Almost all work that goes on at the NSA, CIA, and the rest of the three letter agencies is funded by public money -- your position is tantamount to putting a 'research exception' into the entire classified documents system. Read this, which is everything you need to know about the system. The U.S. Treasury funds all sorts of nuclear weapons research programs, missile R&D, naval warfare tests, etc. You want everyone in the world getting their hands on that data?? Truth is, you really don't have a right to know that stuff, for reasons which are too obvious to lay out, and certainly not 'unthinkable'.
Just so you know I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, here's a list of things you don't have a right to know, taken from 4-202 of that link I gave. It's a sensible list, and you should think very carefully about what's on it and why. Documents the Government doesn't automatically declassify are those that could reasonably:
(1) Reveal an intelligence source, method, or activity, or a cryptologic system or activity;
(2) Reveal information that would assist in the development or use of weapons of mass destruction;
(3) Reveal information that would impair the development or use of technology within a United States weapon system;
(4) Reveal United States military plans, or national security emergency preparedness plans;
(5) Reveal foreign government information;
(6) Damage relations between the United States and a foreign government, reveal a confidential source, or seriously undermine diplomatic activities that are reasonably expected to be ongoing for a period greater than 10 years;
(7) Impair the ability of responsible United States Government officials to protect the President, the Vice President, and other individuals for whom protection services, in the interest of national security, are authorized;
(8) Violate a statute, treaty, or international agreement.
The real issue here is where we draw the line between things that really should be classified, and things which shouldn't. The list above just exempts the document from automatic declassification -- documents are routinely classified for other reasons. The extent of the system is an ongoing debate, one for which both sides have valid arguments. It's certainly not going to be resolved by a few posts on Slashdot, especially by the vast majority of posters who have no idea how politics, national defense, or international relations work.
hahahahah, sorry, every time I see SED and FED I think "smoke emitting diode" and "fire emitting diode". old joke from way back, goes with "light emitting resistor".
You make an interesting point. Now write your Representative and Senators and convince them. In the mean time, it's not fair use. Read 17 U.S.C. 107. Not to mention that circumventing the protection in the first place is a separate violation under the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. 1201.
Actually, the reverse engineering crowd won round 1. Round 2 is people violating copyright claiming fair use. What happens next is pretty predictable -- the MPAA's lawyers get involved, most of the violators were wrong and get hit up for a few grand (surprise surprise), everyone on/. bitches and moans about The Man putting them down while not rising off their pasty asses to actually do anything about it, and the reverse engineers pray to $DEITY that rest of the world gets on with more important things and doesn't sue them too.
Does anyone else here believe in the right tool for the job? Some measurements work best for different people in metric, and some in imperial. I won't go over which belongs where, that's already been discussed by others.
"How can we convert everyone to X"? The/. masses condemn these sorts of questions when X = religion, but when X = the metric system we're OK with it?
"[o]n information and belief, the Defendant has infringed the Plaintiff's copyright by downloading an illegally distributed copy of [the movie you were trying to download when you got the fake torrent]."
The defense is implied consent: "Your Honor, by distributing their own copyrighted file on a p2p network, making it free for download, and not providing any disclaimer or other access control, they gave me permission to download it in accordance with the usual custom on p2p networks."
On top of which, you didn't actually download that movie, so there was no direct infringement of that movie. Granted, you made a copy of something, but it wasn't a copy of [the movie you were trying to download when you got the fake torrent].
The MPAA can substitute something else for the real movie, but it has to be copyrighted by them to win on copyright infringement. Then an additional defense is fraud: "Your Honor, I thought I was downloading something else, but they tricked me into downloading Spider-Man." That's stupid -- they might as well distribute the real movie in the first place.
See this Science Hobbyist article from January 1998. It's long and detailed, and suggests practical steps individual drivers can take for breaking up (or causing!) traffic jams. Yes, dear readers, this is a nine-year-old dupe.
What is the difference between taking a property from a house- or landowner and a pharmaceutical company?
The difference is that drugs are directly related to protecting the health and safety of citizens, the sole purpose of government, while land-grabs aren't. Maybe if the Mexicans suddenly decided to invade Texas, some unfortunate ranchers might lose their land to set up a DMZ, but this would also protect the health and safety of Americans.
That's a whole lot of evidence that her body was carried in the car and dumped somewhere, then the car cleaned. It seems pretty clear a crime was committed in his car. I can't find anything in that long list that ties him to the crime. Maybe they have some harder evidence, and who knows, they convicted Scott Peterson. In the meantime, innocent until proven guilty and all that.
There's no way they get the name. The site is being used to sell PC war simulation games, a legitimate business. Netcraft is reporting that he's had the same IP address for four years, long before MGM started filming. There's no cybersquatting here.
The oscillation overthruster was incorporated into BZFlag, a tank-based FPS. It lets your tank 'walk through walls' and lay in wait inside buildings where you can't be shot by normal bullets. For the record, I'm an admin on a few servers, and I play regularly. Oh yeah, the game runs on Linux, BSD, Irix (where I first encountered it), and Windows of course.
Lately I read some posts on the net about the only solution to this being to amend the constitution to dissolve the executive branch, go toward a bi-cameral parlimentary system.
I disagree. Any nation of laws needs a chief law enforcement officer. Remove the man, not the office. We probably would have long ago, but for the fact that the Republicans in Congress are spineless cowards and/or political toadies. If I were a member of Congress, and the President said he wouldn't enforce a law that I passed and he signed, I'd call that a pretty clear abdication of his constitutional duty. I'd strongly consider demanding impeachment the first time around, and if the House majority is from the opposite political party (as it will be in January), it just might happen.
When a man signs his name to a document, he is bound by it. That's the whole point of signing in the first place. If you aren't willing to enforce a law, Mr. President, don't sign it. Veto, that's what it's there for. If Congress overrides the veto, suck it up, or find a new job.
OK, I'll claim ignorance on the point. But then what's the difference between photoshopped kiddy-porn and "computer-generated child porn"? Perhaps I should have said 'photoshopped starting from a blank screen'?
A public policy is a moral stance. A law or regulation is a rule that hopefully effectively implements a public policy. It is critically important to keep the two ideas separate. For instance, protecting human life is an important public policy, and we implement that policy by enacting laws against murder. One can argue that the laws against murder, or their enforcement by the police, are ineffective, but that argument does not undermine the importance of the policy against taking life. If one set of laws isn't working out, we can always enact a different set of laws without changing the underlying policy.
Controversial social issues, such as abortion, arise because of a conflict between public policies. For example, abortion is such a contentious issue because it lies in an area of conflict between the important public policies of the right to live, and the right to choose how you live.
Melting coins may violate a regulation, but it doesn't contravene public policy. As I explained in another post, there are several public policies that would be violated by taking away private coin melting, such as the right to use one's personal property however one sees fit, without interference from the government.
If this regulation is allowed to stand, it would be an infringement upon the right of the owner of property (in this case, currency), to use that property freely. It stands to reason that you can't wash a $1 bill and try to pass it as a $100 bill -- that's fraud. But you can wash as many $1 bills as you want, paint on them, and sell them as art. The same should be true for coins, and people already punch holes in coins and sell them as jewelry. I should be able to sell my pennies as copper if I want, because I'm not perpetrating a fraud or violating any public policy.*
The government could come along and simply declare that currency is government property which it 'loans out' at no cost. Of course, doing so would be an incentive for people to use other currencies over which they have unlimited control.
* For those of you who would argue that melting coins removes them from circulation, thereby interfering with Congress' power to regulate their value, I respond that if people want to melt them down, the government is doing a lousy job of regulating their value in the first place. Besides, the Congress derives its power from the People, and the People are entirely within their rights to promote public policy, and you can pick your favorite: private property ownership, limited government, efficiency in the copper and nickel markets, the right to exchange value for value...
Before everyone goes insane (I know, this is/., it's already too late), read this article on the US Mint website. For those of you who are too lazy to RTFA:
The US Mint published an interim rule blocking the melting of coins in the Federal Register, which is valid for 120 days. During the next 30 days, the Director of the Mint is required to accept public comments on the proposed rule. After 120 days, the Director will make a final decision. Anyone who has something to say that is more literate than "OMFGROFLBBQ! The US MINT is suxx0rzzzz!!1!11" is invited to comment at the website the government has set up just for that purpose, or submit comments in writing to:
Office of Chief Counsel United States Mint 801 9th Street, N.W. Washington D.C. 20220
Make sure you get your comments in by January 14, 2007.
Making virtual child porn illegal will make it comparatively less dangerous to make real child porn.
Here's a disgusting scenario: sicko A has a child, a camera, and a computer. He wants to make child porn. He would have shot his child with the camera, but oops, that's illegal. So he's considering using the computer to make something virtual, but he'll have to learn Photoshop. Now, the UK comes along and says making virtual child porn is illegal too. Now Mr. A thinks, "well, now that it's illegal either way, I don't have to learn Photoshop."
As long as people keep settling for $thousands, it will never become too expensive. As long as people are actually infringing, it doesn't make sense to fight. Lather, rinse, repeat until everyone is $thousands poorer. The only real solution is to not download music, which is what I do. I don't buy music either, and I haven't for years. I imagine I won't until the record labels stop being such greedy asshats.
The essential and controlling fact is that the stockholder has received nothing out of the company's assets for his separate use and benefit; on the contrary, every dollar of his original investment, together with whatever accretions and accumulations have resulted from employment of his money and that of the other stockholders in the business of the company, still remains the property of the company, and subject to business risks which may result in wiping out the entire investment. Having regard to the very truth of the matter, to substance and not to form, he has received nothing that answers the definition of income within the meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment.
Replace "stockholder" with "player" and apply to the current online gaming situation. Thus: if you convert your Linden Dollars into US Dollars (or Euros or Yen), it's a taxable event. If you sell your account to someone, it's a taxable event, even if you receive services or other property instead of cash. If you donate your account, the recipient will be taxed on its fair market value, which may include a currency conversion. If you make virtual money, without more, it's not taxable until you dispose of it.
That is, unless Congress comes along and mucks with the law. Of course, they'll have a hard time reconciling new law with the current IRS realization requirements. They could declare that you can realize a paper profit, but it would be really tricky to do so without royally screwing stock market investors on capital gains taxes. And if that happens, good luck getting reelected.
Slashdot Mirror
I for one welcome our soon-to-be-RFC-compliant spammer overlords. I mean, we want standards compliance, right? Right??
Just so you know I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, here's a list of things you don't have a right to know, taken from 4-202 of that link I gave. It's a sensible list, and you should think very carefully about what's on it and why. Documents the Government doesn't automatically declassify are those that could reasonably:
The real issue here is where we draw the line between things that really should be classified, and things which shouldn't. The list above just exempts the document from automatic declassification -- documents are routinely classified for other reasons. The extent of the system is an ongoing debate, one for which both sides have valid arguments. It's certainly not going to be resolved by a few posts on Slashdot, especially by the vast majority of posters who have no idea how politics, national defense, or international relations work.
hahahahah, sorry, every time I see SED and FED I think "smoke emitting diode" and "fire emitting diode". old joke from way back, goes with "light emitting resistor".
You make an interesting point. Now write your Representative and Senators and convince them. In the mean time, it's not fair use. Read 17 U.S.C. 107. Not to mention that circumventing the protection in the first place is a separate violation under the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. 1201.
Actually, the reverse engineering crowd won round 1. Round 2 is people violating copyright claiming fair use. What happens next is pretty predictable -- the MPAA's lawyers get involved, most of the violators were wrong and get hit up for a few grand (surprise surprise), everyone on /. bitches and moans about The Man putting them down while not rising off their pasty asses to actually do anything about it, and the reverse engineers pray to $DEITY that rest of the world gets on with more important things and doesn't sue them too.
"How can we convert everyone to X"? The /. masses condemn these sorts of questions when X = religion, but when X = the metric system we're OK with it?
On top of which, you didn't actually download that movie, so there was no direct infringement of that movie. Granted, you made a copy of something, but it wasn't a copy of [the movie you were trying to download when you got the fake torrent].
The MPAA can substitute something else for the real movie, but it has to be copyrighted by them to win on copyright infringement. Then an additional defense is fraud: "Your Honor, I thought I was downloading something else, but they tricked me into downloading Spider-Man." That's stupid -- they might as well distribute the real movie in the first place.
See this Science Hobbyist article from January 1998. It's long and detailed, and suggests practical steps individual drivers can take for breaking up (or causing!) traffic jams. Yes, dear readers, this is a nine-year-old dupe.
That's a whole lot of evidence that her body was carried in the car and dumped somewhere, then the car cleaned. It seems pretty clear a crime was committed in his car. I can't find anything in that long list that ties him to the crime. Maybe they have some harder evidence, and who knows, they convicted Scott Peterson. In the meantime, innocent until proven guilty and all that.
There's no way they get the name. The site is being used to sell PC war simulation games, a legitimate business. Netcraft is reporting that he's had the same IP address for four years, long before MGM started filming. There's no cybersquatting here.
The oscillation overthruster was incorporated into BZFlag, a tank-based FPS. It lets your tank 'walk through walls' and lay in wait inside buildings where you can't be shot by normal bullets. For the record, I'm an admin on a few servers, and I play regularly. Oh yeah, the game runs on Linux, BSD, Irix (where I first encountered it), and Windows of course.
When a man signs his name to a document, he is bound by it. That's the whole point of signing in the first place. If you aren't willing to enforce a law, Mr. President, don't sign it. Veto, that's what it's there for. If Congress overrides the veto, suck it up, or find a new job.
I hate Microsoft because it's trendy. All the cool kids are doing it.
For current prices of base metals on the open market, check out Kitco metals. For the relation to US currency, see coinflation.
OK, I'll claim ignorance on the point. But then what's the difference between photoshopped kiddy-porn and "computer-generated child porn"? Perhaps I should have said 'photoshopped starting from a blank screen'?
Controversial social issues, such as abortion, arise because of a conflict between public policies. For example, abortion is such a contentious issue because it lies in an area of conflict between the important public policies of the right to live, and the right to choose how you live.
Melting coins may violate a regulation, but it doesn't contravene public policy. As I explained in another post, there are several public policies that would be violated by taking away private coin melting, such as the right to use one's personal property however one sees fit, without interference from the government.
* Most 1943 pennies were zinc-coated steel, due to the need for copper in the war effort.
The government could come along and simply declare that currency is government property which it 'loans out' at no cost. Of course, doing so would be an incentive for people to use other currencies over which they have unlimited control.
* For those of you who would argue that melting coins removes them from circulation, thereby interfering with Congress' power to regulate their value, I respond that if people want to melt them down, the government is doing a lousy job of regulating their value in the first place. Besides, the Congress derives its power from the People, and the People are entirely within their rights to promote public policy, and you can pick your favorite: private property ownership, limited government, efficiency in the copper and nickel markets, the right to exchange value for value...
The US Mint published an interim rule blocking the melting of coins in the Federal Register, which is valid for 120 days. During the next 30 days, the Director of the Mint is required to accept public comments on the proposed rule. After 120 days, the Director will make a final decision. Anyone who has something to say that is more literate than "OMFGROFLBBQ! The US MINT is suxx0rzzzz!!1!11" is invited to comment at the website the government has set up just for that purpose, or submit comments in writing to:
Make sure you get your comments in by January 14, 2007.Here's a disgusting scenario: sicko A has a child, a camera, and a computer. He wants to make child porn. He would have shot his child with the camera, but oops, that's illegal. So he's considering using the computer to make something virtual, but he'll have to learn Photoshop. Now, the UK comes along and says making virtual child porn is illegal too. Now Mr. A thinks, "well, now that it's illegal either way, I don't have to learn Photoshop."
Lawyers are accountable. Read Fed. R. Civ. P. 11, especially 11(b)(3) and 11(c).
People don't intend for their PCs to get infected. They do intend to download files using Kazaa. Intent makes all the difference.
As long as people keep settling for $thousands, it will never become too expensive. As long as people are actually infringing, it doesn't make sense to fight. Lather, rinse, repeat until everyone is $thousands poorer. The only real solution is to not download music, which is what I do. I don't buy music either, and I haven't for years. I imagine I won't until the record labels stop being such greedy asshats.
That is, unless Congress comes along and mucks with the law. Of course, they'll have a hard time reconciling new law with the current IRS realization requirements. They could declare that you can realize a paper profit, but it would be really tricky to do so without royally screwing stock market investors on capital gains taxes. And if that happens, good luck getting reelected.