As this seems to be your main point on this thread, it asks for a response. As the other reply noted, the geographic segregation of high speed services is not based on where the wealthy live, and in fact the technology may be segregated against them. The wealthy tend toward the more rural and the more recently built, two factors that limit the provision of high speed services. In the Washington D.C. area, if you drew 5 mile thick concentric circles out from the city center the median income for this circles would increase out to 100 miles (with down blips where it encounters other city centers.)
If we allow a fee to provide for infrastructure construction we will be funding more access to the newly rich than the poor. If we want to encourage net use in poor areas we should be adding a surcharge to ISP bills which allows THEM to offer lower cost service to disadvantaged communities. We already do this with our phone bills, paying a buck a month +/- to pay for subsidized service to the poor and elderly. Why take this money from the ISP (and through them the customer) and give it to the Bells.
If you feel this is a public good that requires government intervention, make sure the cure actually addresses the problem - so many of our social welfare policys don't. Giving the Bells more of our money so they can offer xDSL to the exurbs does not strike me as fair or wise.
BTW - I know I neglect the truly rural - the isolated rural poor - but their percentage of the U.S. population is infintessimal compared to the days of the TVA and other rural development programs. The better answer here would be wireless or other new technology. While I believe the highest and best use of the net can be bringing education and the world to a poor child in deepest Appalachia or most remote Wyoming, I don't wany anyone to have to pay to run a digital quality line all the way to their home - there are better ways.
Re:Well Said - Not Quite the Same
on
Dear Mr. Straw
·
· Score: 2
The SAFE act does update U.S. law in its application to technology. In effect, an encrypted (locked) file containing, for example, a list of drug distributors compiled by the local drug lab, will be treated the same as a locked closet or safe containing that same information. A search warrant is still required.
The prohibition on telling anyone is the same as in any other criminal investigation, it does not simply apply to encryption. You are generally guilty of interfering with a criminal investigation if you go telling people (your "known associates") that the FBI searched your house. The courts have rarely applied this to talking to a reporter or any other figure as long as it is clear that the subject was not trying to interfere with an investigation.
If the cops come to your house looking for someone, and you call that person after they leave and advise them to flee, your are guilty of obstructing justice, even if that person is later found innocent. This is the same idea.
That all being said. This is a ridiculous law, like many English laws regarding individual rights. They may have lit the first candle of some of these concepts in the modern era, but they have pathetic protections in the areas of Speech, Press, arrest and detention, civil procedure, and state security. That a society with such strong traditions fails so significantly in practice should give some insight to the origins of restrictive democracy in other homogenous countries (Singapore, Greece)
Ever since the advent of the web, I (and innumerable other Hitchhikers fans) have noted the similarities - a huge collection of data from countless contributors with incompetant editors, often faulty information, and a great deal of humor. The creation of a true hitchhikers guide using the web was pleasently inevitable. I've often thought/. would eventually come closest to approximating it.
Unfortunately, H2G2 has far too much of the incompetent editing and too little of the clever humor and actually useful information. Just witness the lengthy expositions on black helicopters, the CIA plot to kill Clinton, and wrong instructions on how to do things. One poster noted how great this would be if ones car broke down in the middle of nowhere and they could get instructions on how to fix it. Given the quality of the content, PANIC might be a better slogan.
That being said, a mobile device that always knows where it is and has access to all the information you could possible want (and more) is an exciting concept. Not only could it tell you about the local culture and architecture of the Turkish prison you're in (another post), but also how to bribe the judge, carve your way out with the side of the "Guide" case, or how to use your towel to prevent some unfortunate prison experiences.
Maybe the guys here at/. could give Adams some pointers on building a community and group moderation - the "one cockroach" rumor that could screw a far flung restaurant doesn't work if the posters are rated and moderated.
Anonymous Coward huh? I would think you guys at Antionline would at least have a/. login.
First - the FBI NEVER identifies suspects in on-going criminal investigations. It's as likely they talked to him to get intelligent insights into the current hacker community for their investigation. Second "EXTREMELY LIKELY"? on what grounds, your own personal crystal ball?
One thing JP has gaurenteed, no one at AntiOnline or any of its' spawn will ever be taken seriously in the public policy debate over security and cyber-crime, and those that do use them will discredit their own positions.
I have rarely responded to this looney line of reasoning from the guard-house lawyers, as most of the posters are ranked "1" or lower, but as this yutz made it through, I must ask: What part of that section do you think prohibits a national sales tax, or internet tax, or CPU tax?????
Quite simply, you are wrong. The founders, the Supreme Court, and every other legitimate source since the founding have agreed that this section permits excise (sales), import, per capita, and Value added taxes. A 5% tax on internet transactions falls squarely under this congressional power. It is a uniform tax applied to all transactions taking place on the internet anywhere in the United States. The "uniform" provision does not mean the Internet cannot be singled out - it simply means that ALL Internet transactions must be taxed equally. The only people who dispute this print their own currency and live in compounds in Texas and Montana.
That being said - This tax is one of the most idiotic ideas proposed in recent years anywhere in the political scene (with the obvious exception of the Kansas school board). It will not pass, It won't even make it out of committee. Oh, and btw,/. posted this exact same story 2-3 weeks ago, we're just beating a dead camel.
I work in what can best be described as "a fairly high position in our common social structure". I use/. to better understand the thought processes of a group I believe is both important and under-represtented in social decision-making.
The view this discussion provides is quite enlightening, and more than a little disappointing. Even understanding the libertarian bent of the tech community some of the comments and the accompying "dittos" show a 12 year old's sense of the world.
Rather than wade into the tsunami, just a couple of observations:
1) As was stated, most of the renumerative jobs in the tech business are not rocket science. In fact, 95% of the jobs in this society, with the exception of rocket science and theoretical physics, are not rocket science. The fact that you are doing a particular job is overwhelmingly controled by the educational OPPORTUNITIES you had between the ages of 1 and 18. Opportunity is influenced by many things, including hard work and gumption - you make your own opportunity. But that applies to maybe 10%. The other 90% are here because the opportunity is easily available to them. If opportunity happens to be more available in "white neighborhoods" and less available in "black neighborhoods", and technical opportunity becomes the prime determinent of economic and social success, you have what any social philosopher would call a structural in-equality, and the residents, in general, of those disadvantaged neighborhoods are to use a term, screwed (except for the 10% with gumption who will rise to the top anywhere.)
2) (and why I was replying to this particular post) "Frankly the logic flaws about social responsibility in general are *huge* in this day and age. It really cannot be morally correct to force a man to feed another. Ever"
You, my friend, and all the members of this community who agree with you, are, sadly, not morally compatible with this society. Perhaps we can make arrangements for an island somewhere where your ilk can start a new, different society.
WE (and by this I mean society, your elders, and the generations that came before you, actually making your existance possible) have decided that it is morally wrong (in black and white) to leave a sick man to die in the gutter or a hungry child to starve in the street. Our societies have been organized for hundreds of years at every level, both public and private, to meet this moral imperative. In those same hundred years we have seen a multitude of human advances - flight, communications, medicine, and yes, computers. While part of our underlying moral code holds a revulsion to compelling ANY action of a free man - we allow said compulsion in a countless number of areas, and have allowed it from the time the words "life, liberty, and property" were written. Questioning whether it is correct to force one man to feed another is the moral philosphy equivilant of a 3 year old questioning why she must get a vaccine shot from a doctor.
The fact that so many members of the tech community ask these kinds of questions points to a (not suprising) lack of socialization. You are questioning whether color graphics are a good addition to the PC platform in 1999. The decision has been made, It has been seen as good, and we have moved on.
At the risk of coming to this party very late, I work in the government, in a position to know about these things, and there is NO, absolutely NO PLAN, NO thought, NO inkling, NO notion, NO consideration, NO conception, and NO whim to place any tax of any kind on e-mail. Ever. Period.
This UN plan was real, but as it turns out, they had heard the USPS was considering it, and that's where they got the idea. As the UN doesn't actually have any taxing authority, this was pretty amusing anyway.
Please file this away as one of the many internet myths that we shouldn't waste our time on. There are many more important issues like gov't encryption controls, the FBI restricting the growth of technology because of security fears (they have a lot of friends up here) and Scientologists attacking web-speech.
You say "Democrats" but Sen. Ron Wyden (Democrat-Oregon)is the one who wrote the Internet Tax Bill last year that PROHIBITED any state or local taxes on Internet transactions. He has also led the fight to stop this Hollings bill. Wyden had a hell of a time passing the Internet Tax Bill last year because many REPUBLICAN Senators (McConnell, Burns, Lott) did not want to take away the taxing authority from local governments which tend to be more Republican. He pushed it through only after exhaustively pointing out how absurd 1000's of state and local Internet taxes would be.
A tech=saavy Democrat like Wyden, (also a key opponent of the "Communications Decency Act") is not helped by knee-jerk nerds who don't know enough about politics to know that Dems (Bingaman, Dodd) have done more than Reps over the years to promote technology, and recently to keep the governments grubby paws off the Internet.
R = small, non-intrusive government & D = big, agressive government is about as simplistic as saying that Windows is better than Linux because It has more users.
Slashdot Mirror
As this seems to be your main point on this thread, it asks for a response. As the other reply noted, the geographic segregation of high speed services is not based on where the wealthy live, and in fact the technology may be segregated against them. The wealthy tend toward the more rural and the more recently built, two factors that limit the provision of high speed services. In the Washington D.C. area, if you drew 5 mile thick concentric circles out from the city center the median income for this circles would increase out to 100 miles (with down blips where it encounters other city centers.)
If we allow a fee to provide for infrastructure construction we will be funding more access to the newly rich than the poor. If we want to encourage net use in poor areas we should be adding a surcharge to ISP bills which allows THEM to offer lower cost service to disadvantaged communities. We already do this with our phone bills, paying a buck a month +/- to pay for subsidized service to the poor and elderly. Why take this money from the ISP (and through them the customer) and give it to the Bells.
If you feel this is a public good that requires government intervention, make sure the cure actually addresses the problem - so many of our social welfare policys don't. Giving the Bells more of our money so they can offer xDSL to the exurbs does not strike me as fair or wise.
BTW - I know I neglect the truly rural - the isolated rural poor - but their percentage of the U.S. population is infintessimal compared to the days of the TVA and other rural development programs. The better answer here would be wireless or other new technology. While I believe the highest and best use of the net can be bringing education and the world to a poor child in deepest Appalachia or most remote Wyoming, I don't wany anyone to have to pay to run a digital quality line all the way to their home - there are better ways.
The SAFE act does update U.S. law in its application to technology. In effect, an encrypted (locked) file containing, for example, a list of drug distributors compiled by the local drug lab, will be treated the same as a locked closet or safe containing that same information. A search warrant is still required.
The prohibition on telling anyone is the same as in any other criminal investigation, it does not simply apply to encryption. You are generally guilty of interfering with a criminal investigation if you go telling people (your "known associates") that the FBI searched your house. The courts have rarely applied this to talking to a reporter or any other figure as long as it is clear that the subject was not trying to interfere with an investigation.
If the cops come to your house looking for someone, and you call that person after they leave and advise them to flee, your are guilty of obstructing justice, even if that person is later found innocent. This is the same idea.
That all being said. This is a ridiculous law, like many English laws regarding individual rights. They may have lit the first candle of some of these concepts in the modern era, but they have pathetic protections in the areas of Speech, Press, arrest and detention, civil procedure, and state security. That a society with such strong traditions fails so significantly in practice should give some insight to the origins of restrictive democracy in other homogenous countries (Singapore, Greece)
Ever since the advent of the web, I (and innumerable other Hitchhikers fans) have noted the similarities - a huge collection of data from countless contributors with incompetant editors, often faulty information, and a great deal of humor. The creation of a true hitchhikers guide using the web was pleasently inevitable. I've often thought /. would eventually come closest to approximating it.
/. could give Adams some pointers on building a community and group moderation - the "one cockroach" rumor that could screw a far flung restaurant doesn't work if the posters are rated and moderated.
Unfortunately, H2G2 has far too much of the incompetent editing and too little of the clever humor and actually useful information. Just witness the lengthy expositions on black helicopters, the CIA plot to kill Clinton, and wrong instructions on how to do things. One poster noted how great this would be if ones car broke down in the middle of nowhere and they could get instructions on how to fix it. Given the quality of the content, PANIC might be a better slogan.
That being said, a mobile device that always knows where it is and has access to all the information you could possible want (and more) is an exciting concept. Not only could it tell you about the local culture and architecture of the Turkish prison you're in (another post), but also how to bribe the judge, carve your way out with the side of the "Guide" case, or how to use your towel to prevent some unfortunate prison experiences.
Maybe the guys here at
Anonymous Coward huh? I would think you guys at Antionline would at least have a /. login.
First - the FBI NEVER identifies suspects in on-going criminal investigations. It's as likely they talked to him to get intelligent insights into the current hacker community for their investigation. Second "EXTREMELY LIKELY"? on what grounds, your own personal crystal ball?
One thing JP has gaurenteed, no one at AntiOnline or any of its' spawn will ever be taken seriously in the public policy debate over security and cyber-crime, and those that do use them will discredit their own positions.
I have rarely responded to this looney line of reasoning from the guard-house lawyers, as most of the posters are ranked "1" or lower, but as this yutz made it through, I must ask: What part of that section do you think prohibits a national sales tax, or internet tax, or CPU tax?????
/. posted this exact same story 2-3 weeks ago, we're just beating a dead camel.
Quite simply, you are wrong. The founders, the Supreme Court, and every other legitimate source since the founding have agreed that this section permits excise (sales), import, per capita, and Value added taxes. A 5% tax on internet transactions falls squarely under this congressional power. It is a uniform tax applied to all transactions taking place on the internet anywhere in the United States. The "uniform" provision does not mean the Internet cannot be singled out - it simply means that ALL Internet transactions must be taxed equally. The only people who dispute this print their own currency and live in compounds in Texas and Montana.
That being said - This tax is one of the most idiotic ideas proposed in recent years anywhere in the political scene (with the obvious exception of the Kansas school board). It will not pass, It won't even make it out of committee. Oh, and btw,
I work in what can best be described as "a fairly high position in our common social structure". I use /. to better understand the thought processes of a group I believe is both important and under-represtented in social decision-making.
The view this discussion provides is quite enlightening, and more than a little disappointing. Even understanding the libertarian bent of the tech community some of the comments and the accompying "dittos" show a 12 year old's sense of the world.
Rather than wade into the tsunami, just a couple of observations:
1) As was stated, most of the renumerative jobs in the tech business are not rocket science. In fact, 95% of the jobs in this society, with the exception of rocket science and theoretical physics, are not rocket science. The fact that you are doing a particular job is overwhelmingly controled by the educational OPPORTUNITIES you had between the ages of 1 and 18. Opportunity is influenced by many things, including hard work and gumption - you make your own opportunity. But that applies to maybe 10%. The other 90% are here because the opportunity is easily available to them. If opportunity happens to be more available in "white neighborhoods" and less available in "black neighborhoods", and technical opportunity becomes the prime determinent of economic and social success, you have what any social philosopher would call a structural in-equality, and the residents, in general, of those disadvantaged neighborhoods are to use a term, screwed (except for the 10% with gumption who will rise to the top anywhere.)
2) (and why I was replying to this particular post) "Frankly the logic flaws about social responsibility in general are *huge* in this day and age. It really cannot be morally correct to force a man to feed another. Ever"
You, my friend, and all the members of this community who agree with you, are, sadly, not morally compatible with this society. Perhaps we can make arrangements for an island somewhere where your ilk can start a new, different society.
WE (and by this I mean society, your elders, and the generations that came before you, actually making your existance possible) have decided that it is morally wrong (in black and white) to leave a sick man to die in the gutter or a hungry child to starve in the street. Our societies have been organized for hundreds of years at every level, both public and private, to meet this moral imperative. In those same hundred years we have seen a multitude of human advances - flight, communications, medicine, and yes, computers. While part of our underlying moral code holds a revulsion to compelling ANY action of a free man - we allow said compulsion in a countless number of areas, and have allowed it from the time the words "life, liberty, and property" were written. Questioning whether it is correct to force one man to feed another is the moral philosphy equivilant of a 3 year old questioning why she must get a vaccine shot from a doctor.
The fact that so many members of the tech community ask these kinds of questions points to a (not suprising) lack of socialization. You are questioning whether color graphics are a good addition to the PC platform in 1999. The decision has been made, It has been seen as good, and we have moved on.
At the risk of coming to this party very late, I work in the government, in a position to know about these things, and there is NO, absolutely NO PLAN, NO thought, NO inkling, NO notion, NO consideration, NO conception, and NO whim to place any tax of any kind on e-mail. Ever. Period.
This UN plan was real, but as it turns out, they had heard the USPS was considering it, and that's where they got the idea. As the UN doesn't actually have any taxing authority, this was pretty amusing anyway.
Please file this away as one of the many internet myths that we shouldn't waste our time on. There are many more important issues like gov't encryption controls, the FBI restricting the growth of technology because of security fears (they have a lot of friends up here) and Scientologists attacking web-speech.
You say "Democrats" but Sen. Ron Wyden (Democrat-Oregon)is the one who wrote the Internet Tax Bill last year that PROHIBITED any state or local taxes on Internet transactions. He has also led the fight to stop this Hollings bill. Wyden had a hell of a time passing the Internet Tax Bill last year because many REPUBLICAN Senators (McConnell, Burns, Lott) did not want to take away the taxing authority from local governments which tend to be more Republican. He pushed it through only after exhaustively pointing out how absurd 1000's of state and local Internet taxes would be.
A tech=saavy Democrat like Wyden, (also a key opponent of the "Communications Decency Act") is not helped by knee-jerk nerds who don't know enough about politics to know that Dems (Bingaman, Dodd) have done more than Reps over the years to promote technology, and recently to keep the governments grubby paws off the Internet.
R = small, non-intrusive government & D = big, agressive government is about as simplistic as saying that Windows is better than Linux because It has more users.