads over whether their kids are seeing inappropriate material."
My mother would love this. She would much prefer to watch the television version of movies (without the cussing, nekkidness, and gore). If she could buy DVDs that came with the television version of the movies, she would.
It has nothing to do with protecting her children (none of whom are still children anyway). She was rather liberal in what she allowed her children to watch (I saw Tom Hanks' Bachelor Party movie in my early teens). The issue is that *she* doesn't like the "naughty" bits and would rather not see/hear them.
Most of them are done for the shock/titillation value anyway. I've never understood why movie companies did not release "TV" versions of the movie (on VHS or DVD). My mother is by no means unique in her preferences. Since they are not filling this market niche, third parties are stepping in to fill the void.
"What's a floppy??? Don't they have pills or something to fix it??"
Only for those who buy from SPAM. The rest of us must simply suffer tiny floppies. Plus, we miss out on our slice of the Nigerian wealth.
*sigh*
"We should pressure India to open up its markets and provide the SAME AMOUNT of trade from the US."
According to http://www.ncpa.org/iss/tra/2004/pd031504b.html that is what is currently happening. The US currently exports $131 billion worth of services. We only import (outsource) $77 billion. Thus, we have a $54 billion trade *surplus* in services. All increased outsourcing does is bring us back into *balance*.
I will say it again: the problem is not that foreigners are taking American jobs. The problem is that in the *US* there has been a drop in consumption of IT services. This leaves many IT workers unemployed. To fix this, we need either a boom in IT demand *in the US* or we need to move some IT workers into other industries (to make more stuff for us). Relying on foreigners to fix this for us is just silly.
"your current auto is no less safe tomorrow as it is today because of this technology"
Actually, you're safer. Less likely to be rammed by a sleepy rich person. Not every traffic fatality is the fault of the person who dies.
I once almost hit a trailer (i.e. mobile home) because I fell asleep for a second, woke up, thought I missed my turn, and turned hard right...a hundred feet early. Of course, this system might not have helped with that much as the first two (falling asleep and waking immediately) still could have happened...with buzzing, etc. to further distract me (which might have made the situation worse).
Maybe while the rich road test this for the rest of us, they will find out that it's like air bags. Marginal help when it works, but fatal when something goes wrong (e.g. air bag decapitation).
Btw, did anyone post a "I only travel by foot, you insenstive clod!" yet? Despite their ubiquity in the US, etc., most people in the world still don't own cars.
"the "rich" (please define that)"
I was using the parent's definition: the rich are people who have a high rate of investment. I don't particularly care what the mark off is (e.g. 10% of income invested). My point is that there are *already* tax breaks for investments. The claim was that the "Fair Tax" system taxes the "poor" more than the "rich" because the "poor" consume more of their income (it's a consumption tax).
I am neglecting the income taxed at 0 or negative rates (Earned Income Tax Credit), as that continues under the "Fair Tax" system.
The real issue with the Fair Tax system is that its exemptions mean that the rate is probably too low. Currently, we need marginal rates from 28-50% (including Social Security and Medicare) to produce an effective rate between 20-25% (probably 23%, that's usually how they pick flat tax rates; when federal taxes were 19%, that was the suggested flat rate). Therefore, to maintain current tax collections, the rate would need to be higher, perhaps 27% to start with a 10% surcharge for "higher" income earners (higher being set at whatever level makes the numbers work).
The part about consumption taxes that I like best is that they fix the capital gains system. Since it doesn't adjust for inflation, capital gains taxes use too broad a base. As a result, the government lowers the rate, which doesn't really fix the problem. A consumption tax automatically adjusts for inflation, because the original principal goes untaxed.
Use a VAT to tax corporate income. Replace the personal income and wage taxes with a consumption tax (money invested is not taxed until it is pulled out for consumption). The nature of a VAT is to pay tax on *everything* but credit tax already paid (i.e. if you pay $10+VAT for a piece of wood, you get to credit the VAT you paid against the VAT you charge on the bookcase you make from the wood).
A VAT is very hard to game. The only deductible expenses are tax already paid. The biggest concern is using business resources for personal use. Even that can be legislated away; enforcement is just tricky.
Remember, a new system doesn't have to be perfect. Just better than the current system, which is a bizarre and ever changing mix of taxable, partially taxable, and non-taxable items.
The lowest marginal tax rate (federal, including Social Security and Medicare) is about 28%. Overall, taxes make up between 20% and 25% of national income, so effective taxes (the majority of which are paid by the "rich") are lower than even the lowest marginal rate.
Special rates on capital gains, tax free interest, foundations, etc. leave those who invest (the ones who pay the least under a consumption tax) also paying the least under the current system.