This is not +5 insightful. Schroeder is just whipping to death the fact that at one point in time some airline and airline worker at SFO was apparently badly enforcing FAA/TSA regulations that require all passengers to be ID'ed and matched against the "Don Not Fly" list.
I wager if you go back to SFO now chances are slim you will get on an airplane without an ID. It is FAA/TSA regulation and if an airline refuses to ID and check every passenger against the Do Not Fly list the FAA/TSA will eventually ground them or prevent them from entering U.S. air space.
The "Do Not Fly" list is however so badly implemented it wouldn't be at all suprising if some airlines or individuals are blowing it off. Thats what people do in the face of incompetent bureaucracy, throw wooden shoes in to it, sabotage.
The other obvious problem is in trying to keep the whole thing secret they've done a really bad job of enforcing the whole thing, in training airlines and airline workers on what is required by the regulation and in Europe especially they routinely don't complete the "Do Not Fly" list checks before the plane takes off leading to planes turning back or being rerouted to Maine.
The airlines have nothing to do with this other than they've been forced to ID all passengers and check their names agains the "Do Not Fly" list. The TSA/FAA/FBI are the ones that are forcing this policy.
The key point is if an airline refuses to do it they will be denied access to U.S. air space, they will either be grounded in the U.S. or turned back if they are trying to fly in to the U.S. for Europe for example. If an airliner leaves London or Paris with someone on board that matched the Do Not Fly list they are either forced to turn back or are forced to land in Maine and the person is taken off the plane and detained and the rest of the passengers are screen for possible conspirators.
Just to clarify a rampant mistake in terminology in this whole article. This is not a question of "law" it is a question of "regulation". The difference is the first is passed by Congress and the second is just written by the executive branch and its agencies, the FAA, FCC and TSA for example.
To my knowledge Congress has never passed a "law" implementing the "Do Not Fly" list which led to this requirement airlines ID all passengers. If they had passed a law it probably wouldn't be secret and someone could show Gilmore the "law", There isn't one.
Congress has toyed with passing a law for several versions of "CAPPS" which are the next gen successors to the current stupid "Do Not Fly" list but Congress has so far balked at at the privacy invasion of CAPPS though the executive branch keeps bringing it back over and over again.
The "Do Not Fly" list began in the early '90's as FAA "regulation" in concert with the FBI. It was lame and wasn't for the most part enforced. After 9/11 it was given new life, dramaticly expanded and turned over to TSA, Homeland Security and FBI and is now widely and badly enforced.
It is to my knowledge all done through secret "regulation". However all airlines that fly in or in to the U.S. have to at least go through the motions of enforcing it, ID'ing all passengers and preventing passengers from flying whose names are on the "Do Not Fly" list. When they get a match they are supposed to call TSA/FBI agents who detain and interrogate the person. The person is usually completely innocent and just an unfortunate victim of having the same name as a suspected terrorist or even an alias a suspected terrorist uses. These innocent people are routinely harrassed, embarrassed and often prevented from flying and there is no known procedure for cleaing your name. Your best option is to petition your congressman who in turn begs the FBI, TSA, Homeland security to clear you.
If an airline employee refuses to enforce the regulation they will probably be fired so its "law" to them. If an airline refuses to enforce it they will probably be denied access to U.S. air space so its "law" to them, but it is really secret regulation created by the executive branch and its agencies, the FAA, TSA, FBI and Homeland Security.
"Interesting, then, that our posts are in almost complete agreement."
Uh not they aren't, here is why.
"Conversely, the same applies: just because an airline worker says there IS a law proves nothing."
THERE ISN'T A "LAW" but there is beyond a shadow of a doubt a secret set of regulations that the TSA/Homeland Security is forcing on any airline that flies within the U.S. or in to the U.S. Watch the fucking news man, this is the same system that causes airliners from Britain and France to be routinely turned back or rerouted to Maine when they discover, after the plane takes off, that someone on the plane had a name that matched the "Do Not Fly" list and they didn't catch it before they plane took off. Again this system is so badly implemented its basicly useless.
European airlines hate the living daylights out of the system but they have to go through the motions of enforcing it or the FAA/TSA will deny them entry to American airspace which they have to have.
"then airlines and airports shouldn't make it seem that it is a "law", proper, that must be obeyed in order to fly"
Get off the "law" thing. There are TSA/FAA regulations that are just as binding as law to the airlines. Whether you call it law or regulation the airlines have to implement it. If a counter worker refuses they will probably be fired. If an airline refuses they will be grounded if in the U.S. or denied entry to U.S. airspace if outside the U.S.
Commercial airlines are at the mercy of the FAA/TSA, just like the networks are at the mercy of the FCC. They have to do what they say unless Congress or the Courts step in. Gilmore is pretty much going to have to get a court to rule the regulation is illegal to stop this, or Congress will have to pass a law outlawing this practice which is unlikely due to politicians fear of being branded as soft on terrorism and security.
"Lastly, the system may be inept. But what real security measures should be taken at airports, then?"
Like I said in another post:
A. Armored cockpit doors, already done, didn't cost much, doesn't punish the public, makes it nearly impossible to seize control of an airliner thus and precludes another 9/11.
B. Pursue every improvement you can in screening passengers, baggage and freight, for guns and explosives. If someone gets box cutters on the worst thing they are going to do is attack a passenger and the passengers are going to fight back post 9/11.
The chances are slim of another 9/11 style hijacking and crash thanks to armored cockpit doors. Worst thing you are going to see is maybe a bombing and crashing a plane which would be sad but not a disaster of 9/11 scale. Again do your best to stop it by screening for explosives.
Bottomline is trying to screen people is never going to work. A terrorist group just has to recruit someone with a squeaky clean record or give a person first class fake ID.
Chances are Al Qaida is going to pursue a completely different strategy for their next attack anyway because armored cockpit doors make their old attack strategy a low probability of success strategy. If they want to get people in to the U.S. for a land based attacked, a truck bomb for example, U.S. borders are so porous they can pretty much walk across the Mexican border. Millions of people have done it and do it everyday.
There isn't a law until and unless Congress passes some version of CAPPS which they've been reluctant to do due to the invasive privacy intrusion CAPPS representz. A CAPPS variant might lessen the insanity of the current "Do Not Fly" because you might not be detained just because your name matches some name on the list, presumably your social security number or passport ID or other data would better discriminate you from the know terrorist. The down side is CAPPS will be much more intrusive and probably bring a host of new problems.
And again we aren't talking about a "secret law" we are talking about a well known set of "secret regulations" implemented by the FAA/FBI, under either Clint or the First Bush, and dramaticly expansed by the FBI/TSA/Homeland security post 9/11, again entirely by the Executive branch which doesn't pass laws but can implement regulations unless Congress or the courts stop them.
I'm pretty sure the unfortunate airline counter works might use the term "secret law" because to them secret law and secret regulation is basicly the same thing, all they know is the TSA has ordered their airline, and in turn their boss has ordered them, to ID everyone, match everyone's name against a secret list via computer, and everytime there is a match they call the FBI/TSA agents in the terminal who come and pull the unfortunate, often completely innocent passenger, aside for interrogation, often making them miss their flight, usually hugely embarrasing them, and sometime prevent them from flying all together. And again its nearly impossible to get get your name off the list once you prove your innocence, because the procedure for getting off the list is a secret as who puts names on the list, and whose names are on the list.
You really are defending an insane bureaucracy that is completely in the wrong, for no obvious reason. If the "Do Not Fly" list actually worked maybe you would have a leg to stand on, but it doesn't, it mostly just harrasses innocent people.
Well your lengthy rant is pretty much completely wrong.
There isn't exactly a secret "law" but there is a set of secret regulations that have led to this requirement. EPIC made a set of FOIA requests to try to expose the same things Gilmore is pursuing. They got enough docs to prove its existence, and they have censored docs that concealed most of what they wanted to know about it, in particular who puts names on it, how do get them off and what names are on it.
Just because SFO let him fly proves nothing other than people at the airline in SFO probably weren't doing what the TSA/FBI ordered them to do. Chances are very low you will be able to fly without showing an ID so you wasted WAY to much time pretending that just because one counter work at an airline didn't check it, that this proves anything.
So its not exactly law that airlines have to ID every passenger and check them against the list, its more a regulation Homeland Security and the FBI is trying to shove down the airline's throats and I don't think Congress ever passed it as a law. It was done entirely withing the executive branch. I'm very confident airlines would be overjoyed if they weren't burdened with this law enforcement task, especially since the system is completely incompetent and is mostly nabbing innocent people who happen to have names the same as those on the list. Airline counter works are probably sick of the ugly scenes that ensue when a completely innocent person is pulled aside by the FBI/Homeland Security and harassed for no good reason than being unlucky enough to have the same name as someone on the list.
All in all you really ought'a be ashamed for defending such and insane and inept system.
It is old news but your ID is required so they can match your name against the "Do Not Fly" list. Not sure that there was ever a law passed to create the do not fly list. Its been around since the early nineties and ping ponged between the FAA and the FBI and now I think is the purview of the TSA and the FBI. It was pretty much useless throughout its history up to 9/11. In fact a couple of the 9/11 hijackers were on the "Do Not Fly" list or at least known terrorist lists but no one enforced the list before 9/11. Most of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID and weren't on the list so this ID requirement wouldn't have slowed them down at all though if someone had actually been checking the list on 9/11 two of them would have been stopped from flying. Still its pretty easy to recruit hijackers who are unknown to the FBI/TSA or they can easily develop aliases and fake ID's to circumvent this stupid list.
Gillmore does have a case though I'm not sure its the one he's is pursuing. The fundamental problem with the "Do Not Fly" list is its a relatively arbitrary list of names and aliases of suspected terrorist and is blatantly discriminating against people who happen to have the same name. If you happen to have the same name as one of the names on the list your life will turn in to a living hell if you try to fly. That is where these regulations are unjust and should be overturned.
You can suffer an arbitrary punishment, humiliation and it can destroy your career if you need to fly for you business and the only thing you did wrong was to be unlucky to have a name that some suspected terrorist used at some point in time. The guidelines for putting names on the list is secret, the procedure for getting off is secret and ill defined. It is a system ripe for abuse since some bureaucrat some place can apparently add any name he wants to the list and punish for example political dissidents or people opposing those in power. About all you can do to get your name off is petition your congressman to lobby for you. Its probably easier to slightly mutate your name or legally change your name.
Bottomline is it is institutional insanity and Gilmore is right to fight it though its iffy if he will win. The "Do Not Fly" list hasn't caught a single terrorist in the act or to anyones knowledge prevented a hijacking or bombing. It did nab Cat Stevens, author of the song Peace Train. It is just something an incompetent bureaucracy instituted to put on a show for the public they were doing something to protect them. The two things they needed to do instead, that worked, were:
- put armored cockpit doors on all airliners. DONE and there is almost no chance of a repeat of 9/11. Didn't cost that much, didn't inconvience the public at all or threaten their civil liberties - better screen passengers and baggage for explosives and weapons. Kind of done though siezing sewing scissors and pocket knives is completely insane and unnecessary. With armored cockpit doors a potential hijacker can't seize the plane using crude weapons like box cutters, all they can do is try to attack passengers, and the passengers would fight back.
To fix the do not fly list is nearly impossible so it should be scrapped. Simple name matching is useless and going to punish more innocent people than catch terrorists.
You would have to go to a CAPPS type system where you are probing everyone's social security number, personal data, etc at which point it would be ridiculously intrusive and abusive. A terrorist group could still circumvent it with a stolen ID or recruiting someone with a sparking clean history.
And again with armored cockpit doors a repeat of 9/11 is nearly impossible. The worst you will see is maybe a bomb downing an airliner. It would be a tragedy but its not the end of the world. Again improve screening for explosives and real weapons to reduce this risk.
"I like Slashdot for what it is. With users picking the stories I might up with a site substantially different."
Yea and for all you know it might be better.
What exactly is it that makes the people that are doing most of the picking special? OK if Rob and Hemos did all the picking maybe that would be true to the original spirit of Slashdot and adhere to his Faq answer, that he wants to post stuff he finds interesting to the front page. Well Rob doesn't do the lions share of the front page filtering any more and I think Hemos is long gone. Its now done by a semi random and often fluid bunch of employees who don't have anything special to offer over the average Slashdot reader.
And the key point you seem to miss is they apparently don't even seem to be reading Slashdot otherwise they would notice all the dupe submissions. So what exactly is it about them thats magic, at least slashdot readers doing the moderation would probably mean the people picking the front page stories would have actually read Slashdot which doesn't appear to be the case now.
Like I said give it a try and just post a couple stories a day from user moderation on the front page and see how it works, assuming some one takes the time to set it up right and work out the kinks. I'm willing to bet it couldn't be worse than what we've been seeing lately. You also can't bury moderated submissions in a section of their own because no one will read them. The front page is the only thing most people read, you can tell by the dearth of postings on all the articles that don't make the front page.
"And drug advertising will not make people spend money for drugs they don't need any more than they will spend on other advertised products (cars, beer, etc.) that the may or may not need"
Tell me another ridiculous, whopping lie please. Which of the following applies:
A. Do you actually believe this and are you ridiculously naive,
or
B. do you work for a drug company or a advertising agency?
"The FDA is still a decent watchdog."
OK so I guess you already told another whopping lie. A whistelblower within the FDA has tirelessly and at great risk to himself shown time after time the FDA has failed miserably at its oversight responsibilities, Here and here just for starters. Its widely recognized that the FDA has pretty much sold out to the drug companies and is working more as a partner to enhance their profitibility and is disregarding evidence of danger in their products to avoid costing the drug companies billions of dollars when their flagship drugs prove to be dangerous and should be taken off the market.
"But I don't think that the typical prescription drug ad on tv is false. Annoying, maybe, but that's it."
Well you are wrong. Those adds in effect are telling you their drugs are safe, with the caveat of all the often disturbingly dangerous side effects they quickly rush through at the end.
Well in the cases of numerous drugs they are pushing it turns out they are in fact dangerous, they had the data that showed they were safe and they've been colluding with corrupt officials in the FDA to suppress it. The short list Bextra, Cresto, Meridia, Serevent and Vioxx. Celebrex is under suspicion being in the same class as Vioxx and Bextra. Chances are high Vioxx has killed a substantial number of people, its impossible to tell because they all died of heart attacks and strokes. Many experts are reviewing the case for XOX-2 inhibitors and have concluded there is no actual rationale for them. Ibuprofen at a few cents a pill may be as effective versus COX-2 at 3 dollars a pill. Merck and Pfizer just marketed COX-2 as a miracle drug, brushed all the negative data under the rug with the help of the FDA. and conned everyone in to switching from a generic over the counter drug to a patented prescription drug that they've profited to the tune of billions on, and which have probably killed and people based on the suppressed data.
To retiterare what I posed when this started, all indications are Vioxx and Bextra should be banned but the FDA formed a committee stacked in the favor of Pfizer and Merck and lo and behold they voted to put them back on the market because it would have cost Pfizer and Merck billions to take them down and we value profits over killing people. 10 of the people on the committee have done consulting work for the drug companies in the past, had a of conflict of interest and shouldn't have been on the panel. They voted 9 to 1 for the drug companies. Without their votes Vioxx and Bextra would have been voted off the market.
A similar problem exists with antidepressants. All indications are some of them are causing more problems than they solve. Some were never tested on children but the drug companies successfully marketed them for children anyway. It was a huge growth market. What parent with a problem child wouldn't snap up a magic pill that fixed their kid. Unfortunately it turns out that in children, rather than curing depression they often push children in to hallucinations and suicidal tendencies.
"The Internet is a great communications medium, and it doesn't take billions to use it"
And it wont have any measurable impact against the power of drug companies. Television dominates the lives and thinking of most Americans and you have to be rich to exploit it.
My posting here is pissing in to the wind.
All in all I appreciate your enthusiasm but you are pretty naive about how the real world works. It would be great if everything on Television was true and for the greater good but its not, its brainwashing propaganda designed to make rich companies richer. TV has turned in to the oracle of deception and doom for Americans if not the world. Its a fatal flaw in capitalism that most people will do anything they have to, to turn a profit and get rich, and they don't care who they hurt or the damage they cause.
"No, we didn't. You said advertising before, and I called you on it. You should have said, as you're saying now, that they banned _some_ advertising."
If there was a first amendment issue here then Congress couldn't have banned television and radio ads. At this point you are just hair splitting hairs trying to salvage an arguement you've lost. You may not like it but the precedent already exists for Congress and the FCC to ban advertising on TV and radio which is where the drug companies are pouring billions of dollars each year to the detriment of everyone(except the media raking in those ad dollars).
All in all its a hollow victory on my part though because there is ZERO chance of Congress banning drug company ads. They are probably the single most powerful lobby in Washington and they outright own the President and Congress.
"For the government to paternalistically limit the free flow of factual information that the public can receive is bad for us."
Its equally bad, if not worse for coporations to be allowed to use their deep pockets to bombard us with often false information that is really bad for us. For example the cigarette companies saturated TV, radio and movies with ads for their products in the '50's and '60's and suckered whole generations in to thinking it was cool to smoke. Millions of people died as a direct result of that advertising and the health care costs caring for them have run in to the hundreds of billions if not trillions. They also effectively suppressed the fact that they were pushing an addictive drug, so once people started they couldn't stop.
You seem to be obsessed with fear of government propaganda and censorship buy you've seem completely indifferent to corporate propaganda and censorship through saturation.
I'm 100% with you on first amendment protections for individuals, but I draw the line at protecting the right of corporations to use their wealth for propaganda, deception and fraud.
"The fact that the wheels of justice turn slowly should not be misinterpreted to mean that justice is inappropriate."
Or it means that for 150+ years no court would have dreamed of giving corporations the rights given to individuals by the bill of rights. Only in recent years have corporations acquired such massive control over the political process and the judiciary that they succeeded in bestowing upon themselves civil liberties.
The thing you've missed in your little crusade about civil liberties is corporations are in fact siezing control of government and power and you have more to fear from them today than you do bureaucrats.
"If you don't like these ads, tell people so, and make your case to them. "
That is silly. I don't have billions of dollars to spend to run ads to counter the drug companies. They charge inflated prices for drugs grandma needs to live or die and then turn all those profits in to saturation advertising to push more drugs on people they may or may not need them. They have a multibillion dollar megaphone no individual can compete against.
I personally don't have a problem with their product, unless they are dangerous which many are proving to be, but they are prescription drugs. Your doctor should be deciding if you need them, you shouldn't let a one minute TV ad diagnose you with ADHD, anxiety disorder, etc. It is both unethical and dangerous.
"We didn't. I see cigarette advertisements all the time."
Yes we did. Congress banned cigarette ads on television and radio in 1971 (the exact year I'm not sure of). The tobacco companies circumvented it somewhat by plastering signs and their name on sporting events, car racing in particular but there are have been no outright cigarette ads in the U.S. for 34 years. Some places outside the U.S. ban them in sporting events too so racing teams sponsored by tobacco companies have to race with logoless cars in those venues.
Cigarette ads are still allowed in print, which is maybe what you are refering to, though some publishing companies like the New York Times banned them there too on their own volition.
"They've been saying so for, oh, 30-40 years now"
You see thats the rub, it was never recognized that corporations had first amendment rights until the 1970's. The first amendment is well over 200 years old but somehow this right only sprung in to existence recently. Its more an indication of the power of large corporations over our government in recent years than any right they had when the bill of rights was passed. The Bill of Rights are individual rights, not corporate rights.
If it is a first amendement violation explain to me how we outlawed advertising cigarettes, they are a regulated drug too. Try again. Its also very much open to debate if corporate speech is protected by the First amendment.
They could advertise over the counter drugs all they want, just not prescription drugs.
There is considerable irony in the Republican's outrage about Janet's breast and what Howard says but there is a daily bombardment of ads concerning Viagra and erections. I wonder how all the bible thumpers, petitioning the FCC to stamp out obscenity, cope with their kids being bombarding daily with ads for drugs involving erections and enhancing sexual pleasure. Maybe they are just as enraged about them but the drug lobbies clout is even greater than theirs.
That FAQ answer was 5 years ago, things have changed. Back then I think Rob probably still cared, he probably was still aiming to cash in on the dot.com boom, probably hadn't cashed in any stock yet, and it was before moderation. All the complaints he had there about what the mob would pick can be said about moderation on posts too but we still do that now. I wager he cares a lot less about Slashdot today than he did then or he would have taken some action to put an end to all the dupe front page stories. I'm wondering if:
A. he hasn't even noticed the massive number of dupes and bogus stories lately B. he doesn't care
"That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life."
Uh no, it would be the same people who moderate posts, everybody would do a little. Either moderation works or it doesn't. If it doesn't work it shouldn't be used on ordinary posts. If it does work it will work on submissions too with a little tweaking. You could start out just taking one or two moderated front page stories a day to work out the details and see if it works.
I can also see a big benefit of having all raw submissions being publicly viewable. If you are about to submit a story you can look and see if its already submitted and not waste everyone's time posting it again if a good submission is already in the queue. It would be kind of interesting to see all the things people are submitting that are getting rejected.
My proposed solution to the mess the Slashdot front page has turned in to of late is to use moderation to select the stories that are posted to the front page.
You give people with reasonable karma an extra set of mod points that only can be used to mode story submissions.
You would need to give people with mod points the ability to mark stories as duplicates of recent posts and they would land in the trash bin immediately, there is something of an honor system there though meta moderation could catch people who can stories as dupes that aren't.
The moderators would also need a way to move new submissions in to groups so that all the submissions on the same news are grouped together.
Then the moderators start scoring submissions just like moderation does now. The top scoring submission within the group would be the one that gets considered for the front page.
You would also need to choose the most highly moderated stories between all the groups on different news.
You can establish how many stories you want to get to the front page each day say 12, so every 2 hours on average the current top moderated submission would be automaticly posted. Maybe you post a few more during peak reader hours in the U.S. and Europe.
You might want to allow a higher top score than +5 for this system so really stellar stories get a really high score.
Its sad to have to propose such a solution but its becoming pretty obvious that Rob and Co. aren't reading the site they moderate less than most of the rest of us. Presumably Slashdot has turned in to a job for them and they apparently don't like their job. Most of us read Slashdot when we should be doing our real job, while apparently they don't read it and it is their job.
If you keep posting dupe after dupe it proves you aren't reading all the front page articles or you would remember something as "unique" as a hamster powered songwriter.
Its also been suggested that they are showing some pretty serious bias, Michael for example always going with left leaning stories, and they all seem to have assigned submission god status to Rolan Piqa-whatever.
I'm willing to guess, with some work, moderated control of the front page would be fairer and less likely to produce dupes and bias than the current system. I also wager they might do a better job of picking the best submission on a story and cull out the error filled, flawed and factually incorrect posts which also are appearing on the front page too often lately.
After all this is an open source fanboy site so why is control of Slashdot's front page proprietary and closed.
If you want to bring drug prices under control in the U.S. the first really easy step is to outlaw advertising prescription drugs to the public. You can follow the model under which cigarettes are outlawed.
There is zero reason to be pushing prescription drugs on TV. They should only be advertising to doctors and then only with factual information, audited by an unbiased third party, and not marketing them like underarm deodorant with catchy names and pretty colors.
The drug companies are spending staggering sums on advertising to increase their market share which has several results:
- They inflate drug prices in order to fund the advertising - They push people to push doctors to give them drugs they may or may not need. - The money they are wasting on advertising would be better spent on R&D and safety testing.
I also wager drug companies have dubious rights to many patents in the first place. Much of the basic research is being done by publicly funded universities and institutes, and the drug companies just jump in when they see something which they can profit from, patent it and bring it to market. If public funding is involved in the research that led to the drug the drug companies really have no right to patent it. Even if the drug companies develops the drug they are often massively subsidized with tax breaks and grants.
Here is an interesting editorial on cancer drug development. In the past the lions share of drug discovery came through the National Cancer Institute and its grants to universities and institutes. It appears the Bush administration is slashing NCI funding and striving to push drug discovery in to the private sector, the drug companies. The only problem with that is it is likely only discoveries that look profitable to the drug company will be pursued. In many respects its the same shortsightedness you see in all American business. If its not near term profitable basic research will be axed, treatments for things that don't affect large numbers of people will also be axed.
All in all this is an arena were public funding will probably work better than private enterprise.
Public institutions already do much of the important work, and their role could be easily extended to do the drug trials. The payoff to the country as a whole would far outweigh the cost in tax payer dollars. In fact it would probably reduce our tax burden especially with a Medicare drug benefit coming online which the drug companies are going to exploit to pocket hundreds of billions of tax dollars.
All in all I'm not really sure what drug companies actually add to the process. The drug trials they are supposed to be doing at great expense to bring a drug safely to market have recently proven to be suspect if not outright fraudulent. When there are billions riding on a new drug they are going to do their best to brush negative results under the rug and obviously have, and whats worse the FDA increasingly rubber stamps it when the do. The FDA has stopped being an impartial watchdog and is increasingly a business partner with the drug companies. Here is a pretty good read on the recent FDA committee vote to let Vioxx back on the market and keep Bextra and Celebrex on the market. Ten of the people on the committee had past financial ties to the drug companies involved and voted 9 to 1 in favor of the drug companies. Without those biased votes Vioxx would have stayed off the market and Bextra would have been taken off, Celebrex would have still won the vote.
At the end of the day the main things drug companies seem to really bring to the table are marketing, advertising and profiteering and needless to say those are all extreme negatives.
Lieberman is one of those people who really needs to change parties, Zell Miller too. Remember how when walking out from the State of the Union George W. practicly French kissed him.
I suspect that they are really Republican moles. The Republicans early in their lives started paying them under the table to join the Democratic party and then spend their entire career being whiny, pathetic and embarrassing just to see how much damage they could do to the Democratic party from inside. I suspect that Lieberman, probably more than any other single person, helped insure George W. won the 2000 election. And so I've explained the mystery behind the kiss at the state of the union. It was a big fat, belated, thank you for helping getting George W. elected in 2000.
Zell Miller did his part in 2004 by his lunatic ranting at the Republican convention, saying things that Republicans were reluctant to say out loud, but were delighted to give their mole prime time to rant at the top of his lungs stuff that was basicly slander.
"...you're expecting the staff to find a needle in a haystack since these problems can occur anywhere in the primary coolant system."
Not sure it was your intent but you are basicly saying pressure vessels are inherently dangerous?
" don't know about you, but I'm much more likely to die on a highway to work than at work"
The problem is if you die in a highway accident the societal impact is minimal. A serious accident at a nuclear reactor will lead to widespread devastation. So you have high probability, low consequence versus low probability high consequence.
I'll grant you coal is bad too but you didn't make a good case for profession if that was the intent of your post.
Do a google search on Davis Besse. Its the nuclear power plant that nearly let their containment vessel rust through.
As for the profitability of power companies versus media companies, First Energy, the owners of Davis Besse and some coal fired power plants cleared $878 million in profits just in the first quarter of 2004, and that was while they were stuggling to repair Davis Besse. Energy companies, thanks to deregulation, a blind eye from the FERC and the Bush administration, and a carefully managed shortage of power can charge as much as they want for electricty.
First Energy's name may sound familiar because they are also suspected to have been responsible for the blackout on the east coast.
Also reference Enron's scam to nearly bankrupt California by artificially inflating the price of electricity. California pled for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to step in since it was obvious Enron was colluding with several other energy traders to extort billions of dollars from Californians for electricty. Their illegal activity, since proven by tapes of their energy traders planning the scam, bankrupted PG&E, hammered California's economy and is still hammering it due to the still high cost of electricity, and of course helped put the Republican's in to the governorship. Now there was a situation where some regulation, fines and criminal charges were called for and to date the Bush administration has done nothing about it, and many suspect were in fact colluding with Enron to commit this gigantic fraud, both to help Enron's profitibility and to force a Democrat Governor out of office.
All in all these fines are just the New Republican Party and the Religious right waging war on New York and Hollywood liberals and striving to inflict their puritanical values on everyone. Meanwhile they are letting their rich friends and big corporate backers rape, loot and pillage the public in order to make handsome profits.
If it hadn't been for the Arabs the Romans would have inflicted Roman numerals on us and that would have set us back millennia.
The Romans don't have any particular claim to most of the stuff on your list.
As for Irrigation: Evidence exists of irrigation in Mesopotamia and Egypt as far back as the 6th millennium BC.
As for wine: Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that wine was (like beer) produced about 7000 years ago in what is today Iran, and is one of the first known biological engineering tasks, where the biological process of fermentation is used in a process. The earliest known evidence of wine dates to 5400 B.C., from Hajji Firuz Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of present-day Iran, near the city of Urmia.[1]
As for roads: Many historical examples exist of road and road-building. Some of the most famous are the Roman roads and the Incan courier roads. The oldest engineered road yet discovered is the Sweet Track causeway in England, dating from the 3800s BC. In ancient times, transport by river was far easier and faster than travel by road, especially considering the cost of road construction and the difference in carrying capacity between carts and river barges - provided only that the rivers were navigable in the right places; availability of water transport also influenced settlement patterns
As for medicine don't think the Romans have any particularly claim to it. Egyptians might have actually pioneered surgery. Most others were focused on diet and spirituality until the 18th century or so. It didn't really become very useful until the last couple of centuries.
It is kind of a given that secure encrypted wireless networks would be perceived as a serious threat to a totalitarian state. It will make it hard for them to censor everything and to spot insurrection.
Centralized ISP's where all the network traffic is going through a small number of choke points are much better suited to totalitarian states.
But if a totalitarian state concedes wireless is here to stay they are going to try to mandate one with a backdoor known to the state so they can with some difficulty eavedrop on wireless traffic and networks. They can't listen to it all but the threat that they can monitor it will slow down its use for activities frowned upon by the state.
You could argue well dissidents could just use strong encryption on top of back doored wireless standard but the state can establish that volunteer use of strong encryption is a sign of disloyalty. They can't complain if strong encryption is a standard part of the network protocol, therefor they need to insure the encryption in the standard protocol is easily breeched.
Its an interesting intellectual exercise for anti establishment geeks to contemplate what could be done with wireless networks to create an alternate Internet free of the yoke of government/coprate regulation and oppression. For example if trusted computing comes to be and you have to run a trusted platform to gain access to the network, it it worth the price to relinquish control of your computer, or would it be better to move to a Pirate's Net using wireless and free of government and corporate control.
Could you use a mesh and mirroring to create a wireless network that spanned an entire large nation. Obviously the number of hops to get from one side to the other would be murder so networks would bias to local communities and mirroring more than today's Internet. Realtime games would pretty much have to play locally due to the bad ping times.
This is just the first challenge, could you create an Internet replacement using wireless more or less as it is today.
The harder challenge, could you create a robust and survivable Pirate's Net if your government was actively trying to stamp it out.
"is that Communist ideals, always and everywhere, fail in practice"
Like most unfounded generalizations, thats not really true.
They only thing thats failed recently was Stalinism which was really the only thing resembling Communism that was tried on a large scale in the last century and it was really more Authoritarian Socialism. Trotsky advocated a substantially more democratic form of communism, abhorred Stalin's repressive tendencies, but lost a power struggle and his life. If Trotsky had won, the last century would have been a much different place. All that was proved in China and Russia in the last century is that dictators can be ruthless and brutal, both Stalin and Mao were, but so were Hitler, and Mussolini, Pinochet and the Shah of Iran...this list goes on for a while so for brevity I'll stop here.
Before humankind developed agriculture and started economies man lived under "primitive communism". It worked quite well and was substantially less devastating to our planet than capitalism has proven to be. It was the social form most native american tribes practiced and worked quite well until it encountered imperialist capitalism.
A few other examples of communism that doesn't really fit your mold were the earliest Christians which is somewhat ironic. They did in many instances live in communes and if you actually read Christ's teaching without bias he is in most instances advocating Communism and abandonment of personal property. Some community's like the Amish and Mennonite's live in communes today for this reason, its the closest economic model to the teachings of Christ. Their communes aren't perfect but many work quite well. The problem with modern Christian's are most of them like their wealth and property so they turn a blind eye to Christ's teachings on the subject.
Its a little hard to quantify what system China runs under these days but it appears to mostly be a Stalinist dictatorship with a mix of capitalist economics though its economy is so heavily controlled by the government it recently resembles Fascism more than Communism or Capitalism. China does present a problem with your generalization because it was for a very long time Stalinist Communism and its Communist party is still very much intact and now very successful though I grant you its sure not pure communism anymore.
Cuba certainly isn't perfect but it does get by and it has a few things over the U.S. In particular, quality health care for everyone, not just those who can afford it like in the U.S., and higher education for everyone based on merit and not based on who can afford it. Its certainly not a wealthy country but it does get buy which is amazing considering it has to endure economic boycott from its largest neighbor and has been under various forms of attack from the U.S. since its inception.
I'll probably get flamed for it but Gates and Balmer were right when they said it. The Linux community is in most respects a stateless communist community where everyone is contributing to the common good and no one is exacting property rights in return. It is an example of a true virtual commune that seems to work very well.
"the memory of the hundreds of millions killed by Communism"
Nice attempt to say:
Communism = killing millions of people
There isn't really any correlation. For example:
Fascism = killing millions of people too
Capitalism = killing millions of people too
Americans murdered millions of native American's by various means and generally practiced ethnic cleansing to push them out of their ancestral homes, and on to lands that were for the most part desolate and encouraged them to wither away and die. Many were killed in the process either directly or through famine and disease as Americans destroyed their primitive communes and their way of life in the name of profit and imperialism, the term used was "Manifest Destiny".
American's inflicted slavery on millions of people plucked out of Africa ag
"Many high-profile Frenchmen have been shown to have made millions (possibly billions) off of Iraq's oil-for-food program, which has made their lack of support against Iraq seem rather duplicitous. Were they against action against Iraq because such actions were wrong or because it might hurt their pocketbook? "
Many high-profile Americans have been shown to have made millions (possibly billions) off of the invasion of Iraq, which has made their support against Iraq seem rather duplicitous. Were they for action against Iraq because such actions were right or because it might filled their pocketbook?
Halliburton is the most obvious example, they've made billions from sole source contracts in Iraq, including outright fraud on fuel contracts, inflating numbers of meals in cafeterias for soldiers, $100 or more for a load of laundry, it goes on and on, and of course the number 1 cheerleader for the war in Iraq is the until very recently CEO of Halliburton, Dick Chaney.
Its been established that the coalition spent something around $8 billion dollars soon after the war with almost no accounting controls. They can't for the most part say where the money went, they were handing it out in buckets. It has at least the potential of being as bad or worse a case of fraud than oil for food, its just unlikely anyone will investigate it. At least the U.N. is investigating problem in oil for food.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones at the French windows.
Not sure we've whipped to death the apparent civil war at SCO's parent company the Canopy Group and why exactly they can't file basic paper work on time.
I'm inclined to guess some of the stock issues that are hanging up their 10K may have involved the executives who were summarily executed at Canopy, and since law suits are flying an no one is taking to anyone it may be impossible to get the information they need for their 10K, and maybe the fired execs at Canopy are exacting a revenge on Canopy and SCO.
Apparently the Noorda's advanced age has led them to drop out of active involvement in Canopy Group leading to a vicious power struggle between their kids and two teams of executives.
All in all it appears we have confirmation now that Canopy group is institutionally insane which helps explain why SCO went institutionally insane.
The ChoicePoint breech exposed a fundamental flaw in all credit/background information.
The business model is predicated on accumulating vast quantities of personal data on people and then selling access to other companies.
You see the problem is they will in fact sell the information to pretty much any company who wants it for a price.
If you want to commit identity theft all you have to do is create a legitimate company, if necessary fronting it with people without a criminal record, if you have one. As long as you jump through all the hurdles necessary to establish a legitimate company you can buy data from Choicepoint. You can then funnel all that data to identity thieves, they clean out a bunch of people, and you abandon their corporate front. Everything was totally legal up to the point you turned the data over to the identity thieves.
How exactly do you fix the problem. Not sure you can. Our current financial system and most background checks for employment are predicated on companies being able to gain access to this data. If you block all companies from accessing this many parts of your financial system stop working, credit, loans, insurance, employment checks. It is a near impossibility for a company like Choicepoint to accurately discriminate legitimate companies who have a reason for accessing this data and fronts that are going to exist just long enough to jump through all the hoops necessary to acquire the data legitimately and then use it illegally.
"Plus, who the !@#$% gave ChoicePoint permission to gather data on me?"
Uh, Choicepoint.
All you have to do is form a corporation whose charter is to enter the information business. Once you incorporate you do have to adhere to government regulations but otherwise you just start gathering data, initially from public sources, or you buy it from other companies. Choicepoint for example sucks up court records which are public so they probably have a somewhat better database on the criminial record of everyone than the states and federal government do since they collect it all in one place.
At some point you have to clear a hurdle where you acquire corporate clients, like a credit card company. Once you clear that hurdle everytime someone fills out a credit card application the credit card company sends all the information to your company. You cross check and validate it and if it appears legitimate all the info is entered in your database. At that point you start having data other companies don't and you can start selling access to it and then you profit.
The only way I can see getting out of this conundrum in the digital/network age is you have to give everyone a secure digital signature instead of something as ancient and vulnerable as a name and a Social Security number. Each person needs to be able to attach a password to this new digital social security number so that they can establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that when that number is used it being used by the person that owns it. You can give the encrypted sig out to just about anyone, but no one but you should be able to actually use it get a loan, make a bank transaction, apply for a credit card etcetera since you would have to have the password for the signature to validate you own it.
Needless to say there would be a huge and traumatic transition from the current very vulnerable social security number to a digital signature. In particular you can't just write it on an application. You would have to transmit it through a computer, so you can enter the password and verify you own the ID. You also have to make sure the password entry isn't easily stolen. You also have to have a means for changing your digital signature in the event it is compromised.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not +5 insightful. Schroeder is just whipping to death the fact that at one point in time some airline and airline worker at SFO was apparently badly enforcing FAA/TSA regulations that require all passengers to be ID'ed and matched against the "Don Not Fly" list.
I wager if you go back to SFO now chances are slim you will get on an airplane without an ID. It is FAA/TSA regulation and if an airline refuses to ID and check every passenger against the Do Not Fly list the FAA/TSA will eventually ground them or prevent them from entering U.S. air space.
The "Do Not Fly" list is however so badly implemented it wouldn't be at all suprising if some airlines or individuals are blowing it off. Thats what people do in the face of incompetent bureaucracy, throw wooden shoes in to it, sabotage.
The other obvious problem is in trying to keep the whole thing secret they've done a really bad job of enforcing the whole thing, in training airlines and airline workers on what is required by the regulation and in Europe especially they routinely don't complete the "Do Not Fly" list checks before the plane takes off leading to planes turning back or being rerouted to Maine.
The airlines have nothing to do with this other than they've been forced to ID all passengers and check their names agains the "Do Not Fly" list. The TSA/FAA/FBI are the ones that are forcing this policy.
The key point is if an airline refuses to do it they will be denied access to U.S. air space, they will either be grounded in the U.S. or turned back if they are trying to fly in to the U.S. for Europe for example. If an airliner leaves London or Paris with someone on board that matched the Do Not Fly list they are either forced to turn back or are forced to land in Maine and the person is taken off the plane and detained and the rest of the passengers are screen for possible conspirators.
Just to clarify a rampant mistake in terminology in this whole article. This is not a question of "law" it is a question of "regulation". The difference is the first is passed by Congress and the second is just written by the executive branch and its agencies, the FAA, FCC and TSA for example.
To my knowledge Congress has never passed a "law" implementing the "Do Not Fly" list which led to this requirement airlines ID all passengers. If they had passed a law it probably wouldn't be secret and someone could show Gilmore the "law", There isn't one.
Congress has toyed with passing a law for several versions of "CAPPS" which are the next gen successors to the current stupid "Do Not Fly" list but Congress has so far balked at at the privacy invasion of CAPPS though the executive branch keeps bringing it back over and over again.
The "Do Not Fly" list began in the early '90's as FAA "regulation" in concert with the FBI. It was lame and wasn't for the most part enforced. After 9/11 it was given new life, dramaticly expanded and turned over to TSA, Homeland Security and FBI and is now widely and badly enforced.
It is to my knowledge all done through secret "regulation". However all airlines that fly in or in to the U.S. have to at least go through the motions of enforcing it, ID'ing all passengers and preventing passengers from flying whose names are on the "Do Not Fly" list. When they get a match they are supposed to call TSA/FBI agents who detain and interrogate the person. The person is usually completely innocent and just an unfortunate victim of having the same name as a suspected terrorist or even an alias a suspected terrorist uses. These innocent people are routinely harrassed, embarrassed and often prevented from flying and there is no known procedure for cleaing your name. Your best option is to petition your congressman who in turn begs the FBI, TSA, Homeland security to clear you.
If an airline employee refuses to enforce the regulation they will probably be fired so its "law" to them. If an airline refuses to enforce it they will probably be denied access to U.S. air space so its "law" to them, but it is really secret regulation created by the executive branch and its agencies, the FAA, TSA, FBI and Homeland Security.
"Interesting, then, that our posts are in almost complete agreement."
Uh not they aren't, here is why.
"Conversely, the same applies: just because an airline worker says there IS a law proves nothing."
THERE ISN'T A "LAW" but there is beyond a shadow of a doubt a secret set of regulations that the TSA/Homeland Security is forcing on any airline that flies within the U.S. or in to the U.S. Watch the fucking news man, this is the same system that causes airliners from Britain and France to be routinely turned back or rerouted to Maine when they discover, after the plane takes off, that someone on the plane had a name that matched the "Do Not Fly" list and they didn't catch it before they plane took off. Again this system is so badly implemented its basicly useless.
European airlines hate the living daylights out of the system but they have to go through the motions of enforcing it or the FAA/TSA will deny them entry to American airspace which they have to have.
"then airlines and airports shouldn't make it seem that it is a "law", proper, that must be obeyed in order to fly"
Get off the "law" thing. There are TSA/FAA regulations that are just as binding as law to the airlines. Whether you call it law or regulation the airlines have to implement it. If a counter worker refuses they will probably be fired. If an airline refuses they will be grounded if in the U.S. or denied entry to U.S. airspace if outside the U.S.
Commercial airlines are at the mercy of the FAA/TSA, just like the networks are at the mercy of the FCC. They have to do what they say unless Congress or the Courts step in. Gilmore is pretty much going to have to get a court to rule the regulation is illegal to stop this, or Congress will have to pass a law outlawing this practice which is unlikely due to politicians fear of being branded as soft on terrorism and security.
"Lastly, the system may be inept. But what real security measures should be taken at airports, then?"
Like I said in another post:
A. Armored cockpit doors, already done, didn't cost much, doesn't punish the public, makes it nearly impossible to seize control of an airliner thus and precludes another 9/11.
B. Pursue every improvement you can in screening passengers, baggage and freight, for guns and explosives. If someone gets box cutters on the worst thing they are going to do is attack a passenger and the passengers are going to fight back post 9/11.
The chances are slim of another 9/11 style hijacking and crash thanks to armored cockpit doors. Worst thing you are going to see is maybe a bombing and crashing a plane which would be sad but not a disaster of 9/11 scale. Again do your best to stop it by screening for explosives.
Bottomline is trying to screen people is never going to work. A terrorist group just has to recruit someone with a squeaky clean record or give a person first class fake ID.
Chances are Al Qaida is going to pursue a completely different strategy for their next attack anyway because armored cockpit doors make their old attack strategy a low probability of success strategy. If they want to get people in to the U.S. for a land based attacked, a truck bomb for example, U.S. borders are so porous they can pretty much walk across the Mexican border. Millions of people have done it and do it everyday.
Again your whipping a dead horse.
There isn't a law until and unless Congress passes some version of CAPPS which they've been reluctant to do due to the invasive privacy intrusion CAPPS representz. A CAPPS variant might lessen the insanity of the current "Do Not Fly" because you might not be detained just because your name matches some name on the list, presumably your social security number or passport ID or other data would better discriminate you from the know terrorist. The down side is CAPPS will be much more intrusive and probably bring a host of new problems.
And again we aren't talking about a "secret law" we are talking about a well known set of "secret regulations" implemented by the FAA/FBI, under either Clint or the First Bush, and dramaticly expansed by the FBI/TSA/Homeland security post 9/11, again entirely by the Executive branch which doesn't pass laws but can implement regulations unless Congress or the courts stop them.
I'm pretty sure the unfortunate airline counter works might use the term "secret law" because to them secret law and secret regulation is basicly the same thing, all they know is the TSA has ordered their airline, and in turn their boss has ordered them, to ID everyone, match everyone's name against a secret list via computer, and everytime there is a match they call the FBI/TSA agents in the terminal who come and pull the unfortunate, often completely innocent passenger, aside for interrogation, often making them miss their flight, usually hugely embarrasing them, and sometime prevent them from flying all together. And again its nearly impossible to get get your name off the list once you prove your innocence, because the procedure for getting off the list is a secret as who puts names on the list, and whose names are on the list.
You really are defending an insane bureaucracy that is completely in the wrong, for no obvious reason. If the "Do Not Fly" list actually worked maybe you would have a leg to stand on, but it doesn't, it mostly just harrasses innocent people.
Well your lengthy rant is pretty much completely wrong.
There isn't exactly a secret "law" but there is a set of secret regulations that have led to this requirement. EPIC made a set of FOIA requests to try to expose the same things Gilmore is pursuing. They got enough docs to prove its existence, and they have censored docs that concealed most of what they wanted to know about it, in particular who puts names on it, how do get them off and what names are on it.
Just because SFO let him fly proves nothing other than people at the airline in SFO probably weren't doing what the TSA/FBI ordered them to do. Chances are very low you will be able to fly without showing an ID so you wasted WAY to much time pretending that just because one counter work at an airline didn't check it, that this proves anything.
So its not exactly law that airlines have to ID every passenger and check them against the list, its more a regulation Homeland Security and the FBI is trying to shove down the airline's throats and I don't think Congress ever passed it as a law. It was done entirely withing the executive branch. I'm very confident airlines would be overjoyed if they weren't burdened with this law enforcement task, especially since the system is completely incompetent and is mostly nabbing innocent people who happen to have names the same as those on the list. Airline counter works are probably sick of the ugly scenes that ensue when a completely innocent person is pulled aside by the FBI/Homeland Security and harassed for no good reason than being unlucky enough to have the same name as someone on the list.
All in all you really ought'a be ashamed for defending such and insane and inept system.
It is old news but your ID is required so they can match your name against the "Do Not Fly" list. Not sure that there was ever a law passed to create the do not fly list. Its been around since the early nineties and ping ponged between the FAA and the FBI and now I think is the purview of the TSA and the FBI. It was pretty much useless throughout its history up to 9/11. In fact a couple of the 9/11 hijackers were on the "Do Not Fly" list or at least known terrorist lists but no one enforced the list before 9/11. Most of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID and weren't on the list so this ID requirement wouldn't have slowed them down at all though if someone had actually been checking the list on 9/11 two of them would have been stopped from flying. Still its pretty easy to recruit hijackers who are unknown to the FBI/TSA or they can easily develop aliases and fake ID's to circumvent this stupid list.
Gillmore does have a case though I'm not sure its the one he's is pursuing. The fundamental problem with the "Do Not Fly" list is its a relatively arbitrary list of names and aliases of suspected terrorist and is blatantly discriminating against people who happen to have the same name. If you happen to have the same name as one of the names on the list your life will turn in to a living hell if you try to fly. That is where these regulations are unjust and should be overturned.
You can suffer an arbitrary punishment, humiliation and it can destroy your career if you need to fly for you business and the only thing you did wrong was to be unlucky to have a name that some suspected terrorist used at some point in time. The guidelines for putting names on the list is secret, the procedure for getting off is secret and ill defined. It is a system ripe for abuse since some bureaucrat some place can apparently add any name he wants to the list and punish for example political dissidents or people opposing those in power. About all you can do to get your name off is petition your congressman to lobby for you. Its probably easier to slightly mutate your name or legally change your name.
Bottomline is it is institutional insanity and Gilmore is right to fight it though its iffy if he will win. The "Do Not Fly" list hasn't caught a single terrorist in the act or to anyones knowledge prevented a hijacking or bombing. It did nab Cat Stevens, author of the song Peace Train. It is just something an incompetent bureaucracy instituted to put on a show for the public they were doing something to protect them. The two things they needed to do instead, that worked, were:
- put armored cockpit doors on all airliners. DONE and there is almost no chance of a repeat of 9/11. Didn't cost that much, didn't inconvience the public at all or threaten their civil liberties
- better screen passengers and baggage for explosives and weapons. Kind of done though siezing sewing scissors and pocket knives is completely insane and unnecessary. With armored cockpit doors a potential hijacker can't seize the plane using crude weapons like box cutters, all they can do is try to attack passengers, and the passengers would fight back.
To fix the do not fly list is nearly impossible so it should be scrapped. Simple name matching is useless and going to punish more innocent people than catch terrorists.
You would have to go to a CAPPS type system where you are probing everyone's social security number, personal data, etc at which point it would be ridiculously intrusive and abusive. A terrorist group could still circumvent it with a stolen ID or recruiting someone with a sparking clean history.
And again with armored cockpit doors a repeat of 9/11 is nearly impossible. The worst you will see is maybe a bomb downing an airliner. It would be a tragedy but its not the end of the world. Again improve screening for explosives and real weapons to reduce this risk.
"I like Slashdot for what it is. With users picking the stories I might up with a site substantially different."
Yea and for all you know it might be better.
What exactly is it that makes the people that are doing most of the picking special? OK if Rob and Hemos did all the picking maybe that would be true to the original spirit of Slashdot and adhere to his Faq answer, that he wants to post stuff he finds interesting to the front page. Well Rob doesn't do the lions share of the front page filtering any more and I think Hemos is long gone. Its now done by a semi random and often fluid bunch of employees who don't have anything special to offer over the average Slashdot reader.
And the key point you seem to miss is they apparently don't even seem to be reading Slashdot otherwise they would notice all the dupe submissions. So what exactly is it about them thats magic, at least slashdot readers doing the moderation would probably mean the people picking the front page stories would have actually read Slashdot which doesn't appear to be the case now.
Like I said give it a try and just post a couple stories a day from user moderation on the front page and see how it works, assuming some one takes the time to set it up right and work out the kinks. I'm willing to bet it couldn't be worse than what we've been seeing lately. You also can't bury moderated submissions in a section of their own because no one will read them. The front page is the only thing most people read, you can tell by the dearth of postings on all the articles that don't make the front page.
"And drug advertising will not make people spend money for drugs they don't need any more than they will spend on other advertised products (cars, beer, etc.) that the may or may not need"
Tell me another ridiculous, whopping lie please. Which of the following applies:
A. Do you actually believe this and are you ridiculously naive,
or
B. do you work for a drug company or a advertising agency?
"The FDA is still a decent watchdog."
OK so I guess you already told another whopping lie. A whistelblower within the FDA has tirelessly and at great risk to himself shown time after time the FDA has failed miserably at its oversight responsibilities, Here and here just for starters. Its widely recognized that the FDA has pretty much sold out to the drug companies and is working more as a partner to enhance their profitibility and is disregarding evidence of danger in their products to avoid costing the drug companies billions of dollars when their flagship drugs prove to be dangerous and should be taken off the market.
"But I don't think that the typical prescription drug ad on tv is false. Annoying, maybe, but that's it."
Well you are wrong. Those adds in effect are telling you their drugs are safe, with the caveat of all the often disturbingly dangerous side effects they quickly rush through at the end.
Well in the cases of numerous drugs they are pushing it turns out they are in fact dangerous, they had the data that showed they were safe and they've been colluding with corrupt officials in the FDA to suppress it. The short list Bextra, Cresto, Meridia, Serevent and Vioxx. Celebrex is under suspicion being in the same class as Vioxx and Bextra. Chances are high Vioxx has killed a substantial number of people, its impossible to tell because they all died of heart attacks and strokes. Many experts are reviewing the case for XOX-2 inhibitors and have concluded there is no actual rationale for them. Ibuprofen at a few cents a pill may be as effective versus COX-2 at 3 dollars a pill. Merck and Pfizer just marketed COX-2 as a miracle drug, brushed all the negative data under the rug with the help of the FDA. and conned everyone in to switching from a generic over the counter drug to a patented prescription drug that they've profited to the tune of billions on, and which have probably killed and people based on the suppressed data.
To retiterare what I posed when this started, all indications are Vioxx and Bextra should be banned but the FDA formed a committee stacked in the favor of Pfizer and Merck and lo and behold they voted to put them back on the market because it would have cost Pfizer and Merck billions to take them down and we value profits over killing people. 10 of the people on the committee have done consulting work for the drug companies in the past, had a of conflict of interest and shouldn't have been on the panel. They voted 9 to 1 for the drug companies. Without their votes Vioxx and Bextra would have been voted off the market.
A similar problem exists with antidepressants. All indications are some of them are causing more problems than they solve. Some were never tested on children but the drug companies successfully marketed them for children anyway. It was a huge growth market. What parent with a problem child wouldn't snap up a magic pill that fixed their kid. Unfortunately it turns out that in children, rather than curing depression they often push children in to hallucinations and suicidal tendencies.
"The Internet is a great communications medium, and it doesn't take billions to use it"
And it wont have any measurable impact against the power of drug companies. Television dominates the lives and thinking of most Americans and you have to be rich to exploit it.
My posting here is pissing in to the wind.
All in all I appreciate your enthusiasm but you are pretty naive about how the real world works. It would be great if everything on Television was true and for the greater good but its not, its brainwashing propaganda designed to make rich companies richer. TV has turned in to the oracle of deception and doom for Americans if not the world. Its a fatal flaw in capitalism that most people will do anything they have to, to turn a profit and get rich, and they don't care who they hurt or the damage they cause.
"No, we didn't. You said advertising before, and I called you on it. You should have said, as you're saying now, that they banned _some_ advertising."
If there was a first amendment issue here then Congress couldn't have banned television and radio ads. At this point you are just hair splitting hairs trying to salvage an arguement you've lost. You may not like it but the precedent already exists for Congress and the FCC to ban advertising on TV and radio which is where the drug companies are pouring billions of dollars each year to the detriment of everyone(except the media raking in those ad dollars).
All in all its a hollow victory on my part though because there is ZERO chance of Congress banning drug company ads. They are probably the single most powerful lobby in Washington and they outright own the President and Congress.
"For the government to paternalistically limit the free flow of factual information that the public can receive is bad for us."
Its equally bad, if not worse for coporations to be allowed to use their deep pockets to bombard us with often false information that is really bad for us. For example the cigarette companies saturated TV, radio and movies with ads for their products in the '50's and '60's and suckered whole generations in to thinking it was cool to smoke. Millions of people died as a direct result of that advertising and the health care costs caring for them have run in to the hundreds of billions if not trillions. They also effectively suppressed the fact that they were pushing an addictive drug, so once people started they couldn't stop.
You seem to be obsessed with fear of government propaganda and censorship buy you've seem completely indifferent to corporate propaganda and censorship through saturation.
I'm 100% with you on first amendment protections for individuals, but I draw the line at protecting the right of corporations to use their wealth for propaganda, deception and fraud.
"The fact that the wheels of justice turn slowly should not be misinterpreted to mean that justice is inappropriate."
Or it means that for 150+ years no court would have dreamed of giving corporations the rights given to individuals by the bill of rights. Only in recent years have corporations acquired such massive control over the political process and the judiciary that they succeeded in bestowing upon themselves civil liberties.
The thing you've missed in your little crusade about civil liberties is corporations are in fact siezing control of government and power and you have more to fear from them today than you do bureaucrats.
"If you don't like these ads, tell people so, and make your case to them. "
That is silly. I don't have billions of dollars to spend to run ads to counter the drug companies. They charge inflated prices for drugs grandma needs to live or die and then turn all those profits in to saturation advertising to push more drugs on people they may or may not need them. They have a multibillion dollar megaphone no individual can compete against.
I personally don't have a problem with their product, unless they are dangerous which many are proving to be, but they are prescription drugs. Your doctor should be deciding if you need them, you shouldn't let a one minute TV ad diagnose you with ADHD, anxiety disorder, etc. It is both unethical and dangerous.
"We didn't. I see cigarette advertisements all the time."
Yes we did. Congress banned cigarette ads on television and radio in 1971 (the exact year I'm not sure of). The tobacco companies circumvented it somewhat by plastering signs and their name on sporting events, car racing in particular but there are have been no outright cigarette ads in the U.S. for 34 years. Some places outside the U.S. ban them in sporting events too so racing teams sponsored by tobacco companies have to race with logoless cars in those venues.
Cigarette ads are still allowed in print, which is maybe what you are refering to, though some publishing companies like the New York Times banned them there too on their own volition.
"They've been saying so for, oh, 30-40 years now"
You see thats the rub, it was never recognized that corporations had first amendment rights until the 1970's. The first amendment is well over 200 years old but somehow this right only sprung in to existence recently. Its more an indication of the power of large corporations over our government in recent years than any right they had when the bill of rights was passed. The Bill of Rights are individual rights, not corporate rights.
If it is a first amendement violation explain to me how we outlawed advertising cigarettes, they are a regulated drug too. Try again. Its also very much open to debate if corporate speech is protected by the First amendment.
They could advertise over the counter drugs all they want, just not prescription drugs.
There is considerable irony in the Republican's outrage about Janet's breast and what Howard says but there is a daily bombardment of ads concerning Viagra and erections. I wonder how all the bible thumpers, petitioning the FCC to stamp out obscenity, cope with their kids being bombarding daily with ads for drugs involving erections and enhancing sexual pleasure. Maybe they are just as enraged about them but the drug lobbies clout is even greater than theirs.
"That will never happen."
That FAQ answer was 5 years ago, things have changed. Back then I think Rob probably still cared, he probably was still aiming to cash in on the dot.com boom, probably hadn't cashed in any stock yet, and it was before moderation. All the complaints he had there about what the mob would pick can be said about moderation on posts too but we still do that now. I wager he cares a lot less about Slashdot today than he did then or he would have taken some action to put an end to all the dupe front page stories. I'm wondering if:
A. he hasn't even noticed the massive number of dupes and bogus stories lately
B. he doesn't care
"That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life."
Uh no, it would be the same people who moderate posts, everybody would do a little. Either moderation works or it doesn't. If it doesn't work it shouldn't be used on ordinary posts. If it does work it will work on submissions too with a little tweaking. You could start out just taking one or two moderated front page stories a day to work out the details and see if it works.
I can also see a big benefit of having all raw submissions being publicly viewable. If you are about to submit a story you can look and see if its already submitted and not waste everyone's time posting it again if a good submission is already in the queue. It would be kind of interesting to see all the things people are submitting that are getting rejected.
My proposed solution to the mess the Slashdot front page has turned in to of late is to use moderation to select the stories that are posted to the front page.
You give people with reasonable karma an extra set of mod points that only can be used to mode story submissions.
You would need to give people with mod points the ability to mark stories as duplicates of recent posts and they would land in the trash bin immediately, there is something of an honor system there though meta moderation could catch people who can stories as dupes that aren't.
The moderators would also need a way to move new submissions in to groups so that all the submissions on the same news are grouped together.
Then the moderators start scoring submissions just like moderation does now. The top scoring submission within the group would be the one that gets considered for the front page.
You would also need to choose the most highly moderated stories between all the groups on different news.
You can establish how many stories you want to get to the front page each day say 12, so every 2 hours on average the current top moderated submission would be automaticly posted. Maybe you post a few more during peak reader hours in the U.S. and Europe.
You might want to allow a higher top score than +5 for this system so really stellar stories get a really high score.
Its sad to have to propose such a solution but its becoming pretty obvious that Rob and Co. aren't reading the site they moderate less than most of the rest of us. Presumably Slashdot has turned in to a job for them and they apparently don't like their job. Most of us read Slashdot when we should be doing our real job, while apparently they don't read it and it is their job.
If you keep posting dupe after dupe it proves you aren't reading all the front page articles or you would remember something as "unique" as a hamster powered songwriter.
Its also been suggested that they are showing some pretty serious bias, Michael for example always going with left leaning stories, and they all seem to have assigned submission god status to Rolan Piqa-whatever.
I'm willing to guess, with some work, moderated control of the front page would be fairer and less likely to produce dupes and bias than the current system. I also wager they might do a better job of picking the best submission on a story and cull out the error filled, flawed and factually incorrect posts which also are appearing on the front page too often lately.
After all this is an open source fanboy site so why is control of Slashdot's front page proprietary and closed.
If you want to bring drug prices under control in the U.S. the first really easy step is to outlaw advertising prescription drugs to the public. You can follow the model under which cigarettes are outlawed.
There is zero reason to be pushing prescription drugs on TV. They should only be advertising to doctors and then only with factual information, audited by an unbiased third party, and not marketing them like underarm deodorant with catchy names and pretty colors.
The drug companies are spending staggering sums on advertising to increase their market share which has several results:
- They inflate drug prices in order to fund the advertising
- They push people to push doctors to give them drugs they may or may not need.
- The money they are wasting on advertising would be better spent on R&D and safety testing.
I also wager drug companies have dubious rights to many patents in the first place. Much of the basic research is being done by publicly funded universities and institutes, and the drug companies just jump in when they see something which they can profit from, patent it and bring it to market. If public funding is involved in the research that led to the drug the drug companies really have no right to patent it. Even if the drug companies develops the drug they are often massively subsidized with tax breaks and grants.
Here is an interesting editorial on cancer drug development. In the past the lions share of drug discovery came through the National Cancer Institute and its grants to universities and institutes. It appears the Bush administration is slashing NCI funding and striving to push drug discovery in to the private sector, the drug companies. The only problem with that is it is likely only discoveries that look profitable to the drug company will be pursued. In many respects its the same shortsightedness you see in all American business. If its not near term profitable basic research will be axed, treatments for things that don't affect large numbers of people will also be axed.
All in all this is an arena were public funding will probably work better than private enterprise.
Public institutions already do much of the important work, and their role could be easily extended to do the drug trials. The payoff to the country as a whole would far outweigh the cost in tax payer dollars. In fact it would probably reduce our tax burden especially with a Medicare drug benefit coming online which the drug companies are going to exploit to pocket hundreds of billions of tax dollars.
All in all I'm not really sure what drug companies actually add to the process. The drug trials they are supposed to be doing at great expense to bring a drug safely to market have recently proven to be suspect if not outright fraudulent. When there are billions riding on a new drug they are going to do their best to brush negative results under the rug and obviously have, and whats worse the FDA increasingly rubber stamps it when the do. The FDA has stopped being an impartial watchdog and is increasingly a business partner with the drug companies. Here is a pretty good read on the recent FDA committee vote to let Vioxx back on the market and keep Bextra and Celebrex on the market. Ten of the people on the committee had past financial ties to the drug companies involved and voted 9 to 1 in favor of the drug companies. Without those biased votes Vioxx would have stayed off the market and Bextra would have been taken off, Celebrex would have still won the vote.
At the end of the day the main things drug companies seem to really bring to the table are marketing, advertising and profiteering and needless to say those are all extreme negatives.
Lieberman is one of those people who really needs to change parties, Zell Miller too. Remember how when walking out from the State of the Union George W. practicly French kissed him.
I suspect that they are really Republican moles. The Republicans early in their lives started paying them under the table to join the Democratic party and then spend their entire career being whiny, pathetic and embarrassing just to see how much damage they could do to the Democratic party from inside. I suspect that Lieberman, probably more than any other single person, helped insure George W. won the 2000 election. And so I've explained the mystery behind the kiss at the state of the union. It was a big fat, belated, thank you for helping getting George W. elected in 2000.
Zell Miller did his part in 2004 by his lunatic ranting at the Republican convention, saying things that Republicans were reluctant to say out loud, but were delighted to give their mole prime time to rant at the top of his lungs stuff that was basicly slander.
"...you're expecting the staff to find a needle in a haystack since these problems can occur anywhere in the primary coolant system."
Not sure it was your intent but you are basicly saying pressure vessels are inherently dangerous?
" don't know about you, but I'm much more likely to die on a highway to work than at work"
The problem is if you die in a highway accident the societal impact is minimal. A serious accident at a nuclear reactor will lead to widespread devastation. So you have high probability, low consequence versus low probability high consequence.
I'll grant you coal is bad too but you didn't make a good case for profession if that was the intent of your post.
Do a google search on Davis Besse. Its the nuclear power plant that nearly let their containment vessel rust through.
As for the profitability of power companies versus media companies, First Energy, the owners of Davis Besse and some coal fired power plants cleared $878 million in profits just in the first quarter of 2004, and that was while they were stuggling to repair Davis Besse. Energy companies, thanks to deregulation, a blind eye from the FERC and the Bush administration, and a carefully managed shortage of power can charge as much as they want for electricty.
First Energy's name may sound familiar because they are also suspected to have been responsible for the blackout on the east coast.
Also reference Enron's scam to nearly bankrupt California by artificially inflating the price of electricity. California pled for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to step in since it was obvious Enron was colluding with several other energy traders to extort billions of dollars from Californians for electricty. Their illegal activity, since proven by tapes of their energy traders planning the scam, bankrupted PG&E, hammered California's economy and is still hammering it due to the still high cost of electricity, and of course helped put the Republican's in to the governorship. Now there was a situation where some regulation, fines and criminal charges were called for and to date the Bush administration has done nothing about it, and many suspect were in fact colluding with Enron to commit this gigantic fraud, both to help Enron's profitibility and to force a Democrat Governor out of office.
All in all these fines are just the New Republican Party and the Religious right waging war on New York and Hollywood liberals and striving to inflict their puritanical values on everyone. Meanwhile they are letting their rich friends and big corporate backers rape, loot and pillage the public in order to make handsome profits.
If it hadn't been for the Arabs the Romans would have inflicted Roman numerals on us and that would have set us back millennia.
The Romans don't have any particular claim to most of the stuff on your list.
As for Irrigation: Evidence exists of irrigation in Mesopotamia and Egypt as far back as the 6th millennium BC.
As for wine: Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that wine was (like beer) produced about 7000 years ago in what is today Iran, and is one of the first known biological engineering tasks, where the biological process of fermentation is used in a process. The earliest known evidence of wine dates to 5400 B.C., from Hajji Firuz Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of present-day Iran, near the city of Urmia.[1]
As for roads: Many historical examples exist of road and road-building. Some of the most famous are the Roman roads and the Incan courier roads. The oldest engineered road yet discovered is the Sweet Track causeway in England, dating from the 3800s BC. In ancient times, transport by river was far easier and faster than travel by road, especially considering the cost of road construction and the difference in carrying capacity between carts and river barges - provided only that the rivers were navigable in the right places; availability of water transport also influenced settlement patterns
As for medicine don't think the Romans have any particularly claim to it. Egyptians might have actually pioneered surgery. Most others were focused on diet and spirituality until the 18th century or so. It didn't really become very useful until the last couple of centuries.
It is kind of a given that secure encrypted wireless networks would be perceived as a serious threat to a totalitarian state. It will make it hard for them to censor everything and to spot insurrection.
Centralized ISP's where all the network traffic is going through a small number of choke points are much better suited to totalitarian states.
But if a totalitarian state concedes wireless is here to stay they are going to try to mandate one with a backdoor known to the state so they can with some difficulty eavedrop on wireless traffic and networks. They can't listen to it all but the threat that they can monitor it will slow down its use for activities frowned upon by the state.
You could argue well dissidents could just use strong encryption on top of back doored wireless standard but the state can establish that volunteer use of strong encryption is a sign of disloyalty. They can't complain if strong encryption is a standard part of the network protocol, therefor they need to insure the encryption in the standard protocol is easily breeched.
Its an interesting intellectual exercise for anti establishment geeks to contemplate what could be done with wireless networks to create an alternate Internet free of the yoke of government/coprate regulation and oppression. For example if trusted computing comes to be and you have to run a trusted platform to gain access to the network, it it worth the price to relinquish control of your computer, or would it be better to move to a Pirate's Net using wireless and free of government and corporate control.
Could you use a mesh and mirroring to create a wireless network that spanned an entire large nation. Obviously the number of hops to get from one side to the other would be murder so networks would bias to local communities and mirroring more than today's Internet. Realtime games would pretty much have to play locally due to the bad ping times.
This is just the first challenge, could you create an Internet replacement using wireless more or less as it is today.
The harder challenge, could you create a robust and survivable Pirate's Net if your government was actively trying to stamp it out.
"is that Communist ideals, always and everywhere, fail in practice"
Like most unfounded generalizations, thats not really true.
They only thing thats failed recently was Stalinism which was really the only thing resembling Communism that was tried on a large scale in the last century and it was really more Authoritarian Socialism. Trotsky advocated a substantially more democratic form of communism, abhorred Stalin's repressive tendencies, but lost a power struggle and his life. If Trotsky had won, the last century would have been a much different place. All that was proved in China and Russia in the last century is that dictators can be ruthless and brutal, both Stalin and Mao were, but so were Hitler, and Mussolini, Pinochet and the Shah of Iran...this list goes on for a while so for brevity I'll stop here.
Before humankind developed agriculture and started economies man lived under "primitive communism". It worked quite well and was substantially less devastating to our planet than capitalism has proven to be. It was the social form most native american tribes practiced and worked quite well until it encountered imperialist capitalism.
A few other examples of communism that doesn't really fit your mold were the earliest Christians which is somewhat ironic. They did in many instances live in communes and if you actually read Christ's teaching without bias he is in most instances advocating Communism and abandonment of personal property. Some community's like the Amish and Mennonite's live in communes today for this reason, its the closest economic model to the teachings of Christ. Their communes aren't perfect but many work quite well. The problem with modern Christian's are most of them like their wealth and property so they turn a blind eye to Christ's teachings on the subject.
Its a little hard to quantify what system China runs under these days but it appears to mostly be a Stalinist dictatorship with a mix of capitalist economics though its economy is so heavily controlled by the government it recently resembles Fascism more than Communism or Capitalism. China does present a problem with your generalization because it was for a very long time Stalinist Communism and its Communist party is still very much intact and now very successful though I grant you its sure not pure communism anymore.
Cuba certainly isn't perfect but it does get by and it has a few things over the U.S. In particular, quality health care for everyone, not just those who can afford it like in the U.S., and higher education for everyone based on merit and not based on who can afford it. Its certainly not a wealthy country but it does get buy which is amazing considering it has to endure economic boycott from its largest neighbor and has been under various forms of attack from the U.S. since its inception.
I'll probably get flamed for it but Gates and Balmer were right when they said it. The Linux community is in most respects a stateless communist community where everyone is contributing to the common good and no one is exacting property rights in return. It is an example of a true virtual commune that seems to work very well.
"the memory of the hundreds of millions killed by Communism"
Nice attempt to say:
Communism = killing millions of people
There isn't really any correlation. For example:
Fascism = killing millions of people too
Capitalism = killing millions of people too
Americans murdered millions of native American's by various means and generally practiced ethnic cleansing to push them out of their ancestral homes, and on to lands that were for the most part desolate and encouraged them to wither away and die. Many were killed in the process either directly or through famine and disease as Americans destroyed their primitive communes and their way of life in the name of profit and imperialism, the term used was "Manifest Destiny".
American's inflicted slavery on millions of people plucked out of Africa ag
"Many high-profile Frenchmen have been shown to have made millions (possibly billions) off of Iraq's oil-for-food program, which has made their lack of support against Iraq seem rather duplicitous. Were they against action against Iraq because such actions were wrong or because it might hurt their pocketbook? "
Many high-profile Americans have been shown to have made millions (possibly billions) off of the invasion of Iraq, which has made their support against Iraq seem rather duplicitous. Were they for action against Iraq because such actions were right or because it might filled their pocketbook?
Halliburton is the most obvious example, they've made billions from sole source contracts in Iraq, including outright fraud on fuel contracts, inflating numbers of meals in cafeterias for soldiers, $100 or more for a load of laundry, it goes on and on, and of course the number 1 cheerleader for the war in Iraq is the until very recently CEO of Halliburton, Dick Chaney.
Its been established that the coalition spent something around $8 billion dollars soon after the war with almost no accounting controls. They can't for the most part say where the money went, they were handing it out in buckets. It has at least the potential of being as bad or worse a case of fraud than oil for food, its just unlikely anyone will investigate it. At least the U.N. is investigating problem in oil for food.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones at the French windows.
Not sure we've whipped to death the apparent civil war at SCO's parent company the Canopy Group and why exactly they can't file basic paper work on time.
I'm inclined to guess some of the stock issues that are hanging up their 10K may have involved the executives who were summarily executed at Canopy, and since law suits are flying an no one is taking to anyone it may be impossible to get the information they need for their 10K, and maybe the fired execs at Canopy are exacting a revenge on Canopy and SCO.
Apparently the Noorda's advanced age has led them to drop out of active involvement in Canopy Group leading to a vicious power struggle between their kids and two teams of executives.
All in all it appears we have confirmation now that Canopy group is institutionally insane which helps explain why SCO went institutionally insane.
The ChoicePoint breech exposed a fundamental flaw in all credit/background information.
The business model is predicated on accumulating vast quantities of personal data on people and then selling access to other companies.
You see the problem is they will in fact sell the information to pretty much any company who wants it for a price.
If you want to commit identity theft all you have to do is create a legitimate company, if necessary fronting it with people without a criminal record, if you have one. As long as you jump through all the hurdles necessary to establish a legitimate company you can buy data from Choicepoint. You can then funnel all that data to identity thieves, they clean out a bunch of people, and you abandon their corporate front. Everything was totally legal up to the point you turned the data over to the identity thieves.
How exactly do you fix the problem. Not sure you can. Our current financial system and most background checks for employment are predicated on companies being able to gain access to this data. If you block all companies from accessing this many parts of your financial system stop working, credit, loans, insurance, employment checks. It is a near impossibility for a company like Choicepoint to accurately discriminate legitimate companies who have a reason for accessing this data and fronts that are going to exist just long enough to jump through all the hoops necessary to acquire the data legitimately and then use it illegally.
"Plus, who the !@#$% gave ChoicePoint permission to gather data on me?"
Uh, Choicepoint.
All you have to do is form a corporation whose charter is to enter the information business. Once you incorporate you do have to adhere to government regulations but otherwise you just start gathering data, initially from public sources, or you buy it from other companies. Choicepoint for example sucks up court records which are public so they probably have a somewhat better database on the criminial record of everyone than the states and federal government do since they collect it all in one place.
At some point you have to clear a hurdle where you acquire corporate clients, like a credit card company. Once you clear that hurdle everytime someone fills out a credit card application the credit card company sends all the information to your company. You cross check and validate it and if it appears legitimate all the info is entered in your database. At that point you start having data other companies don't and you can start selling access to it and then you profit.
The only way I can see getting out of this conundrum in the digital/network age is you have to give everyone a secure digital signature instead of something as ancient and vulnerable as a name and a Social Security number. Each person needs to be able to attach a password to this new digital social security number so that they can establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that when that number is used it being used by the person that owns it. You can give the encrypted sig out to just about anyone, but no one but you should be able to actually use it get a loan, make a bank transaction, apply for a credit card etcetera since you would have to have the password for the signature to validate you own it.
Needless to say there would be a huge and traumatic transition from the current very vulnerable social security number to a digital signature. In particular you can't just write it on an application. You would have to transmit it through a computer, so you can enter the password and verify you own the ID. You also have to make sure the password entry isn't easily stolen. You also have to have a means for changing your digital signature in the event it is compromised.