Actually, the DMCA is worse than you realize. To be a legal take down notice all they have to do is identify themselves as owners of some work (that will be easy) then say the video they want pulled infringes on their works copyright. The video doesn't have to be infringing (only a court can really decide that anyway after doing such things as assessing fair use, is it a derivative work, what-have-you), it must be pulled regardless.
How do I know this? Not only is it discoverable by reading the DMCA, but where I work has received a DMCA notice just like that. There was a *very* tenuous basis for linking the claimed work to the claimed infringing work, but not one that was supportable. General counsel advised that we had to pull the claimed infringing work for, IIRC, 30 days. Counterclaim or not the claimed infringing work *must* be pulled for a period of time unless your have risk-happy lawyers (I've never met one).
The "illegal" aspect would be if the filer was sloppy and claimed they owned copyright of the claimed infringing work. That particular claim is "under penalty of perjury" and is the only one which the filer has to be able to back. But only the filer (UMG) and the recipient (Youtube/Google) know the content of the take down notice and what was claimed. If google wasn't in favor of draconian laws like the DMCA they would forward a copy of the take down notice to whoever uploaded the video.
define illegal... the *one* thing that a filer of a take down notice under the DMCA has to claim under penalty of perjury is that they are the copyright holder (or the duly authorized agent of the copyright holder) of the work which they claim is being infringed. Now, the work being contested does *not* have to be the work they claim is being infringed. I know, I've been on the receiving end of that. Guess what, it doesn't matter, you still have to pull it (and counterclaims only allow re-instatement after a "reasonable" period of time that general counsel took to be a month IIRC).
My point is that saying that something is illegal is really overly broad. But the item in question is in fact the one thing the filer of a take down notice must not lie about (under penalty of perjury). So, if the take down notice sent to Youtube (remember, that is google nowadays) specified that the work to be pulled was owned by UMG there *would* be grounds for a perjury charge (I'm not saying they are or are not guilty, that would be up to a court after having heard evidence that is not available to us peons, just that it would be a plausible charge).
Good luck for anyone other than Google or UMG ever discovering what the take down notice actually said...
the plural of anecdote is not data... keep in mind that what you are observing is classic human behavior. They lie and cheat through tests, but you believe them when they say it is commonplace? Hmmm.... A classic defense mechanism when caught doing something wrong is to act like it was nothing out of the ordinary. "Everyone does it, why're you hassling me?"
I have observed the behavior you describe among Asians at university level (in a chemistry class they sat in the last row of the lecture hall and passed tests, each student answered one question). I have some experience in the Saudi Arabia, have seen the same behavior among Saudis and the same excuse. I have also heard it from Americans. Excuses are only that. Excuses.
Before you agree wholeheartedly you might want to consider the case where FRAND patents were denied at the standard rate. When the 'club' doesn't want new members what do you do? Not play in the game? As reasonable as that might be, some folks/companies don't give up so easily.
Apple has been, and knew they were, infringing since the inception of the iPhone. If you believe the anti-Apple line it was because Apple refused to participate in the agreement. If you believe the pro-Apple line it was because the exclusive member club wanted crosslicensing of Apple's patent portfolio in exchange for being allowed to pay the standard license rate.
Not being privy to the behind-closed-doors maneuvering would make it prudent to not/assume/ that penalties should be necessary: it is entirely possible for both parties to have aggravated the situation and a fair resolution/could/ be standard license rate.
Whether or not that is the case here is something that there is insufficient information to decide.
It was Microsoft saying "there's been a proliferation of new commands in Office and we can't just keep putting menus and sub menus like this forever"
Except that's exactly what the ribbon does, except it uses huge buttons instead of concise text. What the ribbon did was take away a static toolbar and a static menu, so you constantly have to hunt around for stuff, especially if you tend to resize windows a lot or move between computers with different size monitors (like a laptop).
What this really made me think of was Apple's Help/Search menu function. For casual users of complicated programs (myself using Photoshop, for instance) we may *know* we can do something, but not remember how it is done -- I use Photoshop for a few hours a couple of times a year. That is not anywhere near enough to maintain proficiency. But the ability to search the menus is much faster than trying to google for it. It also facilitates discovery of features if the menu name is logical.
Providing an immediately accessible way to search through labyrinthine menus makes them more accessible. If Microsoft had done something like that I think they'd be lauded instead of reviled for removing a good UI element.
I find all of this discussion about shia and sunni hatred of each other very interesting, including GP comment about it being obvious to anyone lives in M.E. Assuming the GP anonymous coward actually meets that criteria it would seem likely that he is unable to differentiate between personal beliefs ("I'm shia and hate sunni"/"I'm sunni and hate shia") and reality.
While there are real divisions in Islam, and Sunni vs Shia is one of those (although it is not really that simple and as a blanket 'sunni' or 'shia' isn't that meaningful), there are other divisions as well and sometimes other divisions take priority.
But talking about a country as being either sunni or shia is misleading to say the least. Officially, Saudi Arabia is Wahabi Sunni (yes, there are divisions among Sunni) but the population is not exclusively Sunni. And, in fact, you can walk across a street and go from a Sunni neighborhood to a Shia neighborhood. All of this without constant shooting, bombings, etc. Sure, the neighborhoods have their characteristics, but the same can be said about black vs white in US cities.
Strangely, for those who are not religious extremists, what religion you follow isn't the sole determinant in how they respond to you. Kind of like how in the US the KKK is largely comprised of white men, but not all white men share their views.
In general, the real world is more grey than black and white.
If you read the paper you would find that *Google* phones also suffered from the problem, albeit to the least degree. Both the Nexus One and Nexus S did not effectively protect the DELETE_PACKAGES permission. That isn't exactly insignificant. Now, the likelihood of a google fixing it is rather higher than Samsung or HTC who ignored the researchers reports prior to release of the paper, but it isn't *just* a carrier issue.
where? All I saw was some flash and a link to a PDF that says, "no, we don't". It doesn't explain why they need to log which key is pressed if they are only tracking number of key strokes or some other aggregate information. It *also* implies that the information is shipped off the phone ("stays within the carrier's network" or something like that). GP is right, why else are they doing it.
In my experience at an emergency room (regardless of the theoretical legal realities) you will be denied care unless you provide proof of insurance or an SSN (and are willing to argue). Generally speaking you are right, the spot on the form is just there for looks, but at the ER they ask for SSN (among other things) before they will provide service. It is hard to argue that you need a lawyer to explain to them why they don't need your SSN when you need immediate medical attention.
Also got into a big fight with an ob/gyn office over providing my ssn for my wife's care when we were already providing proof of insurance. Under the circumstances we had the time and will to fight it. Their final decision was that we could not provide SSN if we completely paid for *everything* (the entire term of care including delivery) up front and in full, for them to file against the insurance company they *had* to have my SSN. They did that because ob/gyn services (especially for delivery) are ridiculously expensive putting that option out of the reach of most people. They didn't get my SSN and we didn't have ob/gyn care or a hospital delivery. (Funny how that worked out...)
So while many forms have it and some places won't complain about it not being provided there *are* cases where they will complain *and* will refuse to provide service without it, either by simple denial of service or through refusing any reasonable, sane (even when legally required) alternative. If you don't hit those cases, great. But you live long enough you are likely to encounter them.
If you never used credit, then you simply won't have a credit history.
Oh, sweet naivete. You so obviously do not practice what you preach. My younger sister had a credit history pre-dating her birth.
Your potential employer will ask why. You will say that you don't believe one should rely on debt. Any employer that refuses someone because they don't have a credit history is foolish.
And the potential employer will most likely not ask you. Will consider you suspect for assiduously avoiding something as normal as having *some* sort of credit history. They will simply determine that you are suspicious and go to the next potential employee. What, you thought you were a special, unique flower that was going to get special attention?
Remember, it isn't a bad credit history; it is NO credit history.
Right. This is again how I know you are talking out of your ass. In terms of credit checks, yes it *is* bad. Nothing is more terrifying for someone checking up on you than to not find information.
You can get a phone and Internet without credit. It is just month-by-month and requires a large deposit.
All these examples can do all the credit checking they want. They will just find no history with a lot of inquiries. Most places understand the difference.
Right. So I take it you live out of a cardbox box? Enjoy being detained by the police for public vagrancy?
The only problem will be around purchasing online, booking a flight, or getting a hotel room.
Missouri tried using SSN (though they gave you the option to revert to the old number, which option I exercised), but have given up on it. The military has switched from SSN to a service number. Universities that once used the SSN for a student number have either converted to a different system or are looking at doing so.
Although the SSN is widely abused and I expect this abuse to continue (particularly with financial related tracking) the pendulum seems to be swinging back a little (or at least slowing in momentum).
Somehow I don't think you have ever read "Revelations" so I'm not surprised that you have forgotten "the exact phrasing".
The book you meant was "Revelation" or "The Revelation of St. John". Don't worry, I'll bet you say "I'm going to Walmarts", too. For some reason English speakers often add an extraneous 's' to the end of words.
But in any case that book is a coded reference to people and governments long gone and is not prophetic. (Getting in trouble for speaking out against a government isn't a new problem.)
THEN these systems could begin to really track down terrorists (who by and large come from that part of the world).
Why does everyone forget our home grown terrorists? Timothy McVeigh? the Unabomber? Or aggressive government actions to eliminate potential home grown terrorists? Waco, TX? Ruby Ridge?
There was a group ("Sword and hammer of the Lord" in Arkansas/Tennessee IIRC) taken down in the 1980s. That one, unlike the first four I mentioned, never really got any press. Its hard to tell how common these groups have been.
This situation is a typical lead in to war or revolution. You say "I fell like most reasonable people are not going to agree to that" but when phrased as flyingsquid did, they will -- at least for a while. This is exactly how authoritarian governments exert their power. "Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it" -- well, as society never "understands" we continually repeat these things.
Saddam Hussein would have loved to have this sort of capability to oppress the Iraqi population. He was more brutal to a greater fraction of the population than is currently the case in the US but people tolerated it or left the country. I've met and talked with some of these folks: it wasn't a happy place to live politically and you didn't want to look like you were accumulating power. But they had a really good education system. They had good infrastructure. It wasn't necessarily a *bad* place to live (it is easy to think of worse).
This is the thing: an oppressive government that provides no benefit to the population either collapses from within (revolution or coup) or it must aggress against neighbors (which for some countries is anywhere in the world) to distract from the internal problems. The second option only works so long and ultimately results in either a war they cannot win (and thus are overthrown) or it collapses from within. The old government may be replaced by another oppressive government, or things may improve to an extent -- but eventually oppression sets in as the wealthy and powerful attempt to consolidate all resources and control to themselves.
What I'm saying is that perfectly reasonable people go along with the proposition that they don't need privacy in exchange for a false sense of security: it isn't a matter of what they are agreeing to but how it is couched. But eventually, when the oppression can no longer be ignored, they don't agree and that's when domestic turmoil really sets in.
Is it possible to avert this progression, at least for a while, in the US? Maybe, but I am doubtful. We are so far down the road to corporatacracy that I don't think there is any turning back, just occasional slow downs when the government is forced to apply some regulation after particularly egregious corporate behavior (SOX, et al).
Heh. Losing weight is *easier* when you have lots of excess. It gets harder the closer to a healthy weight you are. *Keeping* weight down for someone who has gotten used to being obese is difficult. "Hey, look, I lost 20 pounds in two weeks" and a month later they are back at the original weight...
I had the misfortune of being in a car accident while insured by geico. Worse, one of the other vehicles was also insured by geico (it was four vehicles in total). Normally, insurance companies just take turns paying, but here was a case where the two most damaged vehicles were insured by the same company in what LE ruled was a no fault accident. This was something geico couldn't stand for.
They tried to claim I wasn't insured because my premium hadn't been paid (it had) They tried to claim it was 1st vehicle's owner's fault for failure to maintain his vehicle (didn't work either) They wanted me to give their lawyer an additional deposition (I can only assume to find something to try and sue me with)
They kept the case open for years, refused to pay off the totalled vehicle (I don't know but suspect refused to pay medical bills for the folks who were seriously injured) claiming I denied the settlement terms (I had accepted them).
The bastards who were passengers in the last vehicle that barely had any impact sued for the standard settlement for "soft tissue injury" on the last day they could -- and geico had no problem paying them. A geico lawyer told me paying them off was "just business" and taken care of without contesting it at all.
If insurance companies are evil (I can think of no lower form) then geico is satan, the ruler over them)
That is definitely the right attitude, you absolutely need to keep an eye firmly on the goal of staying employed and benefiting your employer. It is important to make money from gainful employment so that you can spend it on products. Consume, do not reflect on your position in life. You should accept it, and ridicule anyone who tries to cast aspersion on the ruling class.
They are protesting corruption on a never before seen scale, companies that have grown too large for even the federal government to control.
Applies to more of your post than just what is quoted, but its hard to get past this exaggeration. You might want to read about some great American presidents, their cronies and what they did to this country (and the global economy). A decent place to start is with Harding.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Nah, we're all doomed to repeat it.
IPv6 is structured specifically to where this fragmentation you fear is a non-issue. It is definitely not a re-hash of IP4. Its funny, but your final requirement is part of the silly requirements of IPv6. The *smallest* possible network is 2^64 addresses. You aren't going to run out of address space until you give each molecule of your body and personal articles its own (inherently globally addressable) IPv6 address.
that tripe about the scanning size is just nonsense because of autodiscovery. A compromised box will have a pre-built list of all nearby targets. No need to do any scanning at all, just do direct to target attacks. This is more efficient than traditional worms and harder to detect. (Infection in a new "subnet" is readily achievable through other means, all of which is old hat to malware writers at this point in time.)
The only saving grace is that operating systems have gotten much better about external attacks. But the so-called inability to scan in IPv6 is meaningless and unhelpful.
you are not "pirating" it, but when you use a torrent you *are* inherently re-distributing it to others without a license to do so. Whether or not you care about that doesn't bother me, I'm just responding to your implication that it is legal to torrent if you have a paid version. It is still illegal, it isn't the obtaining nearly so much as the re-distribution.
actually, macrovision never worked. The problem is, macrovision required subversion of your hardware. All you needed was a VCR that predated macrovision and you could copy tapes just fine. Which, when macrovision was first introduced, was the vast majority of devices in use. By the time non-macrovision devices were becoming less common it was common knowledge (and trivial) to strip out macrovision. Because macrovision is, effectively, a signal that tells the device to scramble audio/video. But the audio/video are just fine. Your subverted device does the scrambling -- no macrovision signal, no scrambling.
CSS, on the other hand, slightly delayed playback of dvds on linux.
As to netflix's DRM -- I don't think anyone really cares. One poster says he sees numerous requests on the board he frequents -- but the reality is people obtain broadcast (for current tv show episodes), dvd or bluray sourced video for their watching needs. And Avatar (the tv show, not the movie) had a dvd leak toward the end of the third season that contained unaired episodes -- which was before any dvds of the season were commercially available. Netflix's drm is really pretty meaningless. People that care to just download the shows and movies, who cares about cracking netflix drm when you have other options with better quality?
I wish I had mod points. The system you propose will never come about for what I think are rather obvious reasons, but is the best reform I've heard proposed yet. The main issue with it is that the big boys would still crush the small guys. Basically, paying a patent tax would become a cost of business, you keep the value inflated to the point where no one can risk a judgement. It would also prevent anyone other than a huge corporation from holding meaningful (costly) patents. IBM would be ecstatic.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't buy any electronics do you? Or use a computer?
I sincerely hope not or you are damned hypocrite.
What, its okay to benefit from Chinese and Korean slave labor used to produce cheap electronics, but Dubai is somehow the end of the world?
Actually, the DMCA is worse than you realize. To be a legal take down notice all they have to do is identify themselves as owners of some work (that will be easy) then say the video they want pulled infringes on their works copyright. The video doesn't have to be infringing (only a court can really decide that anyway after doing such things as assessing fair use, is it a derivative work, what-have-you), it must be pulled regardless.
How do I know this? Not only is it discoverable by reading the DMCA, but where I work has received a DMCA notice just like that. There was a *very* tenuous basis for linking the claimed work to the claimed infringing work, but not one that was supportable. General counsel advised that we had to pull the claimed infringing work for, IIRC, 30 days. Counterclaim or not the claimed infringing work *must* be pulled for a period of time unless your have risk-happy lawyers (I've never met one).
The "illegal" aspect would be if the filer was sloppy and claimed they owned copyright of the claimed infringing work. That particular claim is "under penalty of perjury" and is the only one which the filer has to be able to back. But only the filer (UMG) and the recipient (Youtube/Google) know the content of the take down notice and what was claimed. If google wasn't in favor of draconian laws like the DMCA they would forward a copy of the take down notice to whoever uploaded the video.
define illegal... the *one* thing that a filer of a take down notice under the DMCA has to claim under penalty of perjury is that they are the copyright holder (or the duly authorized agent of the copyright holder) of the work which they claim is being infringed. Now, the work being contested does *not* have to be the work they claim is being infringed. I know, I've been on the receiving end of that. Guess what, it doesn't matter, you still have to pull it (and counterclaims only allow re-instatement after a "reasonable" period of time that general counsel took to be a month IIRC).
My point is that saying that something is illegal is really overly broad. But the item in question is in fact the one thing the filer of a take down notice must not lie about (under penalty of perjury). So, if the take down notice sent to Youtube (remember, that is google nowadays) specified that the work to be pulled was owned by UMG there *would* be grounds for a perjury charge (I'm not saying they are or are not guilty, that would be up to a court after having heard evidence that is not available to us peons, just that it would be a plausible charge).
Good luck for anyone other than Google or UMG ever discovering what the take down notice actually said...
the plural of anecdote is not data... keep in mind that what you are observing is classic human behavior. They lie and cheat through tests, but you believe them when they say it is commonplace? Hmmm.... A classic defense mechanism when caught doing something wrong is to act like it was nothing out of the ordinary. "Everyone does it, why're you hassling me?"
I have observed the behavior you describe among Asians at university level (in a chemistry class they sat in the last row of the lecture hall and passed tests, each student answered one question). I have some experience in the Saudi Arabia, have seen the same behavior among Saudis and the same excuse. I have also heard it from Americans. Excuses are only that. Excuses.
To put things into perspective you might want to watch this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/weirdnewsvideo/8140456/200-students-admit-cheating-after-professors-online-rant.html
Before you agree wholeheartedly you might want to consider the case where FRAND patents were denied at the standard rate. When the 'club' doesn't want new members what do you do? Not play in the game? As reasonable as that might be, some folks/companies don't give up so easily.
Apple has been, and knew they were, infringing since the inception of the iPhone. If you believe the anti-Apple line it was because Apple refused to participate in the agreement. If you believe the pro-Apple line it was because the exclusive member club wanted crosslicensing of Apple's patent portfolio in exchange for being allowed to pay the standard license rate.
Not being privy to the behind-closed-doors maneuvering would make it prudent to not /assume/ that penalties should be necessary: it is entirely possible for both parties to have aggravated the situation and a fair resolution /could/ be standard license rate.
Whether or not that is the case here is something that there is insufficient information to decide.
It was Microsoft saying "there's been a proliferation of new commands in Office and we can't just keep putting menus and sub menus like this forever"
Except that's exactly what the ribbon does, except it uses huge buttons instead of concise text. What the ribbon did was take away a static toolbar and a static menu, so you constantly have to hunt around for stuff, especially if you tend to resize windows a lot or move between computers with different size monitors (like a laptop).
What this really made me think of was Apple's Help/Search menu function. For casual users of complicated programs (myself using Photoshop, for instance) we may *know* we can do something, but not remember how it is done -- I use Photoshop for a few hours a couple of times a year. That is not anywhere near enough to maintain proficiency. But the ability to search the menus is much faster than trying to google for it. It also facilitates discovery of features if the menu name is logical.
Providing an immediately accessible way to search through labyrinthine menus makes them more accessible. If Microsoft had done something like that I think they'd be lauded instead of reviled for removing a good UI element.
I find all of this discussion about shia and sunni hatred of each other very interesting, including GP comment about it being obvious to anyone lives in M.E. Assuming the GP anonymous coward actually meets that criteria it would seem likely that he is unable to differentiate between personal beliefs ("I'm shia and hate sunni"/"I'm sunni and hate shia") and reality.
While there are real divisions in Islam, and Sunni vs Shia is one of those (although it is not really that simple and as a blanket 'sunni' or 'shia' isn't that meaningful), there are other divisions as well and sometimes other divisions take priority.
But talking about a country as being either sunni or shia is misleading to say the least. Officially, Saudi Arabia is Wahabi Sunni (yes, there are divisions among Sunni) but the population is not exclusively Sunni. And, in fact, you can walk across a street and go from a Sunni neighborhood to a Shia neighborhood. All of this without constant shooting, bombings, etc. Sure, the neighborhoods have their characteristics, but the same can be said about black vs white in US cities.
Strangely, for those who are not religious extremists, what religion you follow isn't the sole determinant in how they respond to you. Kind of like how in the US the KKK is largely comprised of white men, but not all white men share their views.
In general, the real world is more grey than black and white.
If you read the paper you would find that *Google* phones also suffered from the problem, albeit to the least degree. Both the Nexus One and Nexus S did not effectively protect the DELETE_PACKAGES permission. That isn't exactly insignificant. Now, the likelihood of a google fixing it is rather higher than Samsung or HTC who ignored the researchers reports prior to release of the paper, but it isn't *just* a carrier issue.
where? All I saw was some flash and a link to a PDF that says, "no, we don't". It doesn't explain why they need to log which key is pressed if they are only tracking number of key strokes or some other aggregate information. It *also* implies that the information is shipped off the phone ("stays within the carrier's network" or something like that). GP is right, why else are they doing it.
In my experience at an emergency room (regardless of the theoretical legal realities) you will be denied care unless you provide proof of insurance or an SSN (and are willing to argue). Generally speaking you are right, the spot on the form is just there for looks, but at the ER they ask for SSN (among other things) before they will provide service. It is hard to argue that you need a lawyer to explain to them why they don't need your SSN when you need immediate medical attention.
Also got into a big fight with an ob/gyn office over providing my ssn for my wife's care when we were already providing proof of insurance. Under the circumstances we had the time and will to fight it. Their final decision was that we could not provide SSN if we completely paid for *everything* (the entire term of care including delivery) up front and in full, for them to file against the insurance company they *had* to have my SSN. They did that because ob/gyn services (especially for delivery) are ridiculously expensive putting that option out of the reach of most people. They didn't get my SSN and we didn't have ob/gyn care or a hospital delivery. (Funny how that worked out...)
So while many forms have it and some places won't complain about it not being provided there *are* cases where they will complain *and* will refuse to provide service without it, either by simple denial of service or through refusing any reasonable, sane (even when legally required) alternative. If you don't hit those cases, great. But you live long enough you are likely to encounter them.
If you never used credit, then you simply won't have a credit history.
Oh, sweet naivete. You so obviously do not practice what you preach. My younger sister had a credit history pre-dating her birth.
Your potential employer will ask why. You will say that you don't believe one should rely on debt. Any employer that refuses someone because they don't have a credit history is foolish.
And the potential employer will most likely not ask you. Will consider you suspect for assiduously avoiding something as normal as having *some* sort of credit history. They will simply determine that you are suspicious and go to the next potential employee. What, you thought you were a special, unique flower that was going to get special attention?
Remember, it isn't a bad credit history; it is NO credit history.
Right. This is again how I know you are talking out of your ass. In terms of credit checks, yes it *is* bad. Nothing is more terrifying for someone checking up on you than to not find information.
You can get a phone and Internet without credit. It is just month-by-month and requires a large deposit.
All these examples can do all the credit checking they want. They will just find no history with a lot of inquiries. Most places understand the difference.
Right. So I take it you live out of a cardbox box? Enjoy being detained by the police for public vagrancy?
The only problem will be around purchasing online, booking a flight, or getting a hotel room.
Sure, those are the only problems...
Missouri tried using SSN (though they gave you the option to revert to the old number, which option I exercised), but have given up on it. The military has switched from SSN to a service number. Universities that once used the SSN for a student number have either converted to a different system or are looking at doing so.
Although the SSN is widely abused and I expect this abuse to continue (particularly with financial related tracking) the pendulum seems to be swinging back a little (or at least slowing in momentum).
Somehow I don't think you have ever read "Revelations" so I'm not surprised that you have forgotten "the exact phrasing".
The book you meant was "Revelation" or "The Revelation of St. John". Don't worry, I'll bet you say "I'm going to Walmarts", too. For some reason English speakers often add an extraneous 's' to the end of words.
But in any case that book is a coded reference to people and governments long gone and is not prophetic. (Getting in trouble for speaking out against a government isn't a new problem.)
THEN these systems could begin to really track down terrorists (who by and large come from that part of the world).
Why does everyone forget our home grown terrorists? Timothy McVeigh? the Unabomber? Or aggressive government actions to eliminate potential home grown terrorists? Waco, TX? Ruby Ridge?
There was a group ("Sword and hammer of the Lord" in Arkansas/Tennessee IIRC) taken down in the 1980s. That one, unlike the first four I mentioned, never really got any press. Its hard to tell how common these groups have been.
This situation is a typical lead in to war or revolution. You say "I fell like most reasonable people are not going to agree to that" but when phrased as flyingsquid did, they will -- at least for a while. This is exactly how authoritarian governments exert their power. "Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it" -- well, as society never "understands" we continually repeat these things.
Saddam Hussein would have loved to have this sort of capability to oppress the Iraqi population. He was more brutal to a greater fraction of the population than is currently the case in the US but people tolerated it or left the country. I've met and talked with some of these folks: it wasn't a happy place to live politically and you didn't want to look like you were accumulating power. But they had a really good education system. They had good infrastructure. It wasn't necessarily a *bad* place to live (it is easy to think of worse).
This is the thing: an oppressive government that provides no benefit to the population either collapses from within (revolution or coup) or it must aggress against neighbors (which for some countries is anywhere in the world) to distract from the internal problems. The second option only works so long and ultimately results in either a war they cannot win (and thus are overthrown) or it collapses from within. The old government may be replaced by another oppressive government, or things may improve to an extent -- but eventually oppression sets in as the wealthy and powerful attempt to consolidate all resources and control to themselves.
What I'm saying is that perfectly reasonable people go along with the proposition that they don't need privacy in exchange for a false sense of security: it isn't a matter of what they are agreeing to but how it is couched. But eventually, when the oppression can no longer be ignored, they don't agree and that's when domestic turmoil really sets in.
Is it possible to avert this progression, at least for a while, in the US? Maybe, but I am doubtful. We are so far down the road to corporatacracy that I don't think there is any turning back, just occasional slow downs when the government is forced to apply some regulation after particularly egregious corporate behavior (SOX, et al).
Heh. Losing weight is *easier* when you have lots of excess. It gets harder the closer to a healthy weight you are. *Keeping* weight down for someone who has gotten used to being obese is difficult. "Hey, look, I lost 20 pounds in two weeks" and a month later they are back at the original weight...
I had the misfortune of being in a car accident while insured by geico. Worse, one of the other vehicles was also insured by geico (it was four vehicles in total). Normally, insurance companies just take turns paying, but here was a case where the two most damaged vehicles were insured by the same company in what LE ruled was a no fault accident. This was something geico couldn't stand for.
They tried to claim I wasn't insured because my premium hadn't been paid (it had)
They tried to claim it was 1st vehicle's owner's fault for failure to maintain his vehicle (didn't work either)
They wanted me to give their lawyer an additional deposition (I can only assume to find something to try and sue me with)
They kept the case open for years, refused to pay off the totalled vehicle (I don't know but suspect refused to pay medical bills for the folks who were seriously injured) claiming I denied the settlement terms (I had accepted them).
The bastards who were passengers in the last vehicle that barely had any impact sued for the standard settlement for "soft tissue injury" on the last day they could -- and geico had no problem paying them. A geico lawyer told me paying them off was "just business" and taken care of without contesting it at all.
If insurance companies are evil (I can think of no lower form) then geico is satan, the ruler over them)
That is definitely the right attitude, you absolutely need to keep an eye firmly on the goal of staying employed and benefiting your employer. It is important to make money from gainful employment so that you can spend it on products. Consume, do not reflect on your position in life. You should accept it, and ridicule anyone who tries to cast aspersion on the ruling class.
They are protesting corruption on a never before seen scale, companies that have grown too large for even the federal government to control.
Applies to more of your post than just what is quoted, but its hard to get past this exaggeration. You might want to read about some great American presidents, their cronies and what they did to this country (and the global economy). A decent place to start is with Harding.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Nah, we're all doomed to repeat it.
IPv6 is structured specifically to where this fragmentation you fear is a non-issue. It is definitely not a re-hash of IP4. Its funny, but your final requirement is part of the silly requirements of IPv6. The *smallest* possible network is 2^64 addresses. You aren't going to run out of address space until you give each molecule of your body and personal articles its own (inherently globally addressable) IPv6 address.
that tripe about the scanning size is just nonsense because of autodiscovery. A compromised box will have a pre-built list of all nearby targets. No need to do any scanning at all, just do direct to target attacks. This is more efficient than traditional worms and harder to detect. (Infection in a new "subnet" is readily achievable through other means, all of which is old hat to malware writers at this point in time.)
The only saving grace is that operating systems have gotten much better about external attacks. But the so-called inability to scan in IPv6 is meaningless and unhelpful.
Technically you are right. Now, point me to an implementation.
you are not "pirating" it, but when you use a torrent you *are* inherently re-distributing it to others without a license to do so. Whether or not you care about that doesn't bother me, I'm just responding to your implication that it is legal to torrent if you have a paid version. It is still illegal, it isn't the obtaining nearly so much as the re-distribution.
actually, macrovision never worked. The problem is, macrovision required subversion of your hardware. All you needed was a VCR that predated macrovision and you could copy tapes just fine. Which, when macrovision was first introduced, was the vast majority of devices in use. By the time non-macrovision devices were becoming less common it was common knowledge (and trivial) to strip out macrovision. Because macrovision is, effectively, a signal that tells the device to scramble audio/video. But the audio/video are just fine. Your subverted device does the scrambling -- no macrovision signal, no scrambling.
CSS, on the other hand, slightly delayed playback of dvds on linux.
As to netflix's DRM -- I don't think anyone really cares. One poster says he sees numerous requests on the board he frequents -- but the reality is people obtain broadcast (for current tv show episodes), dvd or bluray sourced video for their watching needs. And Avatar (the tv show, not the movie) had a dvd leak toward the end of the third season that contained unaired episodes -- which was before any dvds of the season were commercially available. Netflix's drm is really pretty meaningless. People that care to just download the shows and movies, who cares about cracking netflix drm when you have other options with better quality?
I wish I had mod points. The system you propose will never come about for what I think are rather obvious reasons, but is the best reform I've heard proposed yet. The main issue with it is that the big boys would still crush the small guys. Basically, paying a patent tax would become a cost of business, you keep the value inflated to the point where no one can risk a judgement. It would also prevent anyone other than a huge corporation from holding meaningful (costly) patents. IBM would be ecstatic.
Still, I really like the post.