If an individual wants to restrict himself to Open Source, there's absolutely no problem with that, so long as it does not contradict any previously-signed-and-still-active agreements on his part not to do so. People are allowed to behave as ideologically as they choose, within pretty broad limits.
However, there is no excuse for a government doing so. Governments are supposed to be more responsible than that -- and to require a drastic litmus test that completely ignores more important issues, such as "is this the best tool for the job given our budget", is arrogance and foolishness.
In this case, the damage to others/is/ the point, just as that's the same logic behind the Usenet Death Penalty. Hurt others (in the case of a UDP, the customers of the ISP who send perfectly legitimate email) whom the authorities do care about so that they change their policies...
It's not particularly nice, or even remotely fair, but something like that might work. A large-scale boycott by major ISPs might do the trick.
Given that much of my spam is not only/from/ Korea, but/in/ Korean, a considerable amount likely comes from Korean businesses.
As for what to do? One heavy-handed bit of leverage would be to block/all/ telcommunications from Korea until they develop some responsible marketing laws and enforce them (with, say, a 90-day notice in advance).
If they really wanted to fight resurgent Nazism, they should probably use Mein Kampf as a reference book on the philosophy so that people know what they're dealing with; after all, the threat comes not from the symbols or names, but from the methods and underlying philosophy. If it loses the swastikas and exchanges the brownshirts for Saville Row tailored suits, the threat is not necessarily any less.
Hell, the US Army published guides on Soviet military organization, and the OPFOR has been called one of the best Soviet(-style) units in the world IIRC.
Hm. The US props up their economy -- Israel has, generally, been the number one recipient of US foreign aid (Egypt is number two), and in exchange, gets --
a) An Israeli government that still goes against US policy. If memory serves, the US has criticized --
- The building of more settlements in the occupied regions. - Blatantly obvious life-threatening human-rights violations like the use of Palestinian civvies as human shields. - The building of a wall along the Green Line. - Punishing the relatives of militants through destruction of their home and moving them from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. - Until recently, any marginalization of Yasser Arafat, who was thought to be vital to the peace process.
I'm not sure if the US has criticized the Israeli policy of extrajudicial executions, e.g. targetting militants with helicopter gunships, or whether it's commented on the various blockades.
b) The open, violent hatred of just about everyone else in the region; plus vast amounts of criticism from Europe and just about everyone else, for being publically so pro-Israeli. This has hurt diplomatically, economically (e.g. the oil embargo), and otherwise (inviting such acts as the WTC bombing, the 9/11 attack, the Marine Barracks attacks, the Embassy bombings)... not surprising when anti-Jewish propaganda declares that the US is, after all, a puppet state run by a Zionist conspiracy.
If the US were fervently isolationist, at least with regards to the Middle East, it would probably get less grief. And if the US were isolationist and made fewer (if any?) enemies there, I doubt that the US would even/need/ a foothold beyond the Turks allowing the base at Incelrik.
So, while there may be a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that the US is supporting a nominally friendly democratic republic, possibly averting a second Holocaust, and opposes factions whose tactics we find repulsive, I'm not sure that there's much practical gain. One might say that there's practical gain for the politicians, because Americans are generally pro-Israel, but then one has to explain why the voters would be more favorable towards Israeli... and it might be even harder to point towards any practical gain for individual voters.
And when was the last time the French were politically significant with regards to events outside their own borders -- 1918?
The countries that would be harrassed by the Court would probably be the US (for peacekeeping ops), the UK (ditto), and Russia (for Chechnya). The former two/might/ feel obligated to hand over suspects; the latter, I doubt it. Any "rogue nations" would have to be defeated first (possibly by internal elements ala the union of Serbia and Montenegro) before they'd hand over suspects -- I don't think Mugabe's going to look at an ICC warrant and surrender. And once force comes into play, you might as well just follow Belgium's bizarre "long arm" example (Belgium already, apparently, considers itself to have the right to prosecute anybody in the world for crimes committed against anybody else in the world, including non-Belgians).
That's not surprising, considering that Russian governments have historically never been either democratic, or moralist, usually instead veering towards kleptocrat dictatorships.
Judging from Putin's attitude towards independent Russian media and his willingness to pardon his predecessor, those tendencies haven't been entirely banished. So I'd be surprised if they trusted/any/ government...
In case you've been under a rock for the last decade, even the UK has eased up on the IRA -- because they and their Sinn Fein partners have been going towards disarmament in favor of political participation.
That's still private funding, and not a matter of Government policy (in contrast to, say, how the Saudi government funds the madrassas in Pakistan to go teach people that the Koran contains all the knowledge they'll need to know, and by the way, wouldn't they like to sign up for some training...).
Oh, and the "Real IRA" is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, so any US citizen helping them in any material fashion, just about, risks arrest and jail time. The IRA isn't designated itself anymore, probably because they're participating in the peace process, and probably the other remaining belligerents (the Ulster Volunteer Force (?), the Provisional IRA, other groups) get less funding from the US people.
Espionage is always illegal according to the victim, and often the host country (which may be different). However,
a) Agents may have diplomatic immunity, so at most they get declared persona non grata for "activities incompatible with their status", and expelled, usually leading to a tit-for-tat expulsion.
b) Non-immune agents, or "illegals", do run the risk of arrest -- if there is sufficient evidence to arrest them, that is; if such evidence is admissible in court; and there are no other factors that count against arrest (for instance, if an arrest would reveal a source, or a weakness in somebody's codes...).
Ex-agents have been arrested occasionally. Robert Hanson (sp?), for instance, had not worked for the Russians for some years before the FBI agents "reactivated" him in a sting.
As for military operations and terrorism, it's more complicated than "does the US like it or not". I don't recall any whining by any US official that, for instance, soldiers killed by Taliban/al-Qaeda in combat were killed by terrorism -- by terrorists perhaps, but that act of killing on the battlefield was itself not terrorism. Also, much that isn't clearly harmful to the US still gets labeled as terrorism -- from a completely amoral point of view, for instance, it might be preferable to stand aside and let the Islamists wipe out the Israelis if they'll leave us alone other than selling cheap oil, but the US doesn't mince words regarding them... If all the US cared about was money, as some critics charge, that would be exactly what we'd do -- just like certain nations openly care more about cheap Iraqi oil than getting rid of a threat to the whole Middle East. It's a moral issue.
Oh, and the Geneva conventions do allow operations even if they are guaranteed to cause incidental loss of civilian life, so long as it is not "excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" and the primary target is otherwise legal...
Re:What about binary-only packages
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you're using such software and it's dynamically linked, you could do the following: (as long as it's not SUID/SGID...)
1. ldd to determine what shared libraries are used -- at least, the ones that were specified at link time. Run-time linking, you'd need to determine by testing and perhaps strace().
2. Put copies of compatible versions of these libraries in a directory set up for this purpose.
3. Write a script that sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH to that directory, runs the program, and unsets it afterwards. Don't put this directory in/etc/ld.so.conf unless there aren't going to be newer versions of these libraries that recompiled programs will use...
Then the binary should look in LD_LIBRARY_PATH first for the libraries.
If it's SUID/SGID... you'd probably need to do something more, like imprisoning the program in a chroot() jail with its own set of libraries, because ld.so will ignore the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable in that case.
In most domains, science does not/prove/; absolute proof is mostly left to mathematicians in their abstract domain -- and it's perfectly reasonable for even a consistent, correct system of well-defined axioms to have clearly-defined logical propositions whose correctness CANNOT be determined.
It can/disprove/ by showing evidence inconsistent with a hypothesis. It can/support/ a hypothesis by finding a large body of confirmatory evidence in the absence of exceptions, and preferably with a plausible explanatory mechanism. Unlike many other dogmas, such as the Aristotelian school, science prefers to work with testable hypotheses and to seek evidence to shed light on the truth.
Something like the FOXP2 gene, for instance, lends itself to some testing; one should eventually be able to determine both what protein it corresponds to, and whether or not it's unique to but ubiquitous among people. And if anybody is ever born with a defective copy of FOXP2 (which could be induced, if it weren't for the ethical considerations), that would be a data point. However, even if such a mutant
a) existed, b) were found (e.g. genetic screening after noticing inability of person to comprehend language) c) did indeed have a defective copy,
Wireless? Mmmm. Then have the sensors / processors / transmitter be built into shades resembling the glasses in "They Live"...
Re:Great, there goes more of our freedom
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Apathy.
If individual citizens paid more attention to politics, voted more based on those, contacted their representatives with informed well-written arguments, and contributed more to campaigns, they'd get more attention paid to them.
Votes and attention are worth more than dollars to a politician since you can't outright buy a seat. However, running/is/ expensive, so if the proles don't care (withholding many possible votes, while many others fall simply due to inherited party affiliations...) that much but businesses and other groups care -- who do you think will be listened to?
1- You should be marked flamebait (or, "idiot", were that designation allowed) for calling troops brainwashed or gun-happy. Unlike, say, assorted African rebel movements which don't mind their troops being stoned out of their minds, most industrialized nations prefer their soldiers be smart enough to have some individual initiative rather than automatons, since they're the ones who have to make the tactical decisions. And trigger-happy folks wouldn't last long on PK missions where they'd be prone to mistake any locals for hostiles...
2- And yes, the US citizenry could. Read up on the Second Amendment, and also on urban warfare -- note that the US military hasn't been much for invading/cities/ full of hostiles recently; it prefers setting up outside them, using bombers and stand-off weapons, using locals to do the grunt work... this isn't just a whim. Capturing cities is hard.
It's delegation of authority, and it's been tested before. Congress can pass laws saying that an agency can (or must) devise regulations regarding something, while leaving the details to the agency. Those laws define the power that an agency has. No relevant law? Then, no power...
...or, they refuse to comply, and perhaps survive for a lil' while (if their current business model works).
Mind you, I'm not contributing much to their business model now (e.g. no cable, no VCR, no audio recordings, no branded fan-merchandise (e.g. "Star Wars" figurines, movie posters, concert t-shirts, et al), and I watch few movies in the theaters)... but I'll leave the choice of whether they want to offer cheap downloads up to them.
It's possible that it'll take a radical restructing of the entertainment economy. For instance, if it becomes non-feasible to sell movies in industrialized, high-bandwidth countries because they're immediately redistributed for free to a degree that viewers are satisfied with the bootlegs, then they're left with recouping costs in other countries -- the same way that US pharmaceutical companies count on recouping most of their research/marketing costs in the US, because we lack the price controls that many other nations have. Or, perhaps they have to increase revenue through persuading people to buy more or pricier associated tangibles, or get more product placement revenue ("Bond, James Bond. And this is my trusty Walther PPK, purchased from..."), or that sort of thing...
Everything... beyond actually crossing over and invading North Vietnam with ground forces, if my history sources are correct, since officially they were trying to prop up Diem's regime and defend it against VC uprisings/NVA incursions instead of conquering the area north of the 17N parallel. Politics...
Of course, the VC also did everything they could, including massacres of their own, and getting otherwise innocent (AFAIK) third-party countries involved as supply conduits and staging areas (nice tactic; the American left protested as an escalation any pursuit of VC outside South Vietnam) -- guerilla warfare is never pretty.
What if they can't afford to sell people what they want? Impasse, or business failure.
Airline passengers want more leg room, actual meals once again instead of mere pretzels for lunch, timely flights, shorter delays, more security, pilots that won't kick them off just because the're Arab or Israeli, cheaper fares, and an end to overbooking. The airlines are providing a lot less than this, and they're mostly, if not all, still hemorrhaging money -- and you can't blame it all on the unions; it's genuinely a lot to ask for.
Surely? I would think that it's impossible, because most of the factors involved are beyond the ken of the hardware. No personal computer is likely to be able to determine/why/ you're duplicating the material -- for instance, making an excerpt for purposes of criticism, versus making an excerpt for later combination with other excerpts for a complete version. It certainly can't tell whether or not you're browsing material for research or for recreation, unless you posit extremely advanced, ubiquitious AI that builds a complete, accurate, precise profile of everything that you do (and probably also has to have electrodes attached to your brain...).
And, what looks like "fair use" may turn into infringement later. Perhaps a person creates an MP3 or ogg or whatever from a CD he owns. How do you expect to (a) permit that, and (b) block him from distributing it (e.g. sending it over a network, removing the disk and giving it to other people, playing it into an audio device that's rigged to record the decoded signal...)? Even if you
a) confiscate all present audio/computer hardware (which isn't going to happen) b) mandate SSSCA-style hardware c) use incredibly strong encryption, personalized to the purchaser (e.g. biometrics) so, in theory, he's the only one that can use it
the SSSCA-style hardware still has to interface with non-SSSCA hardware (your ears, eyes, et al) which means that there has to be an extractable signal which can probably be duplicated.
Well, maybe not visually (mandate goggles that also check for iris scans so you can't stick a videocamera in front of it, say) but still, with hardware hacking, it could almost certainly be broken.
I suspect that there aren't that many choices.
1. Stop/all/ copying, including fair use, which requires the banning of anything that can duplicate or record... 2. Permit the hardware that allows copying, and realize that what is currently regarded as infringement will happen.
2a. Prosecute everybody, vigorously. This isn't very scalable, and many of the offenders aren't readily identifiable most likely. How many users did Napster have, again? How many of them infringed?
2b. Prosecute occasionally, and very sparsely. Most offenders will never be targeted, and this might not be much of a deterrent at all.
2c. Claim that it's illegal, moan about it, but never do anything much except possibly going after bozos who try to profit on it. No deterrent, but minimal money wasted on enforcement, either.
2d. Give up and make it legal -- at least, the non-profit ones. Bootleggers should probably still be targeted unless you want to see a recording studio say, "Hey, nice recording, but our pollsters say that your star is fading, and we feel we've paid you enough already. Bye, and don't forget to buy your CD when we publish it next month."
Re:If we are going to go ballistic...
on
Gone Fission
·
· Score: 1
The present "Native Americans" also probably weren't the only people to immigrate to the Americas early on, unless some were so badly mutated as to resemble Caucasians (see the controversy re: "Kennewick Man", for instance).
Then why are advocacy groups (especially the "fund research versus Foo Disease") so happy to have them as spokesmen?
Hell, incidents in movies have been used as arguments on Slashdot more than once, despite (aside from the occasional documentary, 'natch) being fiction... I wouldn't bet against the idea that people are swayed by entertainers and scriptwriters in place of thinking rationally about the issues.
Movies only make considerable amounts of money because people are willing to pay that price to see the movie (sometimes again, and again, and again, for whatever reason) in all forms (tickets, perhaps tax concessions to lure filming -- but filming probably generates tax income for the host, as well, plus publicity).
Schools can get more money the instant that taxpayers insist on forking over more taxes. That doesn't mean that it'll be spent wisely, of course, especially if you're in Pittsburgh where the public spat between the school board and the district administration so disgusted some donors that they backed out.
Why would Aschroft vigorously go after people who support him and want to harm people he views as enemies?
Politics? I don't see the DOJ suddenly extending an olive branch to Arthur Andersen, Enron or Worldcom for instance -- it'd be politically stupid to do so regardless of how chummy they were in the past, and they're not THAT deaf to the poll numbers.
FWIW, the FBI has apparently seen fit to search the home of one particular bioweapons expert multiple times, although he's not yet officially a suspect.
Just because you don't know all the inputs into the joint probability table doesn't mean that the table doesn't exist.
If I hide a polyhedral die behind my back, and don't tell you how many sides it has, there is still a probability table that dictates the likelihood of each possible outcome.
Slashdot Mirror
If an individual wants to restrict himself to Open Source, there's absolutely no problem with that, so long as it does not contradict any previously-signed-and-still-active agreements on his part not to do so. People are allowed to behave as ideologically as they choose, within pretty broad limits.
However, there is no excuse for a government doing so. Governments are supposed to be more responsible than that -- and to require a drastic litmus test that completely ignores more important issues, such as "is this the best tool for the job given our budget", is arrogance and foolishness.
In this case, the damage to others /is/ the point, just as that's the same logic behind the Usenet Death Penalty. Hurt others (in the case of a UDP, the customers of the ISP who send perfectly legitimate email) whom the authorities do care about so that they change their policies...
It's not particularly nice, or even remotely fair, but something like that might work. A large-scale boycott by major ISPs might do the trick.
Given that much of my spam is not only /from/ Korea, but /in/ Korean, a considerable amount likely comes from Korean businesses.
/all/ telcommunications from Korea until they develop some responsible marketing laws and enforce them (with, say, a 90-day notice in advance).
As for what to do? One heavy-handed bit of leverage would be to block
If they really wanted to fight resurgent Nazism, they should probably use Mein Kampf as a reference book on the philosophy so that people know what they're dealing with; after all, the threat comes not from the symbols or names, but from the methods and underlying philosophy. If it loses the swastikas and exchanges the brownshirts for Saville Row tailored suits, the threat is not necessarily any less.
Hell, the US Army published guides on Soviet military organization, and the OPFOR has been called one of the best Soviet(-style) units in the world IIRC.
Know yourself, but also know your enemy.
Hm. The US props up their economy -- Israel has, generally, been the number one recipient of US foreign aid (Egypt is number two), and in exchange, gets --
/need/ a foothold beyond the Turks allowing the base at Incelrik.
a) An Israeli government that still goes against US policy. If memory serves, the US has criticized --
- The building of more settlements in the occupied regions.
- Blatantly obvious life-threatening human-rights violations like the use of Palestinian civvies as human shields.
- The building of a wall along the Green Line.
- Punishing the relatives of militants through destruction of their home and moving them from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.
- Until recently, any marginalization of Yasser Arafat, who was thought to be vital to the peace process.
I'm not sure if the US has criticized the Israeli policy of extrajudicial executions, e.g. targetting militants with helicopter gunships, or whether it's commented on the various blockades.
b) The open, violent hatred of just about everyone else in the region; plus vast amounts of criticism from Europe and just about everyone else, for being publically so pro-Israeli. This has hurt diplomatically, economically (e.g. the oil embargo), and otherwise (inviting such acts as the WTC bombing, the 9/11 attack, the Marine Barracks attacks, the Embassy bombings)... not surprising when anti-Jewish propaganda declares that the US is, after all, a puppet state run by a Zionist conspiracy.
If the US were fervently isolationist, at least with regards to the Middle East, it would probably get less grief. And if the US were isolationist and made fewer (if any?) enemies there, I doubt that the US would even
So, while there may be a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that the US is supporting a nominally friendly democratic republic, possibly averting a second Holocaust, and opposes factions whose tactics we find repulsive, I'm not sure that there's much practical gain. One might say that there's practical gain for the politicians, because Americans are generally pro-Israel, but then one has to explain why the voters would be more favorable towards Israeli... and it might be even harder to point towards any practical gain for individual voters.
And when was the last time the French were politically significant with regards to events outside their own borders -- 1918?
/might/ feel obligated to hand over suspects; the latter, I doubt it. Any "rogue nations" would have to be defeated first (possibly by internal elements ala the union of Serbia and Montenegro) before they'd hand over suspects -- I don't think Mugabe's going to look at an ICC warrant and surrender. And once force comes into play, you might as well just follow Belgium's bizarre "long arm" example (Belgium already, apparently, considers itself to have the right to prosecute anybody in the world for crimes committed against anybody else in the world, including non-Belgians).
The countries that would be harrassed by the Court would probably be the US (for peacekeeping ops), the UK (ditto), and Russia (for Chechnya). The former two
That's not surprising, considering that Russian governments have historically never been either democratic, or moralist, usually instead veering towards kleptocrat dictatorships.
/any/ government...
Judging from Putin's attitude towards independent Russian media and his willingness to pardon his predecessor, those tendencies haven't been entirely banished. So I'd be surprised if they trusted
In case you've been under a rock for the last decade, even the UK has eased up on the IRA -- because they and their Sinn Fein partners have been going towards disarmament in favor of political participation.
That's still private funding, and not a matter of Government policy (in contrast to, say, how the Saudi government funds the madrassas in Pakistan to go teach people that the Koran contains all the knowledge they'll need to know, and by the way, wouldn't they like to sign up for some training...).
Oh, and the "Real IRA" is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, so any US citizen helping them in any material fashion, just about, risks arrest and jail time. The IRA isn't designated itself anymore, probably because they're participating in the peace process, and probably the other remaining belligerents (the Ulster Volunteer Force (?), the Provisional IRA, other groups) get less funding from the US people.
A few minor points:
Espionage is always illegal according to the victim, and often the host country (which may be different). However,
a) Agents may have diplomatic immunity, so at most they get declared persona non grata for "activities incompatible with their status", and expelled, usually leading to a tit-for-tat expulsion.
b) Non-immune agents, or "illegals", do run the risk of arrest -- if there is sufficient evidence to arrest them, that is; if such evidence is admissible in court; and there are no other factors that count against arrest (for instance, if an arrest would reveal a source, or a weakness in somebody's codes...).
Ex-agents have been arrested occasionally. Robert Hanson (sp?), for instance, had not worked for the Russians for some years before the FBI agents "reactivated" him in a sting.
As for military operations and terrorism, it's more complicated than "does the US like it or not". I don't recall any whining by any US official that, for instance, soldiers killed by Taliban/al-Qaeda in combat were killed by terrorism -- by terrorists perhaps, but that act of killing on the battlefield was itself not terrorism. Also, much that isn't clearly harmful to the US still gets labeled as terrorism -- from a completely amoral point of view, for instance, it might be preferable to stand aside and let the Islamists wipe out the Israelis if they'll leave us alone other than selling cheap oil, but the US doesn't mince words regarding them... If all the US cared about was money, as some critics charge, that would be exactly what we'd do -- just like certain nations openly care more about cheap Iraqi oil than getting rid of a threat to the whole Middle East. It's a moral issue.
Oh, and the Geneva conventions do allow operations even if they are guaranteed to cause incidental loss of civilian life, so long as it is not "excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" and the primary target is otherwise legal...
If you're using such software and it's dynamically linked, you could do the following: (as long as it's not SUID/SGID...)
/etc/ld.so.conf unless there aren't going to be newer versions of these libraries that recompiled programs will use...
1. ldd to determine what shared libraries are used -- at least, the ones that were specified at link time. Run-time linking, you'd need to determine by testing and perhaps strace().
2. Put copies of compatible versions of these libraries in a directory set up for this purpose.
3. Write a script that sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH to that directory, runs the program, and unsets it afterwards. Don't put this directory in
Then the binary should look in LD_LIBRARY_PATH first for the libraries.
If it's SUID/SGID... you'd probably need to do something more, like imprisoning the program in a chroot() jail with its own set of libraries, because ld.so will ignore the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable in that case.
In most domains, science does not /prove/; absolute proof is mostly left to mathematicians in their abstract domain -- and it's perfectly reasonable for even a consistent, correct system of well-defined axioms to have clearly-defined logical propositions whose correctness CANNOT be determined.
/disprove/ by showing evidence inconsistent with a hypothesis. It can /support/ a hypothesis by finding a large body of confirmatory evidence in the absence of exceptions, and preferably with a plausible explanatory mechanism. Unlike many other dogmas, such as the Aristotelian school, science prefers to work with testable hypotheses and to seek evidence to shed light on the truth.
It can
Something like the FOXP2 gene, for instance, lends itself to some testing; one should eventually be able to determine both what protein it corresponds to, and whether or not it's unique to but ubiquitous among people. And if anybody is ever born with a defective copy of FOXP2 (which could be induced, if it weren't for the ethical considerations), that would be a data point. However, even if such a mutant
a) existed,
b) were found (e.g. genetic screening after noticing inability of person to comprehend language)
c) did indeed have a defective copy,
it wouldn't be proof.
Wireless? Mmmm. Then have the sensors / processors / transmitter be built into shades resembling the glasses in "They Live"...
Apathy.
/is/ expensive, so if the proles don't care (withholding many possible votes, while many others fall simply due to inherited party affiliations...) that much but businesses and other groups care -- who do you think will be listened to?
If individual citizens paid more attention to politics, voted more based on those, contacted their representatives with informed well-written arguments, and contributed more to campaigns, they'd get more attention paid to them.
Votes and attention are worth more than dollars to a politician since you can't outright buy a seat. However, running
1- You should be marked flamebait (or, "idiot", were that designation allowed) for calling troops brainwashed or gun-happy. Unlike, say, assorted African rebel movements which don't mind their troops being stoned out of their minds, most industrialized nations prefer their soldiers be smart enough to have some individual initiative rather than automatons, since they're the ones who have to make the tactical decisions. And trigger-happy folks wouldn't last long on PK missions where they'd be prone to mistake any locals for hostiles...
/cities/ full of hostiles recently; it prefers setting up outside them, using bombers and stand-off weapons, using locals to do the grunt work... this isn't just a whim. Capturing cities is hard.
2- And yes, the US citizenry could. Read up on the Second Amendment, and also on urban warfare -- note that the US military hasn't been much for invading
It's delegation of authority, and it's been tested before. Congress can pass laws saying that an agency can (or must) devise regulations regarding something, while leaving the details to the agency. Those laws define the power that an agency has. No relevant law? Then, no power...
...or, they refuse to comply, and perhaps survive for a lil' while (if their current business model works).
Mind you, I'm not contributing much to their business model now (e.g. no cable, no VCR, no audio recordings, no branded fan-merchandise (e.g. "Star Wars" figurines, movie posters, concert t-shirts, et al), and I watch few movies in the theaters)... but I'll leave the choice of whether they want to offer cheap downloads up to them.
It's possible that it'll take a radical restructing of the entertainment economy. For instance, if it becomes non-feasible to sell movies in industrialized, high-bandwidth countries because they're immediately redistributed for free to a degree that viewers are satisfied with the bootlegs, then they're left with recouping costs in other countries -- the same way that US pharmaceutical companies count on recouping most of their research/marketing costs in the US, because we lack the price controls that many other nations have. Or, perhaps they have to increase revenue through persuading people to buy more or pricier associated tangibles, or get more product placement revenue ("Bond, James Bond. And this is my trusty Walther PPK, purchased from..."), or that sort of thing...
Everything... beyond actually crossing over and invading North Vietnam with ground forces, if my history sources are correct, since officially they were trying to prop up Diem's regime and defend it against VC uprisings/NVA incursions instead of conquering the area north of the 17N parallel. Politics...
Of course, the VC also did everything they could, including massacres of their own, and getting otherwise innocent (AFAIK) third-party countries involved as supply conduits and staging areas (nice tactic; the American left protested as an escalation any pursuit of VC outside South Vietnam) -- guerilla warfare is never pretty.
What if they can't afford to sell people what they want? Impasse, or business failure.
Airline passengers want more leg room, actual meals once again instead of mere pretzels for lunch, timely flights, shorter delays, more security, pilots that won't kick them off just because the're Arab or Israeli, cheaper fares, and an end to overbooking. The airlines are providing a lot less than this, and they're mostly, if not all, still hemorrhaging money -- and you can't blame it all on the unions; it's genuinely a lot to ask for.
Surely? I would think that it's impossible, because most of the factors involved are beyond the ken of the hardware. No personal computer is likely to be able to determine /why/ you're duplicating the material -- for instance, making an excerpt for purposes of criticism, versus making an excerpt for later combination with other excerpts for a complete version. It certainly can't tell whether or not you're browsing material for research or for recreation, unless you posit extremely advanced, ubiquitious AI that builds a complete, accurate, precise profile of everything that you do (and probably also has to have electrodes attached to your brain...).
/all/ copying, including fair use, which requires the banning of anything that can duplicate or record...
And, what looks like "fair use" may turn into infringement later. Perhaps a person creates an MP3 or ogg or whatever from a CD he owns. How do you expect to (a) permit that, and (b) block him from distributing it (e.g. sending it over a network, removing the disk and giving it to other people, playing it into an audio device that's rigged to record the decoded signal...)? Even if you
a) confiscate all present audio/computer hardware (which isn't going to happen)
b) mandate SSSCA-style hardware
c) use incredibly strong encryption, personalized to the purchaser (e.g. biometrics) so, in theory, he's the only one that can use it
the SSSCA-style hardware still has to interface with non-SSSCA hardware (your ears, eyes, et al) which means that there has to be an extractable signal which can probably be duplicated.
Well, maybe not visually (mandate goggles that also check for iris scans so you can't stick a videocamera in front of it, say) but still, with hardware hacking, it could almost certainly be broken.
I suspect that there aren't that many choices.
1. Stop
2. Permit the hardware that allows copying, and realize that what is currently regarded as infringement will happen.
2a. Prosecute everybody, vigorously. This isn't very scalable, and many of the offenders aren't readily identifiable most likely. How many users did Napster have, again? How many of them infringed?
2b. Prosecute occasionally, and very sparsely. Most offenders will never be targeted, and this might not be much of a deterrent at all.
2c. Claim that it's illegal, moan about it, but never do anything much except possibly going after bozos who try to profit on it. No deterrent, but minimal money wasted on enforcement, either.
2d. Give up and make it legal -- at least, the non-profit ones. Bootleggers should probably still be targeted unless you want to see a recording studio say, "Hey, nice recording, but our pollsters say that your star is fading, and we feel we've paid you enough already. Bye, and don't forget to buy your CD when we publish it next month."
The present "Native Americans" also probably weren't the only people to immigrate to the Americas early on, unless some were so badly mutated as to resemble Caucasians (see the controversy re: "Kennewick Man", for instance).
No one listens to them?
Then why are advocacy groups (especially the "fund research versus Foo Disease") so happy to have them as spokesmen?
Hell, incidents in movies have been used as arguments on Slashdot more than once, despite (aside from the occasional documentary, 'natch) being fiction... I wouldn't bet against the idea that people are swayed by entertainers and scriptwriters in place of thinking rationally about the issues.
Movies only make considerable amounts of money because people are willing to pay that price to see the movie (sometimes again, and again, and again, for whatever reason) in all forms (tickets, perhaps tax concessions to lure filming -- but filming probably generates tax income for the host, as well, plus publicity).
Schools can get more money the instant that taxpayers insist on forking over more taxes. That doesn't mean that it'll be spent wisely, of course, especially if you're in Pittsburgh where the public spat between the school board and the district administration so disgusted some donors that they backed out.
Why would Aschroft vigorously go after people who support him and want to harm people he views as enemies?
Politics? I don't see the DOJ suddenly extending an olive branch to Arthur Andersen, Enron or Worldcom for instance -- it'd be politically stupid to do so regardless of how chummy they were in the past, and they're not THAT deaf to the poll numbers.
FWIW, the FBI has apparently seen fit to search the home of one particular bioweapons expert multiple times, although he's not yet officially a suspect.
Just because you don't know all the inputs into the joint probability table doesn't mean that the table doesn't exist.
If I hide a polyhedral die behind my back, and don't tell you how many sides it has, there is still a probability table that dictates the likelihood of each possible outcome.