"We" are not fascist, we are merely ruled by fascists. Actually we must take some responsibility. Our grandparents would have burnt DC to the ground and salted the earth for a small fraction of what we most meekly cluck a bit about, more often excuse and defend and go on to pay for it all on April 15th like good little children of the Fatherland.
First, NSA spying on Americans is not a "military action". Second the military at time these actions occurred more so than today, is extremely limited in what domestic activities it can be engaged in. Lastly the 4th Amendment exists to spell out one set of limitations on what the government can do to the people. For the government to claim that part of the Constitution expressly designed no limit its activities does not apply to it is patently absurd. Run this travesty of a President out on a rail.
Actually I doubt very much that 911 was Osama's doing. The buildings were designed against being hit by planes. The buildings fell in near free fall time into their own foot prints with the massive central columns almost completely destroyed. Weakening by fire and supposedly twisting or pancaking could not give that result. There are many other 911 anamolies that make no sense in the official explanation.
Hell, if it is so easy to take down huge building on purpose with a jet then folks needing to demolish skyscrapers could save a lot of money compared to the normal sophisticated demolition costs. Heck the jets even took out a bonus building cleanly that wasn't even hit! Pretty impressive, no?
Al Qaeda has been hopelessly and purposefully over-hyped. We in the US and to some extent other Western powers went looking for a vast international octopus to put the old Cold War spy and intelligence networks to shame. We were told there were sleepers everywhere and huge underground control compounds somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. Years later almost every so-called terrorist cell case has fallen apart as utterly empty and not one bit of major organizational infrastructure or evidence has come to light. The truth is that Al Qaeda is tiny and not very well funded. There is no serious wide-spread and powerful terrorist movement afoot. All that energy pretending there was was merely an excuse for greatly curtailing freedom, massively increasing government power and control and creating military power bases in certain highly strategic spots. It is high time we put paid to this vicious nonsense and utterly rejected any arguments or suggestions made on such a basis.
Engineers, especially of the hackerish variety, scare control freaks of every stripe. I think that is a very good thing.
Would the following forbid putting lua, scheme, python, ruby etc. interpreters on the iPhone?
"No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)...An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise."
I can get all of this for free or very little. Paypal handles the cc junk. Several sites are happy to know of new apps and some even host it for you. So no, what is offered does not justify a 30% of sales charge. That is pure greed. Apple benefits by lots of apps for its device by selling more devices and getting kick backs from the phone company. It does not need to also scalp developers like this.
There are sites out there that will publish information about my app and a link to my page to download it. There are sites that take care of the entire thing including fees. And they don't charge a dime. A 30% of sales charge for just app store functionality I can roll myself or get for nearly free elsewhere? This is certainly not the best deal around. Not by a long shot.
Folks, Is any one here so brain dead as to have missed the obvious fact that our technology enables nearly universal surveillance on the streets today? Did anyone miss that Britain has and/or has plans to put cameras everywhere public? Have you failed to notice the cameras on street corners and in most stores in the US? Did you miss the fact that your cell phone can be used to track you at will? Cameras can now be made so tiny that they can be placed just about anywhere and be rather difficult to spot. Given this do you really believe that any public place, especially in or close to cities is going to be long free of surveillance?
If not then the question is whether we the people get to take advantage of this information to at least do things like take a virtual tour around a city a la Google Street. Since the government and other snoops will have this data we need to both limit their use of it for anti-freedom purposes and level the playing field by gaining access to this information ourselves for various purposes including watching the watchers.
There is nothing remotely pro business about this bit of boneheaded knee jerk nonsense. This is too broad for even the brain damaged RIAA dreams. It is not good business to wipe out entire categories of computer applications and software architecture during the very education of future employees and innovators.
Apple is called out as stealing from U2? This is very funny. U2 is a great darling of Apple pushed many times on U2. There is a U2 autographed ipod. I didn't hear of U2 except for Apple's push on their behalf. I bought a U2 collection as a result. Some stealing. A lot of groups would wish for such "stealing" of their content. I hope U2, a damn fine group, gets rid of this clown before he drives fans and customers away. I would not have bought that U2 collection if I had seen such comments associated with the band beforehand.
Then he would support free software for all the people of earth and free open access to much of the knowledge of humankind. He would recant his and his company's sniping against Linux and open source. He would see to it that licensing for little or no money was available for all of Microsoft's anti-competitive and especially technology blocking patents. Let's see what actions he takes on the basis of his appeal.
Actually we should all be armed to the teeth and shoot any idiot that attempts to infringe our rights. It is not a matter for debate. And "God" hasn't a damn thing to do with it. Bush? Bush merely inherited and made more hay with decades of Americans not understanding and not standing up for their own freedom. As long as we tolerate it we will get more of the same and much much worse in the not too distant future.
The founders did not have to conceive of all the ways our persons, houses, effects and "papers" could manifest in the future for the prohibition against arbitrary search and seizure to extend to all such manifestations. Anyone who says differently is an un-American scoundrel who never understood one iota of this country is supposed to be about. Computers are extension of our minds. Perusing our computers without our consent and without warrant is nothing less than mind rape. We The People must treat it that way if we are to have a chance of remaining free.
Impatience and being unhappy with the state of things on computers is a huge driver for hacking better solutions. It is also a driver for investment to satisfy that itch. I don't see how this particular characteristic in any way implies a lack of computer skills. I hope people become even more impatient with clunky software and systems.
And thus good bye to my iPhone. Encryption is not a great answer as a lot of traffic is not end user controllable. It is a good thing to do in these days of the government and industry thinking they can peruse our externally extended brains with impunity. But it is not imho the best answer. A better effective answer is to slam any company that tries such nonsense in the wallet directly and press class action suits. Make it expensive and scary for so-called internet providers to play these games.
In really tough times all that Open Source software will be used instead of proprietary products that many groups cannot afford. The Commons of reuseable code and generally information that increases in value in proportion to how many use it will become vastly more appreciated. Avoiding duplicated effort and artificial barriers are much more important when you don't have resources to waste. We might come out of such with a much keener idea of what really works best in a Commons and open to all and what does not.
Even having an FCC rule over the broad areas it passes regulations on is arguably unconstitutional. The FCC doesn't have the power to control the Internet in detail. It doesn't have the power to stop technologist from inventing ways to supersede any control it attempts to exert or that any corporation or group of corporation attempt to assert against the express wishes of the people. So let's not act as if we are helpless in the face of whatever some unelected body decides. We are not.
Everything the Founding Fathers said and did is extreme as hell relative to what we have now. Hell, it was extreme back then too. Nothing is more extreme than saying the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect and secure your freedoms and that your freedom includes the right and responsibility to bring down any government that fails in this. It is really extreme to say that you, and I, and each person are the only sovereigns and government is our servant that serves at our pleasure.
Dude, the top 5% already pay most of the tax. Haven't you noticed that the government, those doing the taxing, wastes most of the tax and put us in the hole for generations to come to boot? How what makes your plan do anything but redistribute wealth to bureaucrats and their buds just like now?
Hint. The dollar is worth less every single year. It is worth 36% less against a basket of other worthless paper since Bush took office. The government, not just Bush administration takes over 50% of the wealth, at least that much of the land, and yet manages to run $9.2 trillion in debt ($35 trillion plus is you use normal business accounting), get in the way of scientific and technological progress, lock up more people per capita than any nation in 200 years, turn the once most literate country on earth to 30% illiterate and throw away most of the good will toward America around the world. And it eats more of our substance and enslaves us more and more directly every single year. I can think of a lot worse things than seeing it collapse. Maybe people will come out of their long coma and build something better on the ashes. Yeah, it will be painful. But we are in a lot of pain now and it is set to get a whole lot worse.
With Executive Orders you could do most anything for a time.
1) Repeal all drug laws, disband DEA, free all prisoners in on drug charges; 2) Remove all funds to "faith-based" initiatives; 3) Disband IRS and go temporarily to a flat tax, push for repeal of 16th amendment. End income withholding immediately; 4) Declare fixed bandwidth sales obsolete, null and void; 5) Get the government out of education, health care, housing, charity, etc as quickily as possible without major harm; 6) Get the government out of science; 7) Disband the DHS and salt the ground; 8) End the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the entire bogus "War on Terror"; 9) Institute rigorous privacy requirements including financial privacy as the government no longer has de facto rights over all money and money equivalents you touch; 10) Rigorously enforce the Bill of Rights including hard prosecution of any and all government officials who in any way break it. 11) I don't believe in government subsidies but do what can be done to unblock the path to country-wide always available cheap high speed broadband; 12) Mandate IPV6 everywhere by a fixed date; 13) Return all lands outside government facilities held by the government to the free market; 14) Repeal all laws restricting the free market.
And anything else my geeky anarcho-captitalist little head comes up with until my last act:
At least if you encrypt they will bother to come up with a warrant. Then you at least can fight. Anonymous mail will increase along with anonymous browsing. If they want a tech war then they can have one. Computers are an extension of the brain. The government has no more right to snoop my computer and its interactions than to pry open my brain. I am sure this is on their wish list of cool and needed tech too. If the government has the right to surveil you and all you do and all you say and all you write then the government has total power and control over you. This is not freedom. Not ever close. This is pure tyranny and it will be stopped by all means necessary.
No kids will thing it is cool or worth their time except maybe to hack the hell out of it. For a very minor problem MySpace and attorneys and parents overreact as usual. Nobody bothers with real statistics or real danger assessment. Just lock it up and lock kids out in the name of "safety". Pathetic.
Slashdot Mirror
"We" are not fascist, we are merely ruled by fascists. Actually we must take some responsibility. Our grandparents would have burnt DC to the ground and salted the earth for a small fraction of what we most meekly cluck a bit about, more often excuse and defend and go on to pay for it all on April 15th like good little children of the Fatherland.
Not really. Lincoln did it illegally but there is no such provision in the Constitution.
First, NSA spying on Americans is not a "military action". Second the military at time these actions occurred more so than today, is extremely limited in what domestic activities it can be engaged in. Lastly the 4th Amendment exists to spell out one set of limitations on what the government can do to the people. For the government to claim that part of the Constitution expressly designed no limit its activities does not apply to it is patently absurd.
Run this travesty of a President out on a rail.
Actually I doubt very much that 911 was Osama's doing. The buildings were designed against being hit by planes. The buildings fell in near free fall time into their own foot prints with the massive central columns almost completely destroyed. Weakening by fire and supposedly twisting or pancaking could not give that result. There are many other 911 anamolies that make no sense in the official explanation.
Hell, if it is so easy to take down huge building on purpose with a jet then folks needing to demolish skyscrapers could save a lot of money compared to the normal sophisticated demolition costs. Heck the jets even took out a bonus building cleanly that wasn't even hit! Pretty impressive, no?
Al Qaeda has been hopelessly and purposefully over-hyped. We in the US and to some extent other Western powers went looking for a vast international octopus to put the old Cold War spy and intelligence networks to shame. We were told there were sleepers everywhere and huge underground control compounds somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. Years later almost every so-called terrorist cell case has fallen apart as utterly empty and not one bit of major organizational infrastructure or evidence has come to light. The truth is that Al Qaeda is tiny and not very well funded. There is no serious wide-spread and powerful terrorist movement afoot. All that energy pretending there was was merely an excuse for greatly curtailing freedom, massively increasing government power and control and creating military power bases in certain highly strategic spots. It is high time we put paid to this vicious nonsense and utterly rejected any arguments or suggestions made on such a basis.
Engineers, especially of the hackerish variety, scare control freaks of every stripe. I think that is a very good thing.
Would the following forbid putting lua, scheme, python, ruby etc. interpreters on the iPhone?
"No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)...An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise."
I can get all of this for free or very little. Paypal handles the cc junk. Several sites are happy to know of new apps and some even host it for you. So no, what is offered does not justify a 30% of sales charge. That is pure greed. Apple benefits by lots of apps for its device by selling more devices and getting kick backs from the phone company. It does not need to also scalp developers like this.
There are sites out there that will publish information about my app and a link to my page to download it. There are sites that take care of the entire thing including fees. And they don't charge a dime. A 30% of sales charge for just app store functionality I can roll myself or get for nearly free elsewhere? This is certainly not the best deal around. Not by a long shot.
Folks,
Is any one here so brain dead as to have missed the obvious fact that our technology enables nearly universal surveillance on the streets today? Did anyone miss that Britain has and/or has plans to put cameras everywhere public? Have you failed to notice the cameras on street corners and in most stores in the US? Did you miss the fact that your cell phone can be used to track you at will? Cameras can now be made so tiny that they can be placed just about anywhere and be rather difficult to spot. Given this do you really believe that any public place, especially in or close to cities is going to be long free of surveillance?
If not then the question is whether we the people get to take advantage of this information to at least do things like take a virtual tour around a city a la Google Street. Since the government and other snoops will have this data we need to both limit their use of it for anti-freedom purposes and level the playing field by gaining access to this information ourselves for various purposes including watching the watchers.
There is nothing remotely pro business about this bit of boneheaded knee jerk nonsense. This is too broad for even the brain damaged RIAA dreams. It is not good business to wipe out entire categories of computer applications and software architecture during the very education of future employees and innovators.
Apple is called out as stealing from U2? This is very funny. U2 is a great darling of Apple pushed many times on U2. There is a U2 autographed ipod. I didn't hear of U2 except for Apple's push on their behalf. I bought a U2 collection as a result. Some stealing. A lot of groups would wish for such "stealing" of their content. I hope U2, a damn fine group, gets rid of this clown before he drives fans and customers away. I would not have bought that U2 collection if I had seen such comments associated with the band beforehand.
Then he would support free software for all the people of earth and free open access to much of the knowledge of humankind. He would recant his and his company's sniping against Linux and open source. He would see to it that licensing for little or no money was available for all of Microsoft's anti-competitive and especially technology blocking patents. Let's see what actions he takes on the basis of his appeal.
Actually we should all be armed to the teeth and shoot any idiot that attempts to infringe our rights. It is not a matter for debate. And "God" hasn't a damn thing to do with it. Bush? Bush merely inherited and made more hay with decades of Americans not understanding and not standing up for their own freedom. As long as we tolerate it we will get more of the same and much much worse in the not too distant future.
The founders did not have to conceive of all the ways our persons, houses, effects and "papers" could manifest in the future for the prohibition against arbitrary search and seizure to extend to all such manifestations. Anyone who says differently is an un-American scoundrel who never understood one iota of this country is supposed to be about. Computers are extension of our minds. Perusing our computers without our consent and without warrant is nothing less than mind rape. We The People must treat it that way if we are to have a chance of remaining free.
Since when was there any shred of doubt on this point?
Impatience and being unhappy with the state of things on computers is a huge driver for hacking better solutions. It is also a driver for investment to satisfy that itch. I don't see how this particular characteristic in any way implies a lack of computer skills. I hope people become even more impatient with clunky software and systems.
And thus good bye to my iPhone. Encryption is not a great answer as a lot of traffic is not end user controllable. It is a good thing to do in these days of the government and industry thinking they can peruse our externally extended brains with impunity. But it is not imho the best answer. A better effective answer is to slam any company that tries such nonsense in the wallet directly and press class action suits. Make it expensive and scary for so-called internet providers to play these games.
In really tough times all that Open Source software will be used instead of proprietary products that many groups cannot afford. The Commons of reuseable code and generally information that increases in value in proportion to how many use it will become vastly more appreciated. Avoiding duplicated effort and artificial barriers are much more important when you don't have resources to waste. We might come out of such with a much keener idea of what really works best in a Commons and open to all and what does not.
Even having an FCC rule over the broad areas it passes regulations on is arguably unconstitutional. The FCC doesn't have the power to control the Internet in detail. It doesn't have the power to stop technologist from inventing ways to supersede any control it attempts to exert or that any corporation or group of corporation attempt to assert against the express wishes of the people. So let's not act as if we are helpless in the face of whatever some unelected body decides. We are not.
Everything the Founding Fathers said and did is extreme as hell relative to what we have now. Hell, it was extreme back then too. Nothing is more extreme than saying the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect and secure your freedoms and that your freedom includes the right and responsibility to bring down any government that fails in this. It is really extreme to say that you, and I, and each person are the only sovereigns and government is our servant that serves at our pleasure.
Lets hear it for extremism.
Dude, the top 5% already pay most of the tax. Haven't you noticed that the government, those doing the taxing, wastes most of the tax and put us in the hole for generations to come to boot? How what makes your plan do anything but redistribute wealth to bureaucrats and their buds just like now?
Hint. The dollar is worth less every single year. It is worth 36% less against a basket of other worthless paper since Bush took office. The government, not just Bush administration takes over 50% of the wealth, at least that much of the land, and yet manages to run $9.2 trillion in debt ($35 trillion plus is you use normal business accounting), get in the way of scientific and technological progress, lock up more people per capita than any nation in 200 years, turn the once most literate country on earth to 30% illiterate and throw away most of the good will toward America around the world. And it eats more of our substance and enslaves us more and more directly every single year. I can think of a lot worse things than seeing it collapse. Maybe people will come out of their long coma and build something better on the ashes. Yeah, it will be painful. But we are in a lot of pain now and it is set to get a whole lot worse.
With Executive Orders you could do most anything for a time.
:-)
1) Repeal all drug laws, disband DEA, free all prisoners in on drug charges;
2) Remove all funds to "faith-based" initiatives;
3) Disband IRS and go temporarily to a flat tax, push for repeal of 16th amendment. End income withholding immediately;
4) Declare fixed bandwidth sales obsolete, null and void;
5) Get the government out of education, health care, housing, charity, etc as quickily as possible without major harm;
6) Get the government out of science;
7) Disband the DHS and salt the ground;
8) End the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the entire bogus "War on Terror";
9) Institute rigorous privacy requirements including financial privacy as the government no longer has de facto rights over all money and money equivalents you touch;
10) Rigorously enforce the Bill of Rights including hard prosecution of any and all government officials who in any way break it.
11) I don't believe in government subsidies but do what can be done to unblock the path to country-wide always available cheap high speed broadband;
12) Mandate IPV6 everywhere by a fixed date;
13) Return all lands outside government facilities held by the government to the free market;
14) Repeal all laws restricting the free market.
And anything else my geeky anarcho-captitalist little head comes up with until my last act:
Disband the office of President as we know it.
OK, you asked me to dream.
At least if you encrypt they will bother to come up with a warrant. Then you at least can fight. Anonymous mail will increase along with anonymous browsing. If they want a tech war then they can have one. Computers are an extension of the brain. The government has no more right to snoop my computer and its interactions than to pry open my brain. I am sure this is on their wish list of cool and needed tech too. If the government has the right to surveil you and all you do and all you say and all you write then the government has total power and control over you. This is not freedom. Not ever close. This is pure tyranny and it will be stopped by all means necessary.
No kids will thing it is cool or worth their time except maybe to hack the hell out of it. For a very minor problem MySpace and attorneys and parents overreact as usual. Nobody bothers with real statistics or real danger assessment. Just lock it up and lock kids out in the name of "safety". Pathetic.