Excepting that in the case of the Federal courts in particular all judges are appointed by the executive branch and the chief executive can pick people who ARE biased if they so choose and almost always do pick people who see things their way. Of course, there are checks and balances built in to our constitution most importantly that the Senate has to approve them all which can weed out people unfit to be a judge for life.
Unfortunately today thanks to the near collapse of the Democratic party and the rise of the new right wing, Christian fundamentalist dominated Republican party both the executive and Senate are controlled by people with a similar and increasingly extremist bent.
Not to fear our system of government honed over 200 plus years has the filibuster in the Senate to serve as the last check on a majority party seizing control of the judiciary and the government in general. Unfortunately the filibuster exists only in Senate rules and is not enshrined in our constitution. In the past both parties saw it in their interest, and had the wisdom, to preserve the filibuster so if they become the minority party they would not be powerless.
Unfortunately the Republican's are going to throw that wisdom to the wind and very soon they are going to change the Senate rules, eliminate the filibuster, make the Democrats powerless and most probably create a constitutional crisis unlike any we've seen. If they succeed they can appoint any extremist judge they can hold a party line vote on and given a few years, they can stack the federal courts, including the Supreme court with people who may be very biased and not the least bit independent and yes that could eventually lead to a police state. You may have heard of this option, its called the "nuclear option" and when it happens we will basically be living in a one party state as long as the Republicans keep winning elections legitimately or by hook and crook, or decide to rewrite our nations laws to enshrine their one party state as was done in the 1930's in Germany. A political party there seized power largely through democratic means.
I'm willing to bet that unless you are willing to work in the defense industry designing hardware is not going to be a great career in the U.S. Designing CPU's and GPU's might last in the U.S. somewhat longer since they are still somewhat entrenched in the U.S. but designing just about everything else electronic has already moved to Asia, Taiwan in particular and now China, and is unlikely to return.
God only knows how much software development will survive in the U.S. There will probably be some bastions like Google, Microsoft and Adobe in the U.S. and there will be lots of grinding out in house custom stuff for big corporations. The latter pays bills but otherwise isn't exactly satisfying. Places like Microsoft, Cisco and SUN are already off shoring a lot of work to China and India.
Unfortunately there are a lot of factors working against the U.S. staying a leader in software development, cost of living, healthcare and labor is to high compared to India, China and Eastern Europe, the education system in the U.S. is generally bad, Americans are not for the most part disciplined or hungry any more, they've had it to easy to long like most affluent empires headed for decline. The U.S. has maintained a lot of its vitality by importing talent from around the world but since 9/11 that talent is increasingly not coming to the U.S. or being turned away by an out of control visa bureaucracy(though if you are an indigent worker and want to swim the Rio Grande the border is wide open.
I wager a lot of bright, well educated people from around the world probably don't want to move to a country dominated by right wingers, intolerants and Christian fundamentalists with a blood thirsty penchant for wars. There also used to be no economic opportunity in places like India and China so the brightest flocked to the U.S. where the money way. But most smart people in those places know there is more economic opportunity in China and India than the U.S. these days. A lot of China expats have been flocking home to China to cash on the gold rush there as long as they can stand the government.
As a footnote I would add a personal opinion, software development is probably better than working in a factory, and I love doing it for fun, but fact is unless you are working on a good team on software you love and you have a stake in its success its actually not that great a career, especially now that the get rich quick for doing nothing opportunities are drying up. There is a real tendency to 80 hour a week death marches for which you are getting paid for 40, insane schedules, slogging through bug queues, and watching insane marketing and management types do insane things. And of course there is the top rank of executives who loot all the profits for the multimillion dollar compensation packages and lay people off at the drop of a hat, often to compensate for their grievous management mistakes.
So in summary if you want to work in the U.S. business administration is hands down the best career choice if you have what it takes to climb your way to the top, so hone your golf game and barroom and B.S. skills and climb, climb, climb. Might be a good idea to join the Young Republicans, the right church, the best frat and if you have some spare cash start donating to Republican candidates. They politicians that control a huge percentage of the U.S. economy really do look at that FEC database of campaign contributions and reward those who give them money (reference all the cell phone people recently bounced from a communication panel because they bet on the wrong horse).
If you have what it takes to cross the threshold in to upper management you will do very well whether you have a clue or not. If you are bright and have a better idea like the founders of Google you can get rich to but it is way harder than just B.S.ing your way in to the ranks of the executive elite.
The thing that is always lost in discussion of educations, is the first most important variable. Whether education succeeds or fails depends for the most part on the desire of students to learn. Good teachers or good computerized courses and software can promote the desire to learn, and can dramatically enhance the learning process, but in the absence of desire these things aren't likely to make it happen. The key reason American education seems to be failing is most American's have a low desire to learn. Most High School students place way more value on athletics, activites and social strata than they do on the education component.
If students don't see the value in education and don't want to learn next to nothing is going to help.
One motivator for learning is hunger. If students see education as a route to success, earning a living and putting food on the table chances are the will be motivated.
Another motivator might be if you are part of a successful, educated family your family may instill in you the value of it (i.e. you live like you do because your ancestors valued education, skills and hard work).
If you couch education as it is to most Americans:
A. We are rich, we will continue to be rich whether we work hard or not
B. We are poor and we are going to stay poor no matter what we do
education comes across as a waste of time and it fails.
Dude, not only are you losing it you have a potty mouth.
What exactly is it about stringing together four letter words that makes you think that is a good way to make a coherent point. Not sure why Howard Stern gets the grief he does when trash writing like yours is all over the Internet for kids to read.
The problem with voting Libertarian is, if you were to actually implement it is it would let corporations run amuck too. Of course maybe it would be better than the status quo where they are buying the government wholesale and using it to loot money out of the pockets of tax payers.
One thing we do actually need and want from government is to put checks on the monopolists, the stock swindlers, etc, though the government we have is really bad at checking them.
"Not only that, but we have whackos who continue to think that giving up our right to bear arms is a good idea. What are we supposed to overthrow anyone with? Rocks and sharp sticks?"
Chances are slim to none you are going to overthrow the U.S. government using guns. In fact its seldom a good way to effect change any place. You are more likely to end up with one group of armed thugs toppling the existing group of armed thugs, and ruling as armed thugs.
You start shooting at people you are going to be instantly be branded as terrorists, criminals and wackos by the state, the media and most people and they will just hunt you down.
When governments are toppled by the will of the people and with minimal violence hold a moral high ground that strengthens their support and power after the peaceful revolution. In fact you really want the state to use violence to put down strikes and peaceful protests. When they do they almost always lose all their popular support and hasten their fall.
Get some books on Ghandi or Martin Luther King. Nonviolent strategies are way more likely to work, the problem is you have to have enough people who want change, preferably a majority. If you have a enough people strikes, peaceful protest and attacking the status quo at the ballot box will work better than killing people. Problem is most Americans like the status quo. Most Americans are fat, dumb and happy. It really isn't likely you will see real unrest for another 10-20 years. By then America's wealth will have been largely erased by trillion dollar annual trade deficits and budget deficits, there will be no jobs, the dollar will have collapsed and been abandoned as the global reserve currency in favor of the Euro, gasoline will be prohibitively expensive in part due to the dollars collapse and the OPEC moving to the Euro.
When America has completed its transition to a real 3rd world country, with 5% being filthy rich and 95% of its people in grinding poverty, then you will have the critical mass to topple the status quo. When Americans can't afford to drive their cars you will have their attention.
Unfortunately it would be better if Americans were a thinking people and toppled a government(both parties), that is currently driving them down a road to the ruin, largely at the direction of a corporate plutocracy whose only allegiance is to wealth and power and will sell America down a river in a heart beat, if thats what it takes stay rich and get richer.
The one flash point you might see in the near term is the Republican's may attempt to seize complete control of the government by exercising the "nuclear option" in the senate and changing the closure rule so a simple majority can end a filibuster. At that point the Democrats will be in powerless in the Senate as they already are in the House. The Republicans will have effectively seized power and we are in a defacto one party state assuming they can hold their majority in 2006 and 2008. An enlightened population would be given pause by such a power grab, you would hope Americans would react, sadly I doubt they will.
"This sounds exacly like the kind of thing slashdotters should be doing - go out and find a candidate you like"
I think you answered your own question. There are no candidates to like, who have even a remote chance of getting elected. Ralph Nader is the closest I've seen lately, he has no chance. John McCain might work or might be a complete disaster, but he wont abandon the Republican party and they will never nominate him, he is not rabid right wing enough.
Thats why Democrats, liberals, progressive are getting their asses kicked. They can't stand their own candidates.
Another problem with the left, in the U.S. at least, is they are prone to think for themselves and are all over the map on issues and candidates. The right tends to think what FOX News and talk radio, and their churches tell them to think. They also have a very standard set of wedge issues that causes them to vote as a unified block, gays, guns and abortion. The left is mostly pro choice but not completely, some on the left support gays rights, others are as homophobic as the right. The left is all over the map on guns.
Me, I'm sick of Roland, in partnership with Slashdot editor's, apparently turning front page articles in to paid ads to drive traffic to Roland's web site. If he finds interesting articles, why doesn't he just submit them and face the same odds of them making the front page as the rest of us, slim, and not put in the links to the plagiarism on his web site to drive traffic to his site.
If he writes original work that is interesting and submits it great, put it on the front page. But he isn't, he is ripping off someone else's work.
If Slashdot want to put his "work" in the advertising section that would be A-OK too. Putting a plagiarist, seeking ad revenue, on the front page posing as news is NOT OK.
This is an interesting form of revisionism, but it does really correspond to facts. The Soviet Union was largely dismantled by its own government, a fellow named Gorbachev.
Its open to debate whether it was his intent with glasnost(openness) and perestroika(restructuring) to completely dismantle communist rule though that it was an inevitable result of relaxing the Soviet Union's grip on Eastern Europe and relaxing repression withint the U.S.S.R. As I recall his reforms started snowballing, the hard liners attempted a coup but it was to late, and in the power vacuum created by the coup Yeltsin and a popular uprising finished removing the Communists.
Americans in particular are fond of the illusion that they and Reagan should take all the credit. Only thing Reagan had to do with it was in influencing Gorbachev and I doubt he influenced him much. Gorbachev was a very smart money, and Reagan was a clueless, Alzheimer afflicted actor, whose main talent was reading from a teleprompter.
In case you missed it when I posted it on Roland's scam last Sunday, here is a writeup someone did on how Roland is trying to use Slashdot to make a living, and is apparently being aided in his efforts, for one reason or another by Slashdot's editors.
"That fix is to get rid of it alltogether and make"
Wont get any argument from me, I'd prefer that too but it ain't gonna happen. Both parties are addicted to all the extra money this regressive payroll tax is bringing in for them to steal, redirect and/or squander. If it were gone tomorrow the budget deficit would be so astronomical they couldn't find any buy the debt, a run on the dollar would ensue.
Noone wants to go back to a time when large numbers of old people,who hadn't been responsible, were destitute. There is a pretty steep cost there too.
And the Republican's now LOVE the idea of Social Security as long as they can do private accounts and forcibly extract money out of people's paychecks and force them to hand it over to their rich banker friends. They are so desperate to do it now because they want to take that big Social Security surplus we have now and instead of squandering on government spending instead put it in to the hands of their rich banker friends and the stock market, which will lead to a windfall profit for all the people who own the stock before the big influx of new capital.
I'm just pointing out it would be trivial to save and retain the current system, and be fairer to worked if they just start taxing at just what is needed to support the program. If it was pay as you go it would be dramatically fairer to all involved, and it would never go bankrupt. Again the only problem is:
A. The slush fund Congress and the President are squandering would be gone B. The Republican's wouldn't have a "crisis" to solve and they wouldn't be able to redirect all the money to their rich banker friends and the stock market which is their one and only true goal.
"I can do MUCH better than social security, which returns at a rate less than inflation."
Uh, you contradict yourself. There is NO investment of Social Security money and there is NO return on the investment. The rate of return on what you put in is completely arbitrary because the government is stealing everything that isn't being paid out. By the time I retire chances are high Social Security and the U.S. government will be bankrupt so all of the money I've put in will be gone. Alternately they will jack taxes up a few more times before I get there and slash benefits so chances are I will be losing money not getting a %1 return on it.
"Another couple of trivially incorrect points you make are that a) taxes are somehow equivalent to stealing and b) politicians are "stealing" our money..."
Uh, setting a payroll tax rate that is grossly in excess of what is needed to support the entitlement, and then using the money for programs that have nothing to do with the entitlement is stealing. Its a blatantly regressive tax scheme because it hits the poor and middle income disproportionately hard. Politicians do steal our money. They tax us in to the ground and then frequently redirect the money to their big campaign contributors in pork.
Now if the surplus money were there in 2018 when the surplus turns in to a deficit it wouldn't be stealing. But I assure all the surplus is already gone and by then they will either jack up payroll taxes, slash benefits, or try to borrow there way out of it and chances are by 2018 U.S. credit will be so bad they wont be able to borrow a plug nickel.
"do you realize that telling other people that they're "wrong" for their choice in leaders is part of that?"
Chill dude, I was just curious why the election turned out the way it did and being personally disappointed with how the U.S. election turned out I was hoping the rest of the world would at least get rid of all the poodle's backing the wacky people who've seized power in the U.S. Just wishin' not like I actually seek to influence the outcome.
You want to see "Arrogant American" lecturing people on elections, someone who actually has the power to influence them, check the Donald Rumsfeld speech today when he bashed Spain for throwing out the right wing, pro Bush, government.
Or check how the U.S. pumped $50 million dollars in to the Ukraine with the express intent of influencing the outcome of their election. If some country overtly pumped that much money in to the U.S. to influence an election the targeted party would go ballistic. U.S. does it, its just business as usual, especially for the National Endowment for "Democracy".
In fact the U.S. government, especially the right wing U.S. governments like we have now have actually influenced or outright rigged countless elections over the last half century. Me wishing there had been a different outcome in Australia kind of pales by comparison.
Hey I think America was totally crazy for their choice of leaders too. I was just wondering if some Aussie could explain what the issues were that lead to Howard winning. I'll go first and set an example, in the U.S. the Republican's won due to ruthless exploitation of a wedge issue, gay marriage, and terrorizing everyone over national security.
"Seems it be much smarter for EDS to adopt Linux, thereby being able to legally "steal" all the "IP" that their feared competitor IBM is producing."
Kind of hard to build a consulting business on "stealing" Linux IP. EDS can use IBM's open source stuff no problem, but a potential customer is going to be faced with the choice of:
- Hire IBM because they are developing Linux stuff so they obviously have the expertise
- Hire EDS who is probably learning as they go because Linux isn't exactly their bag, and are now bad mouthing it to boot.
IBM isn't stupid. They know ownership of the IP in the Linux world doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is if your potential clients view you as savvy and expert and IBM obviously conveys that on Linux, especially with the never ending barrage of great Linux stuff they post on their developer site and the non stop advertising.
If you are trying to land a consulting gig it also helps if the potential customer sees you as getting Linux and are not trying to "own" things or do proprietary lockins.
"They way it is now, they just look incompetent."
Totally right. IBM's marketing strategy is to be pro Linux, and not overtly anti Microsoft or anti anything else. Everyone knows they have no love for Microsoft but if a customer wants Windows IBM consulting will do it in a heartbeat. They'd probably even do Solaris if the customer required it, though probably more reluctantly (the old proprietary UNIX religious wars run deeper than the Linux versus Windows religious war).
EDS on the other hand, at least in this case, is being anti something and that is a really stupid marketing approach for someone selling services. You need to be pro something versus anti something. But its hard for EDS to create much excitement being pro Windows desktop and Solaris servers. Its an ancient strategy and long in the tooth, especially since many people think SUN is half dead. IBM looks leading edge and trendy being pro Linux. If EDS tries to be pro Linux they just look like a "me too" compared to IBM. IBM really has them foxed.
Not sure where CSC falls in this. I imagine they will just whore their services based on the customer's desires and aren't religious about it.
What exactly is wrong with Australia, I really am curious. I was really hoping you would throw out Howard and the Liberals in the 2004 elections for backing the war in Iraq and being Bush and Blair's poodle. Was hoping this would knock one more leg out from under the coalition of the "willing" (sic). Is Australia still so infatuated with Britain that you have to emulate them and continue to support a so called "Liberal" party that is apparently really right wing and follow in Blair's footsteps by electing a prime minister(Howard) who is a Blair emulator and Bush poodle.
I mean I totally understand why the U.S. votes for Bush, this country is full of clueless right wingers, religious zealots and FOX news pretty much tells them what to think. I was hoping the rest of the world still had a clue though. I wait with bated breath to see if Britain throws Blair out over Iraq and his poodledom.
Australia doesn't get much coverage in the U.S., well no country gets any coverage in the U.S. except the U.S. and Israel, last summer I'd heard the Australian people were unhappy over Iraq and Howard was going to lose and then bam, he wins again. What happened?
Agility Alliance is mostly an attempt by EDS in particular to form a consortium to counter IBM and its love affair with Linux. They offer Solaris Server's(SUN), Windows Desktops(Microsoft), and Cisco just wants to sell their Chinese made routers to anyone and will probably kiss up to IBM five minutes after walking out of the Agility Alliance press conference.
EDS is just trying to be anti IBM, and since IBM is pro Linux that means their competitive analysis team unwisely told them to be rabidly anti Linux whether it made any sense or not. Obviously it didn't make much sense. Big consulting companies might form preferences, and offer recommendations, but they are supposed to pick the best solution for job and be willing to be open minded enough to offer the technology the customer wants.
To put it another way by bashing Linux to this extent EDS has:
A. Shown to their potential customers they have a religious bias, which will preclude them from being a good consultant.
B. Shot themselves in the foot for any contract competition where Linux is prefered by the customer.
I think you are wrong. Not sure how easy it easy or expensive the gear is but I'm pretty sure the U.S. Navy taps undersea fiber all the time, using submarines. Doing it on land must be substantially easier.
I've wondered how much dark fiber there is laying around the world and if anybody would notice if you started using it. I'm pretty sure fiber infrastructure was way overbuilt thanks to everyone listening to Bernard Ebber's fantasy predictions for global demand for bandwidth.
I imagine once you started using dark fiber on any scale eventually the owner would notice. Alternately I'm wondering if you can tap fiber cables and run a rogue signal on it without the owner noticing it.
I wonder if ISP's working under the new trusted computing mandate would let you run a data stream point to point on their networks, using hosts that at least appear trusted but would basicly being working as routers between Alternet and Corpranet, ideally encrypting everything in the Alternet stream to keep the NSA and friends from spying on it while its in Corpranet.
Fiber through back yards would be a nice idea for high bandwidth in small areas but you would inevitably have people that wouldn't let you run it through your yard and you would have a huge hurdle to clear everytime you had to cross a street or other significant expanses you don't own.
Wireless is obviously better for the community network though you would be completely at the mercy of the FCC or your country's equivalent regulator. Would also be very vulnerable to being spyed on by Corpranet unless its strongly encrypted. As soon as corprate controlled government figured out Alternet was being used to... gasp... share music they probably would seek to snuff out all wireless networks unless they were certified and trusted.
Just to give equal time to religious fanatics on both sides I imagine you should be more worried about fundementalist Christians laying there hands on the technology, especialy those in sects with a strong penchant for dwelling on the Book of Revelation and the Rapture.
You see they are already sitting around waiting not so patiently for the end of the world and are convinced that God will sweep all the good Christians, them, up to heaven when the end is near and all the heathens will be left to burn in the hell or the black hole, which ever one has the strongest pull.
You probably need to study the NRA and how they've managed to keep guns mostly unregulated in the U.S.
If you want to play by the establishment rules I imagine you need to form a national association, get a couple million dues paying members, hire lobbyists, get everyone in the association registered to vote and make it clear that the membership is strongly predisposed to vote for politicians who vote against trusted computing, against siezing control of our computers, and handing over control of all computers to Microsoft or other corprate entities like them.
Of course your membership needs to be like the NRA and place this issue over all others when you vote, over abortion, over gun control, over gay marriage. It really sucks to vote based on one issues but if a presidential candidate knows they will lose 2-3 million votes if they back trusted computing they will think twice before they support it.
Me I'm left wondering how exactly China plays in to trusted computing. I can see them totally wanting something like it because they already want to completely control Internet and computer use by their population. However I really doubt they are going to ceede control over their computing infrastructure to Microsoft, the U.S. or anyone but themselves. How exactly to you even have a global Internet if China implements its own sphere of trusted computing, the U.S. another almost certainly dominated by Microsoft, and maybe the E.U. another.
As soon as governments outside the U.S. realize trusted computing is placing enormous new power in the hands of Microsoft and the U.S. government I'd be inclined to think they will all opt out. You would almost think you would have to have region codes for trusted computing and then how do you communicate across the region boundries.
Dude, if you are forming your world view based on the alternate reality that is South Park you are the one with issues here:)
South Park shreds everyone equally, its only fair they give liberal college grads and hippies equal time. Its comedy, satire, parody....laugh.
Not sure I said they are out to "get us". The corporate part of the combine are out to milk us for all the profit they can squeeze out of us. The government part is out to exert the maximum control over us that they can get away with(i.e. as much as we let them), and most of them are out to steer pork to their rich friends and corporate benefactors. When they retire from politics most of them rake in fat paybacks from the companies and people they bestowed the pork upon.
Just go back and read the history of the Medicare "reform" bill, the one with the supposed drug benefit for seniors. It was written by drug, healthcare, and insurance companies for their benefit, not for the benefit of seniors or tax payers. They basically bought the Medicare adminstrator, he was job shopping with these very companies while the bill was being negotiated, with White House permission though it was a blatant conflict of interest. He intentionally concealed the cost of the bill, threatened his subordinates who wanted to give the real number to Congress, and outright lied when he told everyone it would be $400 million which was exactly the highest figure that would pass Congress. As soon as it passed the Bush adminsitration admitted it would really be at least $500 billion. A month or two ago it was jacked up to $720 billion. There is in fact no limit on how much it will cost because the drug companies told Congress to add a clause forbidding Medicare from negotiating fair prices for the drugs it buys as part of the drug benefit. The drug companies can charge as much as they feel like and will. Don't be surprised when it really kicks in the Republican's will declare Medicare in a fiscal crisis and either jack up our payroll taxes or cut benefits.
If you think corporations don't control the American government at this point you are either naive, clueless or not paying attention.
I doubt the corprate/government combine is going to take the net to trusted computing suddenly, it will probably happen slowly and gradually so no one freaks. But you just have to look at Slashdot to see that governments/corporations are in full scale war against bittorrent and p2p, the NSA is getting geered up to spy on everyone, not just those outside America.
Seems to me its a good idea to take advantage of all the goodness that is wireless and mesh and at least start building community networks that retain some freedom. Fact is the Internet and your beloved giant telecom company ISP's and government are going to do no nothing but charge more, outlaw more and allow less and less as time goes by.
No arguement that they all do it, the Bush administration is just doing it vastly worse than any previous administration and is th emost cynical because they are doing it and then turning around and then saying the system is in crisis precisely because they are stealing our money. They also came in with budget surpluses and turned them in to a flood of red ink as far as the eye can see. Some of the surplus was due to the bubble but most of the red ink is entirely due to tax cuts for the rich and out of control spending on defense, intelligence and homeland security.
The Bushites are using regressive payrolls taxes, and stealing our wages, to subsidize tax cuts for the rich. Its the absolute worst form of class warfare by the rich on the poor and middle class.
Social Security is enormously easy to fix, but neither party wants to fix it because they both want to tax working people to pay for pork they dole out to their friends and campaign contributors.
Here is the trivial fix, change the tax rate every year so that income approximately matches benefits paid out, so it is truly a pay as you go system. The surplus is then gone so politicians can't squander it. You also eliminate the situation we've been in for the last 20 years where workers are being grossly overtaxed and politicians are stealing our money. Sure the taxes are going to be steep during the baby boomer retirement years and maybe you will need to raise the retirement age to compensate for people living way longer than they probably should, but barring medical miracles they will eventually die and social security taxes will decline somewhat.
"Don't want to interoperate with the rest of the secure users out there? Don't use hardware that is tied to THE secure OS."
If trusted computing reaches the point you can't get on the Internet unless you are running it, and at that point trusted computing means your completely relinquish control of your computer and your privacy, then maybe geeks should take this opportunity to start a network of their own free of corprate and government control. Think Pirate Radio except for the internet, the Pirate's Web, or Alternet.
At least at a local level you should be able to create a wirless mesh network free of the shackles the government and corporations are inevitably going to try to put on the Internet in the name of "security", "safety" and to protect their monopolies on music and films.
Its going to be a little harder to do the long haul part of the network, since you are going to have to do a lot of hops and latency will be terrible. Thankfully as disk drives and hardware get cheaper people can make liberal use of mirrors to that there are local copies of valuable stuff like Wikipedia and open source archives.
You will also probably be confined to latency sensitive online games only in your local community.
All in all I'm not sure it would be such a bad thing because:
- It would foster a greater sense of local community involvement, which is sorely lacking on the Internet.
- It would compel geeks to be resourceful and roll up their sleeves instead of just open up their wallet and dole out cash to the giant, abusive telecommunications giant every month.
- I wager the Internet is going to be in a pretty steady decline in usefulness as governments and corporations seek to exert ever more control over it and try to extract subscriptions and fees for anything interesting, or saturate you with advertising. Its also a near inevitability that they will seek to wipe out bit torrent, all p2p or anything that is used by pirates, even when they also have legitimate uses.
- People might start appreciating the value of the freedom things like open source give you once corporation controlled governments start taking them away. You usually don't value something until you lose it. Maybe it will be just the thing to ignite a sustainable and powerful political movement to regain control of our governments. As it is everyone is to fat, dumb and happy to do anything about it so corporation controlled governments are eviscerating out civil rights and no one give a damn as long as they have their porn, video games and reality TV.
All in all I favor college radio, which is the closes thing to pirate radio you can usually find. They play interesting, eclectic mixes of often good music because they are putting out content they like, not content that ClearChannel and the RIAA want to shove down peoples throats and make them like simply by depriving them of anything better.
Not sure that the Internet might not be rejuvenated if it goes back to its BBS, Modem roots. I wonder if spam, spyware, script kiddies and the like will be lesser or greater on the Pirate's net versus the "trusted" computing Internet. I wager the free lancers would be worse on the Pirate's net but the corporate controlled spam, spying, privacy invasion and intrusion will be worse on the "trusted" internet.
I wager we can pull off an Alternet as long as unregulated wireless is tolerated by the government and continues to improve. If once the Alternet starts rolling and the government, corporations seek to outlaw unregulated wireless and wipe it out, then it gets to be more interested. Could we run a usable and interesting mesh network in the face of a hostile, corporate controlled police state trying to wipe it out.
Should put Cisco in an interesting position, since John Chambers declared they are going to be a Chinese company.
The Chinese are pretty big on Linux because they don't like to pay royalties or licenses to non Chinese corporations so they don't much want Microsoft controlling their IT infrastructure in the long run.
Unless you live in China Cisco is very deserving of a boycott because they are selling themselves and the rest of the world down the river by moving all of their capital and IP to China. Chambers also sounds especially stupid in his willingness to do whatever the Chinese tell him to do. You have to wonder exactly at what point America's business leaders transitioned from being some of the best and most ruthless competitors in the world to being complete and utter suckers. Guess thats what dangling cheap oppressed labor, and a rapidly growing potentially giant market in front of them does. American business men will sell their mother to the devil for those two things.
"China will become the IT centre of the world and we can have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 2040."
"What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company," Chambers said."
"Our contract manufacturers, at my request, and candidly at the request of the leaders in your country, began to move our contract manufacturers here to China," Chambers said.
So in other words for all you know its full of teen agers feeding you crap to see how gullible you are mixed in with some people who know what they are talking about but you have no clue who they are.
"This is bunk and you are completely making it up. Provide the link."
Dude, you are SOOOOOOO wrongagain. The British military has created its own news service and started feeding slanted news stories to networks with no disclaimer that they are carefully shaped propaganda. WOuld like to post a link but I can't find a google match. It was in Google News last week. Its some four letter acronym starting with 'S'. I think the networks that are using it know it propaganda and use it anyway though apparently their viewers don't.
Chalk another point up to both naive and pretentious.
"Would you prefer that they don't offer to bunk the civilian media with the soldiers?"
Hell yea. It completely destroys the reporters objectivity. They end up going only where the military wants them to go, seeing only what the military wants them to see, and worse if they see something the military doesn't want them to report they don't. Not sure how they military let NBC air the footage of a soldier executing unarmed, wounded men laying on the floor of a mosque. Their censor must have been asleep that day.
"To suggest that federal agencies monitor the outgoing traffic to TOR is laughable and shows how little of the technical aspects of TOR you know."
No actually you just supported every point I originally made about their use of Tor. Either:
A. They are using it with authorization to spy, astroturf, or to spread propaganda and they don't want it to be traced back to the Pentagon or wherever via IP. You first got your panties in a twist when I said they were be using it to conceal their identity when they are spreading misinformation(propaganda) and now you are saying that is exactly what they are using it for, duh, with a dose of spying mixed in.
B. They are using it without authorization, as you said to conceal what they are doing from their boss, and facility security with encryption and an anonymizer. In that case it should be a red flag that there is someone at your facility with a clearance that can't be trusted. For all you know they are sending love notes to Chinese or Russian intelligence.
So like I said originally and you missed it, either they are using with authorization to spread propaganda and spy, or they are using it without authorization at which point they are just a massive security risk.
The more important point is the article is refering to the DOJ investigating itself and finding itself innocent, duh. Its right up there with the Pentagon investigating itself on why it appears to be torturing prisoners around the globe. Remarkably the Pentagon found itself innocent last week, or least it found all its officers and civilian leadership innocent, and laid the blame on rogue enlisted soldiers. Well if you are in the military and you are an enlisted soldier doing something wrong either your chain of command ordered it, condoned it or is derlict in its duty in keeping you from doing it.
The other obvious flaw with the approach taken here is they are ONLY talking about private citizens reporting abuses.
A. Most citizens are going to be to afraid to report abuses.
B. There is untold potential for abuse in the patriot act that the public would never know about to report it. The most obvious is sneek and peek, where the DOJ/FBI can legally break and enter to search your home or business, with the intent that you never know it occured. If they execute a successful sneak and peak how exactly are you going to know about it to report the abuse, and obviously if you did find out about the fear factor is so high chances are slim you are going to run tattling to the same agency that has you in its sights. Same goes for libraries. Librarians are under a gag to not say anything about the fact the FBI is watching what someone reads. What do you think the chances are a librarian is going to file a complaint with the DOJ under these terms.
In general when Big Brother is spying on you, unless they are incompetent, you aren't supposed to know about it and its unlikely you will call up Big Brother to complain.
Bottomline the methodology of the investigative mechanism (i.e. relying on citizens to report the abuse) is so deeply flawed as to be meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
Excepting that in the case of the Federal courts in particular all judges are appointed by the executive branch and the chief executive can pick people who ARE biased if they so choose and almost always do pick people who see things their way. Of course, there are checks and balances built in to our constitution most importantly that the Senate has to approve them all which can weed out people unfit to be a judge for life.
Unfortunately today thanks to the near collapse of the Democratic party and the rise of the new right wing, Christian fundamentalist dominated Republican party both the executive and Senate are controlled by people with a similar and increasingly extremist bent.
Not to fear our system of government honed over 200 plus years has the filibuster in the Senate to serve as the last check on a majority party seizing control of the judiciary and the government in general. Unfortunately the filibuster exists only in Senate rules and is not enshrined in our constitution. In the past both parties saw it in their interest, and had the wisdom, to preserve the filibuster so if they become the minority party they would not be powerless.
Unfortunately the Republican's are going to throw that wisdom to the wind and very soon they are going to change the Senate rules, eliminate the filibuster, make the Democrats powerless and most probably create a constitutional crisis unlike any we've seen. If they succeed they can appoint any extremist judge they can hold a party line vote on and given a few years, they can stack the federal courts, including the Supreme court with people who may be very biased and not the least bit independent and yes that could eventually lead to a police state. You may have heard of this option, its called the "nuclear option" and when it happens we will basically be living in a one party state as long as the Republicans keep winning elections legitimately or by hook and crook, or decide to rewrite our nations laws to enshrine their one party state as was done in the 1930's in Germany. A political party there seized power largely through democratic means.
I'm willing to bet that unless you are willing to work in the defense industry designing hardware is not going to be a great career in the U.S. Designing CPU's and GPU's might last in the U.S. somewhat longer since they are still somewhat entrenched in the U.S. but designing just about everything else electronic has already moved to Asia, Taiwan in particular and now China, and is unlikely to return.
God only knows how much software development will survive in the U.S. There will probably be some bastions like Google, Microsoft and Adobe in the U.S. and there will be lots of grinding out in house custom stuff for big corporations. The latter pays bills but otherwise isn't exactly satisfying. Places like Microsoft, Cisco and SUN are already off shoring a lot of work to China and India.
Unfortunately there are a lot of factors working against the U.S. staying a leader in software development, cost of living, healthcare and labor is to high compared to India, China and Eastern Europe, the education system in the U.S. is generally bad, Americans are not for the most part disciplined or hungry any more, they've had it to easy to long like most affluent empires headed for decline. The U.S. has maintained a lot of its vitality by importing talent from around the world but since 9/11 that talent is increasingly not coming to the U.S. or being turned away by an out of control visa bureaucracy(though if you are an indigent worker and want to swim the Rio Grande the border is wide open.
I wager a lot of bright, well educated people from around the world probably don't want to move to a country dominated by right wingers, intolerants and Christian fundamentalists with a blood thirsty penchant for wars. There also used to be no economic opportunity in places like India and China so the brightest flocked to the U.S. where the money way. But most smart people in those places know there is more economic opportunity in China and India than the U.S. these days. A lot of China expats have been flocking home to China to cash on the gold rush there as long as they can stand the government.
As a footnote I would add a personal opinion, software development is probably better than working in a factory, and I love doing it for fun, but fact is unless you are working on a good team on software you love and you have a stake in its success its actually not that great a career, especially now that the get rich quick for doing nothing opportunities are drying up. There is a real tendency to 80 hour a week death marches for which you are getting paid for 40, insane schedules, slogging through bug queues, and watching insane marketing and management types do insane things. And of course there is the top rank of executives who loot all the profits for the multimillion dollar compensation packages and lay people off at the drop of a hat, often to compensate for their grievous management mistakes.
So in summary if you want to work in the U.S. business administration is hands down the best career choice if you have what it takes to climb your way to the top, so hone your golf game and barroom and B.S. skills and climb, climb, climb. Might be a good idea to join the Young Republicans, the right church, the best frat and if you have some spare cash start donating to Republican candidates. They politicians that control a huge percentage of the U.S. economy really do look at that FEC database of campaign contributions and reward those who give them money (reference all the cell phone people recently bounced from a communication panel because they bet on the wrong horse).
If you have what it takes to cross the threshold in to upper management you will do very well whether you have a clue or not. If you are bright and have a better idea like the founders of Google you can get rich to but it is way harder than just B.S.ing your way in to the ranks of the executive elite.
The thing that is always lost in discussion of educations, is the first most important variable. Whether education succeeds or fails depends for the most part on the desire of students to learn. Good teachers or good computerized courses and software can promote the desire to learn, and can dramatically enhance the learning process, but in the absence of desire these things aren't likely to make it happen. The key reason American education seems to be failing is most American's have a low desire to learn. Most High School students place way more value on athletics, activites and social strata than they do on the education component.
If students don't see the value in education and don't want to learn next to nothing is going to help.
One motivator for learning is hunger. If students see education as a route to success, earning a living and putting food on the table chances are the will be motivated.
Another motivator might be if you are part of a successful, educated family your family may instill in you the value of it (i.e. you live like you do because your ancestors valued education, skills and hard work).
If you couch education as it is to most Americans:
A. We are rich, we will continue to be rich whether we work hard or not
B. We are poor and we are going to stay poor no matter what we do
education comes across as a waste of time and it fails.
With MIT's open courseware if you have the time, the desire and some basic intelligence, I'd say chances are high you can probably educate yourself these days.
Dude, not only are you losing it you have a potty mouth.
What exactly is it about stringing together four letter words that makes you think that is a good way to make a coherent point. Not sure why Howard Stern gets the grief he does when trash writing like yours is all over the Internet for kids to read.
The problem with voting Libertarian is, if you were to actually implement it is it would let corporations run amuck too. Of course maybe it would be better than the status quo where they are buying the government wholesale and using it to loot money out of the pockets of tax payers.
One thing we do actually need and want from government is to put checks on the monopolists, the stock swindlers, etc, though the government we have is really bad at checking them.
"Not only that, but we have whackos who continue to think that giving up our right to bear arms is a good idea. What are we supposed to overthrow anyone with? Rocks and sharp sticks?"
Chances are slim to none you are going to overthrow the U.S. government using guns. In fact its seldom a good way to effect change any place. You are more likely to end up with one group of armed thugs toppling the existing group of armed thugs, and ruling as armed thugs.
You start shooting at people you are going to be instantly be branded as terrorists, criminals and wackos by the state, the media and most people and they will just hunt you down.
When governments are toppled by the will of the people and with minimal violence hold a moral high ground that strengthens their support and power after the peaceful revolution. In fact you really want the state to use violence to put down strikes and peaceful protests. When they do they almost always lose all their popular support and hasten their fall.
Get some books on Ghandi or Martin Luther King. Nonviolent strategies are way more likely to work, the problem is you have to have enough people who want change, preferably a majority. If you have a enough people strikes, peaceful protest and attacking the status quo at the ballot box will work better than killing people. Problem is most Americans like the status quo. Most Americans are fat, dumb and happy. It really isn't likely you will see real unrest for another 10-20 years. By then America's wealth will have been largely erased by trillion dollar annual trade deficits and budget deficits, there will be no jobs, the dollar will have collapsed and been abandoned as the global reserve currency in favor of the Euro, gasoline will be prohibitively expensive in part due to the dollars collapse and the OPEC moving to the Euro.
When America has completed its transition to a real 3rd world country, with 5% being filthy rich and 95% of its people in grinding poverty, then you will have the critical mass to topple the status quo. When Americans can't afford to drive their cars you will have their attention.
Unfortunately it would be better if Americans were a thinking people and toppled a government(both parties), that is currently driving them down a road to the ruin, largely at the direction of a corporate plutocracy whose only allegiance is to wealth and power and will sell America down a river in a heart beat, if thats what it takes stay rich and get richer.
The one flash point you might see in the near term is the Republican's may attempt to seize complete control of the government by exercising the "nuclear option" in the senate and changing the closure rule so a simple majority can end a filibuster. At that point the Democrats will be in powerless in the Senate as they already are in the House. The Republicans will have effectively seized power and we are in a defacto one party state assuming they can hold their majority in 2006 and 2008. An enlightened population would be given pause by such a power grab, you would hope Americans would react, sadly I doubt they will.
"This sounds exacly like the kind of thing slashdotters should be doing - go out and find a candidate you like"
I think you answered your own question. There are no candidates to like, who have even a remote chance of getting elected. Ralph Nader is the closest I've seen lately, he has no chance. John McCain might work or might be a complete disaster, but he wont abandon the Republican party and they will never nominate him, he is not rabid right wing enough.
Thats why Democrats, liberals, progressive are getting their asses kicked. They can't stand their own candidates.
Another problem with the left, in the U.S. at least, is they are prone to think for themselves and are all over the map on issues and candidates. The right tends to think what FOX News and talk radio, and their churches tell them to think. They also have a very standard set of wedge issues that causes them to vote as a unified block, gays, guns and abortion. The left is mostly pro choice but not completely, some on the left support gays rights, others are as homophobic as the right. The left is all over the map on guns.
Chill out dude, you're losing it.
Me, I'm sick of Roland, in partnership with Slashdot editor's, apparently turning front page articles in to paid ads to drive traffic to Roland's web site. If he finds interesting articles, why doesn't he just submit them and face the same odds of them making the front page as the rest of us, slim, and not put in the links to the plagiarism on his web site to drive traffic to his site.
If he writes original work that is interesting and submits it great, put it on the front page. But he isn't, he is ripping off someone else's work.
If Slashdot want to put his "work" in the advertising section that would be A-OK too. Putting a plagiarist, seeking ad revenue, on the front page posing as news is NOT OK.
This is an interesting form of revisionism, but it does really correspond to facts. The Soviet Union was largely dismantled by its own government, a fellow named Gorbachev.
Its open to debate whether it was his intent with glasnost(openness) and perestroika(restructuring) to completely dismantle communist rule though that it was an inevitable result of relaxing the Soviet Union's grip on Eastern Europe and relaxing repression withint the U.S.S.R. As I recall his reforms started snowballing, the hard liners attempted a coup but it was to late, and in the power vacuum created by the coup Yeltsin and a popular uprising finished removing the Communists.
Americans in particular are fond of the illusion that they and Reagan should take all the credit. Only thing Reagan had to do with it was in influencing Gorbachev and I doubt he influenced him much. Gorbachev was a very smart money, and Reagan was a clueless, Alzheimer afflicted actor, whose main talent was reading from a teleprompter.
In case you missed it when I posted it on Roland's scam last Sunday, here is a writeup someone did on how Roland is trying to use Slashdot to make a living, and is apparently being aided in his efforts, for one reason or another by Slashdot's editors.
"That fix is to get rid of it alltogether and make"
Wont get any argument from me, I'd prefer that too but it ain't gonna happen. Both parties are addicted to all the extra money this regressive payroll tax is bringing in for them to steal, redirect and/or squander. If it were gone tomorrow the budget deficit would be so astronomical they couldn't find any buy the debt, a run on the dollar would ensue.
Noone wants to go back to a time when large numbers of old people,who hadn't been responsible, were destitute. There is a pretty steep cost there too.
And the Republican's now LOVE the idea of Social Security as long as they can do private accounts and forcibly extract money out of people's paychecks and force them to hand it over to their rich banker friends. They are so desperate to do it now because they want to take that big Social Security surplus we have now and instead of squandering on government spending instead put it in to the hands of their rich banker friends and the stock market, which will lead to a windfall profit for all the people who own the stock before the big influx of new capital.
I'm just pointing out it would be trivial to save and retain the current system, and be fairer to worked if they just start taxing at just what is needed to support the program. If it was pay as you go it would be dramatically fairer to all involved, and it would never go bankrupt. Again the only problem is:
A. The slush fund Congress and the President are squandering would be gone
B. The Republican's wouldn't have a "crisis" to solve and they wouldn't be able to redirect all the money to their rich banker friends and the stock market which is their one and only true goal.
"I can do MUCH better than social security, which returns at a rate less than inflation."
Uh, you contradict yourself. There is NO investment of Social Security money and there is NO return on the investment. The rate of return on what you put in is completely arbitrary because the government is stealing everything that isn't being paid out. By the time I retire chances are high Social Security and the U.S. government will be bankrupt so all of the money I've put in will be gone. Alternately they will jack taxes up a few more times before I get there and slash benefits so chances are I will be losing money not getting a %1 return on it.
"Another couple of trivially incorrect points you make are that a) taxes are somehow equivalent to stealing and b) politicians are "stealing" our money..."
Uh, setting a payroll tax rate that is grossly in excess of what is needed to support the entitlement, and then using the money for programs that have nothing to do with the entitlement is stealing. Its a blatantly regressive tax scheme because it hits the poor and middle income disproportionately hard. Politicians do steal our money. They tax us in to the ground and then frequently redirect the money to their big campaign contributors in pork.
Now if the surplus money were there in 2018 when the surplus turns in to a deficit it wouldn't be stealing. But I assure all the surplus is already gone and by then they will either jack up payroll taxes, slash benefits, or try to borrow there way out of it and chances are by 2018 U.S. credit will be so bad they wont be able to borrow a plug nickel.
"do you realize that telling other people that they're "wrong" for their choice in leaders is part of that?"
Chill dude, I was just curious why the election turned out the way it did and being personally disappointed with how the U.S. election turned out I was hoping the rest of the world would at least get rid of all the poodle's backing the wacky people who've seized power in the U.S. Just wishin' not like I actually seek to influence the outcome.
You want to see "Arrogant American" lecturing people on elections, someone who actually has the power to influence them, check the Donald Rumsfeld speech today when he bashed Spain for throwing out the right wing, pro Bush, government.
Or check how the U.S. pumped $50 million dollars in to the Ukraine with the express intent of influencing the outcome of their election. If some country overtly pumped that much money in to the U.S. to influence an election the targeted party would go ballistic. U.S. does it, its just business as usual, especially for the National Endowment for "Democracy".
In fact the U.S. government, especially the right wing U.S. governments like we have now have actually influenced or outright rigged countless elections over the last half century. Me wishing there had been a different outcome in Australia kind of pales by comparison.
Hey I think America was totally crazy for their choice of leaders too. I was just wondering if some Aussie could explain what the issues were that lead to Howard winning. I'll go first and set an example, in the U.S. the Republican's won due to ruthless exploitation of a wedge issue, gay marriage, and terrorizing everyone over national security.
"Seems it be much smarter for EDS to adopt Linux, thereby being able to legally "steal" all the "IP" that their feared competitor IBM is producing."
Kind of hard to build a consulting business on "stealing" Linux IP. EDS can use IBM's open source stuff no problem, but a potential customer is going to be faced with the choice of:
- Hire IBM because they are developing Linux stuff so they obviously have the expertise
- Hire EDS who is probably learning as they go because Linux isn't exactly their bag, and are now bad mouthing it to boot.
IBM isn't stupid. They know ownership of the IP in the Linux world doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is if your potential clients view you as savvy and expert and IBM obviously conveys that on Linux, especially with the never ending barrage of great Linux stuff they post on their developer site and the non stop advertising.
If you are trying to land a consulting gig it also helps if the potential customer sees you as getting Linux and are not trying to "own" things or do proprietary lockins.
"They way it is now, they just look incompetent."
Totally right. IBM's marketing strategy is to be pro Linux, and not overtly anti Microsoft or anti anything else. Everyone knows they have no love for Microsoft but if a customer wants Windows IBM consulting will do it in a heartbeat. They'd probably even do Solaris if the customer required it, though probably more reluctantly (the old proprietary UNIX religious wars run deeper than the Linux versus Windows religious war).
EDS on the other hand, at least in this case, is being anti something and that is a really stupid marketing approach for someone selling services. You need to be pro something versus anti something. But its hard for EDS to create much excitement being pro Windows desktop and Solaris servers. Its an ancient strategy and long in the tooth, especially since many people think SUN is half dead. IBM looks leading edge and trendy being pro Linux. If EDS tries to be pro Linux they just look like a "me too" compared to IBM. IBM really has them foxed.
Not sure where CSC falls in this. I imagine they will just whore their services based on the customer's desires and aren't religious about it.
"...doubly so as I'm an Australian"
What exactly is wrong with Australia, I really am curious. I was really hoping you would throw out Howard and the Liberals in the 2004 elections for backing the war in Iraq and being Bush and Blair's poodle. Was hoping this would knock one more leg out from under the coalition of the "willing" (sic). Is Australia still so infatuated with Britain that you have to emulate them and continue to support a so called "Liberal" party that is apparently really right wing and follow in Blair's footsteps by electing a prime minister(Howard) who is a Blair emulator and Bush poodle.
I mean I totally understand why the U.S. votes for Bush, this country is full of clueless right wingers, religious zealots and FOX news pretty much tells them what to think. I was hoping the rest of the world still had a clue though. I wait with bated breath to see if Britain throws Blair out over Iraq and his poodledom.
Australia doesn't get much coverage in the U.S., well no country gets any coverage in the U.S. except the U.S. and Israel, last summer I'd heard the Australian people were unhappy over Iraq and Howard was going to lose and then bam, he wins again. What happened?
Agility Alliance is mostly an attempt by EDS in particular to form a consortium to counter IBM and its love affair with Linux. They offer Solaris Server's(SUN), Windows Desktops(Microsoft), and Cisco just wants to sell their Chinese made routers to anyone and will probably kiss up to IBM five minutes after walking out of the Agility Alliance press conference.
EDS is just trying to be anti IBM, and since IBM is pro Linux that means their competitive analysis team unwisely told them to be rabidly anti Linux whether it made any sense or not. Obviously it didn't make much sense. Big consulting companies might form preferences, and offer recommendations, but they are supposed to pick the best solution for job and be willing to be open minded enough to offer the technology the customer wants.
To put it another way by bashing Linux to this extent EDS has:
A. Shown to their potential customers they have a religious bias, which will preclude them from being a good consultant.
B. Shot themselves in the foot for any contract competition where Linux is prefered by the customer.
"...but you can't tap it."
I think you are wrong. Not sure how easy it easy or expensive the gear is but I'm pretty sure the U.S. Navy taps undersea fiber all the time, using submarines. Doing it on land must be substantially easier.
I've wondered how much dark fiber there is laying around the world and if anybody would notice if you started using it. I'm pretty sure fiber infrastructure was way overbuilt thanks to everyone listening to Bernard Ebber's fantasy predictions for global demand for bandwidth.
... gasp ... share music they probably would seek to snuff out all wireless networks unless they were certified and trusted.
I imagine once you started using dark fiber on any scale eventually the owner would notice. Alternately I'm wondering if you can tap fiber cables and run a rogue signal on it without the owner noticing it.
I wonder if ISP's working under the new trusted computing mandate would let you run a data stream point to point on their networks, using hosts that at least appear trusted but would basicly being working as routers between Alternet and Corpranet, ideally encrypting everything in the Alternet stream to keep the NSA and friends from spying on it while its in Corpranet.
Fiber through back yards would be a nice idea for high bandwidth in small areas but you would inevitably have people that wouldn't let you run it through your yard and you would have a huge hurdle to clear everytime you had to cross a street or other significant expanses you don't own.
Wireless is obviously better for the community network though you would be completely at the mercy of the FCC or your country's equivalent regulator. Would also be very vulnerable to being spyed on by Corpranet unless its strongly encrypted. As soon as corprate controlled government figured out Alternet was being used to
Just to give equal time to religious fanatics on both sides I imagine you should be more worried about fundementalist Christians laying there hands on the technology, especialy those in sects with a strong penchant for dwelling on the Book of Revelation and the Rapture.
You see they are already sitting around waiting not so patiently for the end of the world and are convinced that God will sweep all the good Christians, them, up to heaven when the end is near and all the heathens will be left to burn in the hell or the black hole, which ever one has the strongest pull.
You probably need to study the NRA and how they've managed to keep guns mostly unregulated in the U.S.
If you want to play by the establishment rules I imagine you need to form a national association, get a couple million dues paying members, hire lobbyists, get everyone in the association registered to vote and make it clear that the membership is strongly predisposed to vote for politicians who vote against trusted computing, against siezing control of our computers, and handing over control of all computers to Microsoft or other corprate entities like them.
Of course your membership needs to be like the NRA and place this issue over all others when you vote, over abortion, over gun control, over gay marriage. It really sucks to vote based on one issues but if a presidential candidate knows they will lose 2-3 million votes if they back trusted computing they will think twice before they support it.
Me I'm left wondering how exactly China plays in to trusted computing. I can see them totally wanting something like it because they already want to completely control Internet and computer use by their population. However I really doubt they are going to ceede control over their computing infrastructure to Microsoft, the U.S. or anyone but themselves. How exactly to you even have a global Internet if China implements its own sphere of trusted computing, the U.S. another almost certainly dominated by Microsoft, and maybe the E.U. another.
As soon as governments outside the U.S. realize trusted computing is placing enormous new power in the hands of Microsoft and the U.S. government I'd be inclined to think they will all opt out. You would almost think you would have to have region codes for trusted computing and then how do you communicate across the region boundries.
Dude, if you are forming your world view based on the alternate reality that is South Park you are the one with issues here :)
South Park shreds everyone equally, its only fair they give liberal college grads and hippies equal time. Its comedy, satire, parody....laugh.
Not sure I said they are out to "get us". The corporate part of the combine are out to milk us for all the profit they can squeeze out of us. The government part is out to exert the maximum control over us that they can get away with(i.e. as much as we let them), and most of them are out to steer pork to their rich friends and corporate benefactors. When they retire from politics most of them rake in fat paybacks from the companies and people they bestowed the pork upon.
Just go back and read the history of the Medicare "reform" bill, the one with the supposed drug benefit for seniors. It was written by drug, healthcare, and insurance companies for their benefit, not for the benefit of seniors or tax payers. They basically bought the Medicare adminstrator, he was job shopping with these very companies while the bill was being negotiated, with White House permission though it was a blatant conflict of interest. He intentionally concealed the cost of the bill, threatened his subordinates who wanted to give the real number to Congress, and outright lied when he told everyone it would be $400 million which was exactly the highest figure that would pass Congress. As soon as it passed the Bush adminsitration admitted it would really be at least $500 billion. A month or two ago it was jacked up to $720 billion. There is in fact no limit on how much it will cost because the drug companies told Congress to add a clause forbidding Medicare from negotiating fair prices for the drugs it buys as part of the drug benefit. The drug companies can charge as much as they feel like and will. Don't be surprised when it really kicks in the Republican's will declare Medicare in a fiscal crisis and either jack up our payroll taxes or cut benefits.
If you think corporations don't control the American government at this point you are either naive, clueless or not paying attention.
I doubt the corprate/government combine is going to take the net to trusted computing suddenly, it will probably happen slowly and gradually so no one freaks. But you just have to look at Slashdot to see that governments/corporations are in full scale war against bittorrent and p2p, the NSA is getting geered up to spy on everyone, not just those outside America.
Seems to me its a good idea to take advantage of all the goodness that is wireless and mesh and at least start building community networks that retain some freedom. Fact is the Internet and your beloved giant telecom company ISP's and government are going to do no nothing but charge more, outlaw more and allow less and less as time goes by.
No arguement that they all do it, the Bush administration is just doing it vastly worse than any previous administration and is th emost cynical because they are doing it and then turning around and then saying the system is in crisis precisely because they are stealing our money. They also came in with budget surpluses and turned them in to a flood of red ink as far as the eye can see. Some of the surplus was due to the bubble but most of the red ink is entirely due to tax cuts for the rich and out of control spending on defense, intelligence and homeland security.
The Bushites are using regressive payrolls taxes, and stealing our wages, to subsidize tax cuts for the rich. Its the absolute worst form of class warfare by the rich on the poor and middle class.
Social Security is enormously easy to fix, but neither party wants to fix it because they both want to tax working people to pay for pork they dole out to their friends and campaign contributors.
Here is the trivial fix, change the tax rate every year so that income approximately matches benefits paid out, so it is truly a pay as you go system. The surplus is then gone so politicians can't squander it. You also eliminate the situation we've been in for the last 20 years where workers are being grossly overtaxed and politicians are stealing our money. Sure the taxes are going to be steep during the baby boomer retirement years and maybe you will need to raise the retirement age to compensate for people living way longer than they probably should, but barring medical miracles they will eventually die and social security taxes will decline somewhat.
"Don't want to interoperate with the rest of the secure users out there? Don't use hardware that is tied to THE secure OS."
If trusted computing reaches the point you can't get on the Internet unless you are running it, and at that point trusted computing means your completely relinquish control of your computer and your privacy, then maybe geeks should take this opportunity to start a network of their own free of corprate and government control. Think Pirate Radio except for the internet, the Pirate's Web, or Alternet.
At least at a local level you should be able to create a wirless mesh network free of the shackles the government and corporations are inevitably going to try to put on the Internet in the name of "security", "safety" and to protect their monopolies on music and films.
Its going to be a little harder to do the long haul part of the network, since you are going to have to do a lot of hops and latency will be terrible. Thankfully as disk drives and hardware get cheaper people can make liberal use of mirrors to that there are local copies of valuable stuff like Wikipedia and open source archives.
You will also probably be confined to latency sensitive online games only in your local community.
All in all I'm not sure it would be such a bad thing because:
- It would foster a greater sense of local community involvement, which is sorely lacking on the Internet.
- It would compel geeks to be resourceful and roll up their sleeves instead of just open up their wallet and dole out cash to the giant, abusive telecommunications giant every month.
- I wager the Internet is going to be in a pretty steady decline in usefulness as governments and corporations seek to exert ever more control over it and try to extract subscriptions and fees for anything interesting, or saturate you with advertising. Its also a near inevitability that they will seek to wipe out bit torrent, all p2p or anything that is used by pirates, even when they also have legitimate uses.
- People might start appreciating the value of the freedom things like open source give you once corporation controlled governments start taking them away. You usually don't value something until you lose it. Maybe it will be just the thing to ignite a sustainable and powerful political movement to regain control of our governments. As it is everyone is to fat, dumb and happy to do anything about it so corporation controlled governments are eviscerating out civil rights and no one give a damn as long as they have their porn, video games and reality TV.
All in all I favor college radio, which is the closes thing to pirate radio you can usually find. They play interesting, eclectic mixes of often good music because they are putting out content they like, not content that ClearChannel and the RIAA want to shove down peoples throats and make them like simply by depriving them of anything better.
Not sure that the Internet might not be rejuvenated if it goes back to its BBS, Modem roots. I wonder if spam, spyware, script kiddies and the like will be lesser or greater on the Pirate's net versus the "trusted" computing Internet. I wager the free lancers would be worse on the Pirate's net but the corporate controlled spam, spying, privacy invasion and intrusion will be worse on the "trusted" internet.
I wager we can pull off an Alternet as long as unregulated wireless is tolerated by the government and continues to improve. If once the Alternet starts rolling and the government, corporations seek to outlaw unregulated wireless and wipe it out, then it gets to be more interested. Could we run a usable and interesting mesh network in the face of a hostile, corporate controlled police state trying to wipe it out.
Should put Cisco in an interesting position, since John Chambers declared they are going to be a Chinese company.
The Chinese are pretty big on Linux because they don't like to pay royalties or licenses to non Chinese corporations so they don't much want Microsoft controlling their IT infrastructure in the long run.
Unless you live in China Cisco is very deserving of a boycott because they are selling themselves and the rest of the world down the river by moving all of their capital and IP to China. Chambers also sounds especially stupid in his willingness to do whatever the Chinese tell him to do. You have to wonder exactly at what point America's business leaders transitioned from being some of the best and most ruthless competitors in the world to being complete and utter suckers. Guess thats what dangling cheap oppressed labor, and a rapidly growing potentially giant market in front of them does. American business men will sell their mother to the devil for those two things.
"China will become the IT centre of the world and we can have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 2040."
"What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company," Chambers said."
"Our contract manufacturers, at my request, and candidly at the request of the leaders in your country, began to move our contract manufacturers here to China," Chambers said.
"That's because I don't ask."
So in other words for all you know its full of teen agers feeding you crap to see how gullible you are mixed in with some people who know what they are talking about but you have no clue who they are.
"This is bunk and you are completely making it up. Provide the link."
Dude, you are SOOOOOOO wrongagain. The British military has created its own news service and started feeding slanted news stories to networks with no disclaimer that they are carefully shaped propaganda. WOuld like to post a link but I can't find a google match. It was in Google News last week. Its some four letter acronym starting with 'S'. I think the networks that are using it know it propaganda and use it anyway though apparently their viewers don't.
Chalk another point up to both naive and pretentious.
"Would you prefer that they don't offer to bunk the civilian media with the soldiers?"
Hell yea. It completely destroys the reporters objectivity. They end up going only where the military wants them to go, seeing only what the military wants them to see, and worse if they see something the military doesn't want them to report they don't. Not sure how they military let NBC air the footage of a soldier executing unarmed, wounded men laying on the floor of a mosque. Their censor must have been asleep that day.
"To suggest that federal agencies monitor the outgoing traffic to TOR is laughable and shows how little of the technical aspects of TOR you know."
No actually you just supported every point I originally made about their use of Tor. Either:
A. They are using it with authorization to spy, astroturf, or to spread propaganda and they don't want it to be traced back to the Pentagon or wherever via IP. You first got your panties in a twist when I said they were be using it to conceal their identity when they are spreading misinformation(propaganda) and now you are saying that is exactly what they are using it for, duh, with a dose of spying mixed in.
B. They are using it without authorization, as you said to conceal what they are doing from their boss, and facility security with encryption and an anonymizer. In that case it should be a red flag that there is someone at your facility with a clearance that can't be trusted. For all you know they are sending love notes to Chinese or Russian intelligence.
So like I said originally and you missed it, either they are using with authorization to spread propaganda and spy, or they are using it without authorization at which point they are just a massive security risk.
The more important point is the article is refering to the DOJ investigating itself and finding itself innocent, duh. Its right up there with the Pentagon investigating itself on why it appears to be torturing prisoners around the globe. Remarkably the Pentagon found itself innocent last week, or least it found all its officers and civilian leadership innocent, and laid the blame on rogue enlisted soldiers. Well if you are in the military and you are an enlisted soldier doing something wrong either your chain of command ordered it, condoned it or is derlict in its duty in keeping you from doing it.
The other obvious flaw with the approach taken here is they are ONLY talking about private citizens reporting abuses.
A. Most citizens are going to be to afraid to report abuses.
B. There is untold potential for abuse in the patriot act that the public would never know about to report it. The most obvious is sneek and peek, where the DOJ/FBI can legally break and enter to search your home or business, with the intent that you never know it occured. If they execute a successful sneak and peak how exactly are you going to know about it to report the abuse, and obviously if you did find out about the fear factor is so high chances are slim you are going to run tattling to the same agency that has you in its sights. Same goes for libraries. Librarians are under a gag to not say anything about the fact the FBI is watching what someone reads. What do you think the chances are a librarian is going to file a complaint with the DOJ under these terms.
In general when Big Brother is spying on you, unless they are incompetent, you aren't supposed to know about it and its unlikely you will call up Big Brother to complain.
Bottomline the methodology of the investigative mechanism (i.e. relying on citizens to report the abuse) is so deeply flawed as to be meaningless.