is just that the government won't let me, it will actively prevent me from removing myself from the system
As far as I'm aware the US Government doesn't take steps to prevent Americans from emigrating to other nations, so I fail to see how the Government is actively preventing you from removing yourself from the system. In fact, there are many remote areas where you could go and be subject to little if any Governmental interference in your day to day life. The Australian Outback, Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, the African wilderness, etc, etc.
Don't want to live in any of those places? You could always consider moving to a US territory. Most of the benefits of American citizenship (defense from hostile nations, Government hand-outs and subsidies, etc) with fewer obligations (paying Federal taxes). You don't even need to learn Spanish (Puerto Rico) if you move to Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands.
doesn't change the fact that if I choose to stay in the US and don't vote, I am being governed against my will
I'm sorry, I must have missed the section of the Bill of Rights that says you have 'opt-out' rights from Government. Could you point it out to me?
Seriously, what do you mean by being 'governed against my will'? What do you suggest? That if you don't vote, no laws should apply to you? You shouldn't have to pay taxes? What exactly is 'being governed against my will'?
Does "white" have the same kind of pejorative negativity, hateful history, and attitude associated with "nigger"?
No, I'll grant you that it doesn't, but I still fail to see why you needed to use it and I fail to see how it served any legitimate purpose. And forget about the word "nigger". If I had made a similar comment about some historical black figure and used terminology like "fat black man" I'd probably still stand a decent chance at being called a racist. Even if I wasn't, I fail to see what legitimate purpose it would serve to even bring up the fact that the person was black.
If you can't do that, you have no chance of understanding what Jefferson's use of "liberty" describes, no less why the statement and the man who used it, in the context it was used in, deserves to be ridiculed
I always thought the context in which it was used was as a justification for the separation of the colonies from the British Crown. In that context I fail to see why it should be ridiculed. Do you disagree with any of the statements in the Declaration of Independence?
Are their words often used to support one argument, when their personal actions didn't follow?
It's a mistake to judge past civilizations and societies by modern standards of right and wrong. This is one of the first lessons of anthropology. Past societies have done any number of things (slavery, wars of conquest, gladiatorial combat, human sacrifice, forced religious conversion and/or religious persecution) that would be considered abhorrent by modern standards. Does that mean that we can't embrace the progress that those societies brought in the arts, sciences, etc, etc?
Yeah, that's what I thought. If there were one trait that both Hippocrates and Socrates had the least of, compared most men, it was hypocrisy
So it's Jefferson's supposed hypocrisy that bothers you? Even though his actions were perfectly in line with societal norm at the time? Even though he supported efforts towards the reduction of slavery?
One word: context.
I fail to see in what context you can use the term "fat white man" and not expect it to stir racist sentiment. It serves no legitimate purpose other then an appeal to emotion and hatred. And I stand by my statement -- if I made a similar comment about somebody like Martin Luther King (maybe something like "nigger plagiarist" or "nigger womanizer") I would likely find myself called out as a racist and modded into oblivion.
They will generally only agree to hear cases where the decision that they will make is politically acceptable
Uhh, yeah, I was with you up until this point. For better or worse SCOTUS has issued lots of highly unpopular decisions in it's history. Hell, the GP even mentioned a recent one.
the ACLU, decides to get involved very early in the process. This rarely happens. It will essentially never happen if you represent something unpopular, because the organization depends on solicited funds
I'd disagree with this too. The ACLU has defended people accused of possession of child pornography before. Doesn't get much more unpopular then that.
Said a fat white man born into a wealthy family, no less one who kept slaves and concubines.
Are you also so quick to dismiss the accomplishments of Hippocrates and Socrates because the ancient Greeks kept slaves? Maybe we should stop using Arabic numerals and the Roman alphabet because both of them kept slaves too.
And what the fuck does being white have to do with anything? If I posted "said a fat nigger" I'd be assumed to be a racist and modded down accordingly. Guess it's ok to beat up on the majority......
Don't be stupid. We're not talking about a perpetual motion device here. You use it once. It's used. If you want to 'reinvigorate' it to the point that it's usable as fuel again, you have to put in more energy than you'd get out of it.
Read this post. Yes, the reprocessing of nuclear waste isn't 100% efficient. But you can obtain usable fuel from spent fuel rods, while at the same time reducing the amount of the waste product that you have to dispose of. How is that a bad thing? I could point out that recycling plastic isn't 100% efficient either, but it's still considered worthwhile to do so (if only to reduce the mass that needs to go to the landfill).
Ash produced from burning wood doesn't kill everything it comes into contact with, and last for millions of years.
Exactly which isotopes come out of a fission reactor that last for "millions of years" or are you just quoting your friendly local Greenpeace flier? And there are any number of disposal options that could solve this problem -- placing it at subduction zones, launching it into space, burying it in geologically stable areas/deep mines, etc, etc, etc. Some of the waste produced by the chemical industry is every bit as nasty as nuclear waste (more so in some cases), but it doesn't draw the same anti-* sentiment as nuclear waste does, because it doesn't include the word "nuclear" in the description.
In any case, I think our future lies with the atom, eventually with nuclear fusion, today with nuclear fission. You realize that in about a decade we could reduce our co2 output (from power generation) to next to nothing if we embarked on a program to replace all of our coal and gas fired plants with nuclear ones? This is technology that exists today. And a co2 neutral method of electricity production opens up some interesting possibilities for other areas -- electric cars that got their power from nuclear/hydro/renewables would likewise be carbon neutral. Trains already run on electricity -- if that electricity comes from a carbon neutral source then we have a "free" method of moving people and goods around. It might even make trains competitive with trucks again on long haul routes (if the cost of carbon emissions are taken into account).
Ya know, we do have the technology to reprocess the "waste" and convert most of it into fuel that can be used again. The United States chooses not to use such technology due to concerns about proliferation -- but it's around. The French have been doing it for quite some time now.
Nuclear power is NOT the answer
Why? Mankind learned how to harness chemical reactions (fire). Then we learned how to split the atom and harness nuclear reactions. Sounds like a natural progression to me.
If you don't wear a seatbelt and are seriously injured or crippled in a crash, who pays your hospital bill
Your car insurance policy. I'm not going to dwell on the slippery slope argument (why not ban fatty foods?) because the other reply already went there. The last time I checked, auto insurance is a requirement in almost every state. Your auto insurance (or the other guys) will pay for your injuries, regardless of the status of your medical insurance. In fact your medical insurance policy probably has a clause saying they refuse to pay a dime on any injuries sustained in an auto accident, until the auto insurance limits are used up.
The only scenario where the taxpayer picks up the cost here is the driver who both lacks automobile insurance (a crime in most states) AND medical insurance AND whom is at fault for the accident (if the other guy is at fault his insurance is gonna pay) in a state without no-fault laws. That's an awful lot of ANDs that need to happen before the taxpayer eats the cost of someone driving without a seatbelt.
but no one seems to like the idea of refusing lifesaving treatment to uninsured people... Beggars can't be choosers, and since so much of our society is unwilling to pay for its own medical care, the rest of us have to be able to dictate terms of help to them
Unwilling to pay or unable to pay? Do you know what medical insurance costs? I'm single with zero dependents and between my employer (75%) and I (25%) it's close to $5,000 a year. Add a wife and kids and it goes to close to $12,000 a year. I worked in the insurance industry for a few years -- even the policies with insanely high deductibles and shit for coverage are out of reach for most people.
In a purely libertarian society, people could do whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt others
Why is the basic concept of being able to do whatever you want (provided it doesn't harm anyone else) incompatible with ensuring that the citizenry have a social safety net? This is one of my basic problems with Libertarianism. I love the civil liberties side of it. I'm less eager (read: completely opposed) to adopting their laissez-faire economic model. I'm also somewhat skeptical of completely dismantling the Federal Government.
Then allow States to come up with their own solutions, but also make them responsible for their own medical systems (this means dismantling Medicare; states can replace it with their own State-run systems). We're much more likely to see good solutions at the State level from some of the States than we are to see a good solution from the bloated and out-of-touch Federal government
I've suggested something like this before. Make the states responsible for things like social security, medicare, etc, etc. I still think the Feds need to have a role in some areas not envisioned by the Founding Fathers though -- I'd be somewhat leery of dismantling the CDC for example -- but the Constitution does allow for this (the General Welfare clause).
T-Mobile has an option called FlexPay, which provides for almost all of the advantages of post-paid service, without needing a contract (if you pay full price for the phone).
They are the only (major) American carrier with anything like this though and that's a crying shame IMHO. Why the hell do I need to be locked into a contract for the benefit of having phone service? And don't anybody come back and say "prepaid" as an option -- most American prepaid plans are a joke for anything over and above "keeping the phone in the car in case I break down" usage. They certainly aren't viable options for anybody that talks on the phone for a decent amount and wants to go cellular-only.
On the CDMA side of things a least, if you have the lock codes, you can activate it anywhere
Not exactly. In order to provision a CDMA phone the carrier needs to put the ESN of the phone on your account. They can easily refuse to complete an ESN change if the new ESN represents an unapproved phone model.
With GSM you don't need to involve the carrier to switch phones. All you do is move your SIM card. The only provision on GSM for blocking phones that I'm aware of is the ability to use the IMEI Database to blacklist certain IMEIs, typically those belonging to stolen phones. In theory, if your phone is reported stolen it will be added to this blacklist and become a brick unless the IMEI is changed. In practice, not all carriers honor this database.
I wonder if the carriers will be nice enough to let us bring our own phones (presumably paying full price for them and avoiding any carrier subsidy) and get service under the same terms as anybody else, but without a long term contract with ETF? Somehow I kind of doubt it -- wonder what the justification for contracts will be when people pay full price for the phone?
However, especially in situations where nobody is directly harmed or directly deprived of property, you would think that perhaps there should be a consitutional prohibition on criminalizing a large percentage of the citizenry
One would think that in situations where nobody is harmed that the action in question wouldn't be illegal in the first place. Why does the state force me to wear a seatbelt? My failure to do so harms nobody but myself. Ditto for recreational drug use. If I wanna light up a joint who exactly am I placing at risk, besides (maybe) myself?
as it reeks of mob rule
That's basically what democracy is. Hell, even the Founding Fathers were worried about this.
Unfortunately Americans seem comfortable with letting the majority shit on the minority every chance it gets
Unfortunately, that's hardly unique to America. The UK is about two steps away from being a surveillance society. France has tried to regulate who can wear religious clothing in public schools.
What if more than 50% of the people illegally download music, shouldn't the law then be repealed
That argument hasn't seemed to work very well for marijuana legalization so I kind of doubt it's going to work here:(
Whatever happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
I don't know if I buy downloading music off the net for free as essential to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". I definitely think the punishments for doing so are way out of line with the severity of the crime though. And "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" went out the window when the Government decided it could tell me what I can and can not put into my body. It went out the window when the Government decided to try and regulate what we can do in the privacy of our own bedrooms. It went out the window when the Government decided to compel people to register for selective service at 18 but deny them the right to legally purchase alcohol until 21.
GOP was in charge of Congress,/. we all saw their name-party plastered in the article splash. Congress is now in Democrat control and suddenly, no Name-Party is being posted on the article splash.
Maybe you should try to RTFA? Let me help you out:
"A bipartisan group of Congressmen (and one woman) yesterday introduced a major bill"
Show me the majority of the Republicans opposing this bill and you'll have a point. Until then, I'm going with "Congress is clueless and sucks" as a generalized statement of how I feel about this.
Maybe you'll be lucky enough to get unlimited instant viewing time too. I had a journal entry about this... when I signed up they said I had unlimited time, but all the FAQs said it was the dollar value of your plan.
Called them up and they said I was one of a "handful" of customers selected to demo unlimited instant viewing while they decide if they should release it to all of their customers. Pretty sweet deal -- $15.11/mo (with tax) for two DVDs at a time + unlimited instant view. I've been burning a lot of time watching old Magnum PI episodes, among other things:)
No, they can't. Even the membership clubs can't search your stuff if you refuse (although they could terminate your membership for violating the terms) -- you can't sign away your rights in the United States (to a private concern away).
His points were still valid though. There are any number of measures that a merchant could take to reduce shoplifting. Hell, they could even wipe it out altogether and be completely within the law, simply by putting ALL of their stock behind the counter and making you ask for it (similiar to what they do with high value items), but that would be a money losing idea because of the manpower requirements.
In the end, they need to find some measure of balance. In the case of the *AAs, they should resign themselves to the fact that it's impossible to stop piracy, focus on the big time offenders (why dump resources into going after Grandma for Kazaa downloads when some guy is selling bootlegged DVDs/CDs on the street corner?) and do what they can to bring piracy down to acceptable levels.
If they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
The same with piracy. They will never be able to stop all piracy. Steps should probably be taken to go after the worst offenders (I have little sympathy for people trying to engage in piracy for profit) but going after Grandma for downloading an episode of Law & Order is going to cost them more in goodwill then will gain them in prevention. And it still won't stop piracy.
Visa and Mastercard could stop a ton of credit card fraud by allowing (requiring?) merchants to ID customers, replacing signature verification with some sort of shared secret (PIN code?), etc, etc. Most of this isn't likely to happen, because it would cost them more in customer goodwill (do you want to show your license every time you swipe your card?) and sales then the amount of fraud it would prevent.
*shrug*, I suspect that if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for MOST people.
I'm sure the audiophile can tell the difference between a mp3 and a CD. I'm sure the videophile can tell the difference between a DVD and a high bitrate divx or Netflix stream. But most of us don't notice or if we do, then we don't care.
If set up right there is absolutely no way to tell the difference between encrypted BT and encrypted anything else. That's the point IT'S ENCRYPTED.
Well, the problem is that often times the initial handshakes aren't encrypted, or they ARE encrypted but the handshake itself is still easy to identify as BT. If you can identify one connection as belonging to BT then there is nothing stopping you from slowing it down or even blocking it entirely.
Also, the current BT clients aren't exactly subtle. Even when using encryption the massive burst of traffic to random IPs all over the world isn't exactly low-key. Fire up Wireshark and/or tcpdump at your network edge. Even with encryption the BT users stand out like a sore thumb. There's also the matter of most tracker connections being unencrypted and the tracker IPs themselves being known. If the network filtering device sees you connect to a known Pirate Bay tracker it's probably a safe assumption that your torrent use isn't to download WoW updates.....
If content filtering does become widespread (part of me still thinks AT&T is just looking to sucker Hollywood into paying for this "service") then it's only a matter of time before protocols are created that blend into the background better. If those protocols become as widely accepted as BT is today (i.e: used to distribute patches, Linux kernels and the like) then it will certainly put a damper on these plans. Even better would be a protocol that provided for a peer to peer exchange of the tracker information -- i.e: all they see you connect to is a bunch of peers, not known tracker IP addresses.
I wonder where the ongoing WGA strike fell on this list of issues
Well, you have to understand... the studios didn't want the strike. The WGA are a greedy bunch of bastards that expect royalties off internet sales and other so-called "new media". Yeah, right! The studios have no way of knowing how much that new media is worth, so how are they going to pay royalties to the writers?
Don't the writers know that it's clearly impossible for the studios to calculate how much something is worth.... unless it's being pirated of course, then it's clearly worth billions of dollars and costs thousands of jobs;)
In all seriousness though (and so my whole post isn't sarcasm), J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) has some interesting things to say about the writers strike. It's a good perspective into what motivates the rank and file of the WGA.
The quality is still only so-so and nowhere near DVD quality
Uhh, how much bandwidth do you have? I'm at 5.0Mbits and stream at their highest quality and I can't discern any difference between watching a DVD and using Instant View.
Introduce a faster connection like an unsaturated cable service and you'd quickly enter 'able to stream it'.
You wouldn't even need a faster one. I've become a huge fan of the instant view feature on Netflix and somehow I managed to luck out and get unlimited time instead of the 1 hr per dollar limit.
I have 5Mbits down. It will max that out -- but not for the entire length of the movie. Averaged out it seems to be about 1.5 - 1.8Mbits -- and that's for the highest quality that they offer. Supposedly you can use the service on 768k DSL, though they obviously increase the compression rate and lower the image quality.
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As far as I'm aware the US Government doesn't take steps to prevent Americans from emigrating to other nations, so I fail to see how the Government is actively preventing you from removing yourself from the system. In fact, there are many remote areas where you could go and be subject to little if any Governmental interference in your day to day life. The Australian Outback, Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, the African wilderness, etc, etc.
Don't want to live in any of those places? You could always consider moving to a US territory. Most of the benefits of American citizenship (defense from hostile nations, Government hand-outs and subsidies, etc) with fewer obligations (paying Federal taxes). You don't even need to learn Spanish (Puerto Rico) if you move to Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the section of the Bill of Rights that says you have 'opt-out' rights from Government. Could you point it out to me?
Seriously, what do you mean by being 'governed against my will'? What do you suggest? That if you don't vote, no laws should apply to you? You shouldn't have to pay taxes? What exactly is 'being governed against my will'?
No, I'll grant you that it doesn't, but I still fail to see why you needed to use it and I fail to see how it served any legitimate purpose. And forget about the word "nigger". If I had made a similar comment about some historical black figure and used terminology like "fat black man" I'd probably still stand a decent chance at being called a racist. Even if I wasn't, I fail to see what legitimate purpose it would serve to even bring up the fact that the person was black.
If you can't do that, you have no chance of understanding what Jefferson's use of "liberty" describes, no less why the statement and the man who used it, in the context it was used in, deserves to be ridiculedI always thought the context in which it was used was as a justification for the separation of the colonies from the British Crown. In that context I fail to see why it should be ridiculed. Do you disagree with any of the statements in the Declaration of Independence?
By the way, I am white.And why is that relevant?
It's a mistake to judge past civilizations and societies by modern standards of right and wrong. This is one of the first lessons of anthropology. Past societies have done any number of things (slavery, wars of conquest, gladiatorial combat, human sacrifice, forced religious conversion and/or religious persecution) that would be considered abhorrent by modern standards. Does that mean that we can't embrace the progress that those societies brought in the arts, sciences, etc, etc?
Yeah, that's what I thought. If there were one trait that both Hippocrates and Socrates had the least of, compared most men, it was hypocrisySo it's Jefferson's supposed hypocrisy that bothers you? Even though his actions were perfectly in line with societal norm at the time? Even though he supported efforts towards the reduction of slavery?
One word: context.I fail to see in what context you can use the term "fat white man" and not expect it to stir racist sentiment. It serves no legitimate purpose other then an appeal to emotion and hatred. And I stand by my statement -- if I made a similar comment about somebody like Martin Luther King (maybe something like "nigger plagiarist" or "nigger womanizer") I would likely find myself called out as a racist and modded into oblivion.
It's been tried before ;)
Uhh, yeah, I was with you up until this point. For better or worse SCOTUS has issued lots of highly unpopular decisions in it's history. Hell, the GP even mentioned a recent one.
the ACLU, decides to get involved very early in the process. This rarely happens. It will essentially never happen if you represent something unpopular, because the organization depends on solicited fundsI'd disagree with this too. The ACLU has defended people accused of possession of child pornography before. Doesn't get much more unpopular then that.
(I agree with everything else you said)
Are you also so quick to dismiss the accomplishments of Hippocrates and Socrates because the ancient Greeks kept slaves? Maybe we should stop using Arabic numerals and the Roman alphabet because both of them kept slaves too.
And what the fuck does being white have to do with anything? If I posted "said a fat nigger" I'd be assumed to be a racist and modded down accordingly. Guess it's ok to beat up on the majority......
Then vote against every single incumbent in Federal elections. Or move somewhere else. Those would be your two options.
Read this post. Yes, the reprocessing of nuclear waste isn't 100% efficient. But you can obtain usable fuel from spent fuel rods, while at the same time reducing the amount of the waste product that you have to dispose of. How is that a bad thing? I could point out that recycling plastic isn't 100% efficient either, but it's still considered worthwhile to do so (if only to reduce the mass that needs to go to the landfill).
Ash produced from burning wood doesn't kill everything it comes into contact with, and last for millions of years.Exactly which isotopes come out of a fission reactor that last for "millions of years" or are you just quoting your friendly local Greenpeace flier? And there are any number of disposal options that could solve this problem -- placing it at subduction zones, launching it into space, burying it in geologically stable areas/deep mines, etc, etc, etc. Some of the waste produced by the chemical industry is every bit as nasty as nuclear waste (more so in some cases), but it doesn't draw the same anti-* sentiment as nuclear waste does, because it doesn't include the word "nuclear" in the description.
In any case, I think our future lies with the atom, eventually with nuclear fusion, today with nuclear fission. You realize that in about a decade we could reduce our co2 output (from power generation) to next to nothing if we embarked on a program to replace all of our coal and gas fired plants with nuclear ones? This is technology that exists today. And a co2 neutral method of electricity production opens up some interesting possibilities for other areas -- electric cars that got their power from nuclear/hydro/renewables would likewise be carbon neutral. Trains already run on electricity -- if that electricity comes from a carbon neutral source then we have a "free" method of moving people and goods around. It might even make trains competitive with trucks again on long haul routes (if the cost of carbon emissions are taken into account).
Ya know, we do have the technology to reprocess the "waste" and convert most of it into fuel that can be used again. The United States chooses not to use such technology due to concerns about proliferation -- but it's around. The French have been doing it for quite some time now.
Nuclear power is NOT the answerWhy? Mankind learned how to harness chemical reactions (fire). Then we learned how to split the atom and harness nuclear reactions. Sounds like a natural progression to me.
Your car insurance policy. I'm not going to dwell on the slippery slope argument (why not ban fatty foods?) because the other reply already went there. The last time I checked, auto insurance is a requirement in almost every state. Your auto insurance (or the other guys) will pay for your injuries, regardless of the status of your medical insurance. In fact your medical insurance policy probably has a clause saying they refuse to pay a dime on any injuries sustained in an auto accident, until the auto insurance limits are used up.
The only scenario where the taxpayer picks up the cost here is the driver who both lacks automobile insurance (a crime in most states) AND medical insurance AND whom is at fault for the accident (if the other guy is at fault his insurance is gonna pay) in a state without no-fault laws. That's an awful lot of ANDs that need to happen before the taxpayer eats the cost of someone driving without a seatbelt.
but no one seems to like the idea of refusing lifesaving treatment to uninsured peopleUnwilling to pay or unable to pay? Do you know what medical insurance costs? I'm single with zero dependents and between my employer (75%) and I (25%) it's close to $5,000 a year. Add a wife and kids and it goes to close to $12,000 a year. I worked in the insurance industry for a few years -- even the policies with insanely high deductibles and shit for coverage are out of reach for most people.
In a purely libertarian society, people could do whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt othersWhy is the basic concept of being able to do whatever you want (provided it doesn't harm anyone else) incompatible with ensuring that the citizenry have a social safety net? This is one of my basic problems with Libertarianism. I love the civil liberties side of it. I'm less eager (read: completely opposed) to adopting their laissez-faire economic model. I'm also somewhat skeptical of completely dismantling the Federal Government.
Then allow States to come up with their own solutions, but also make them responsible for their own medical systems (this means dismantling Medicare; states can replace it with their own State-run systems). We're much more likely to see good solutions at the State level from some of the States than we are to see a good solution from the bloated and out-of-touch Federal governmentI've suggested something like this before. Make the states responsible for things like social security, medicare, etc, etc. I still think the Feds need to have a role in some areas not envisioned by the Founding Fathers though -- I'd be somewhat leery of dismantling the CDC for example -- but the Constitution does allow for this (the General Welfare clause).
T-Mobile has an option called FlexPay, which provides for almost all of the advantages of post-paid service, without needing a contract (if you pay full price for the phone).
They are the only (major) American carrier with anything like this though and that's a crying shame IMHO. Why the hell do I need to be locked into a contract for the benefit of having phone service? And don't anybody come back and say "prepaid" as an option -- most American prepaid plans are a joke for anything over and above "keeping the phone in the car in case I break down" usage. They certainly aren't viable options for anybody that talks on the phone for a decent amount and wants to go cellular-only.
Not exactly. In order to provision a CDMA phone the carrier needs to put the ESN of the phone on your account. They can easily refuse to complete an ESN change if the new ESN represents an unapproved phone model.
With GSM you don't need to involve the carrier to switch phones. All you do is move your SIM card. The only provision on GSM for blocking phones that I'm aware of is the ability to use the IMEI Database to blacklist certain IMEIs, typically those belonging to stolen phones. In theory, if your phone is reported stolen it will be added to this blacklist and become a brick unless the IMEI is changed. In practice, not all carriers honor this database.
I wonder if the carriers will be nice enough to let us bring our own phones (presumably paying full price for them and avoiding any carrier subsidy) and get service under the same terms as anybody else, but without a long term contract with ETF? Somehow I kind of doubt it -- wonder what the justification for contracts will be when people pay full price for the phone?
One would think that in situations where nobody is harmed that the action in question wouldn't be illegal in the first place. Why does the state force me to wear a seatbelt? My failure to do so harms nobody but myself. Ditto for recreational drug use. If I wanna light up a joint who exactly am I placing at risk, besides (maybe) myself?
as it reeks of mob ruleThat's basically what democracy is. Hell, even the Founding Fathers were worried about this.
Unfortunately Americans seem comfortable with letting the majority shit on the minority every chance it getsUnfortunately, that's hardly unique to America. The UK is about two steps away from being a surveillance society. France has tried to regulate who can wear religious clothing in public schools.
Very.
What if more than 50% of the people illegally download music, shouldn't the law then be repealedThat argument hasn't seemed to work very well for marijuana legalization so I kind of doubt it's going to work here :(
Whatever happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?I don't know if I buy downloading music off the net for free as essential to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". I definitely think the punishments for doing so are way out of line with the severity of the crime though. And "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" went out the window when the Government decided it could tell me what I can and can not put into my body. It went out the window when the Government decided to try and regulate what we can do in the privacy of our own bedrooms. It went out the window when the Government decided to compel people to register for selective service at 18 but deny them the right to legally purchase alcohol until 21.
"the last thing we need is another government organization"
There, fixed that for you.
Maybe you should try to RTFA? Let me help you out:
"A bipartisan group of Congressmen (and one woman) yesterday introduced a major bill"
Show me the majority of the Republicans opposing this bill and you'll have a point. Until then, I'm going with "Congress is clueless and sucks" as a generalized statement of how I feel about this.
Maybe you'll be lucky enough to get unlimited instant viewing time too. I had a journal entry about this... when I signed up they said I had unlimited time, but all the FAQs said it was the dollar value of your plan.
Called them up and they said I was one of a "handful" of customers selected to demo unlimited instant viewing while they decide if they should release it to all of their customers. Pretty sweet deal -- $15.11/mo (with tax) for two DVDs at a time + unlimited instant view. I've been burning a lot of time watching old Magnum PI episodes, among other things :)
No, they can't. Even the membership clubs can't search your stuff if you refuse (although they could terminate your membership for violating the terms) -- you can't sign away your rights in the United States (to a private concern away).
His points were still valid though. There are any number of measures that a merchant could take to reduce shoplifting. Hell, they could even wipe it out altogether and be completely within the law, simply by putting ALL of their stock behind the counter and making you ask for it (similiar to what they do with high value items), but that would be a money losing idea because of the manpower requirements.
In the end, they need to find some measure of balance. In the case of the *AAs, they should resign themselves to the fact that it's impossible to stop piracy, focus on the big time offenders (why dump resources into going after Grandma for Kazaa downloads when some guy is selling bootlegged DVDs/CDs on the street corner?) and do what they can to bring piracy down to acceptable levels.
If they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
The same with piracy. They will never be able to stop all piracy. Steps should probably be taken to go after the worst offenders (I have little sympathy for people trying to engage in piracy for profit) but going after Grandma for downloading an episode of Law & Order is going to cost them more in goodwill then will gain them in prevention. And it still won't stop piracy.
Visa and Mastercard could stop a ton of credit card fraud by allowing (requiring?) merchants to ID customers, replacing signature verification with some sort of shared secret (PIN code?), etc, etc. Most of this isn't likely to happen, because it would cost them more in customer goodwill (do you want to show your license every time you swipe your card?) and sales then the amount of fraud it would prevent.
*shrug*, I suspect that if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for MOST people.
I'm sure the audiophile can tell the difference between a mp3 and a CD. I'm sure the videophile can tell the difference between a DVD and a high bitrate divx or Netflix stream. But most of us don't notice or if we do, then we don't care.
Well, the problem is that often times the initial handshakes aren't encrypted, or they ARE encrypted but the handshake itself is still easy to identify as BT. If you can identify one connection as belonging to BT then there is nothing stopping you from slowing it down or even blocking it entirely.
Also, the current BT clients aren't exactly subtle. Even when using encryption the massive burst of traffic to random IPs all over the world isn't exactly low-key. Fire up Wireshark and/or tcpdump at your network edge. Even with encryption the BT users stand out like a sore thumb. There's also the matter of most tracker connections being unencrypted and the tracker IPs themselves being known. If the network filtering device sees you connect to a known Pirate Bay tracker it's probably a safe assumption that your torrent use isn't to download WoW updates.....
If content filtering does become widespread (part of me still thinks AT&T is just looking to sucker Hollywood into paying for this "service") then it's only a matter of time before protocols are created that blend into the background better. If those protocols become as widely accepted as BT is today (i.e: used to distribute patches, Linux kernels and the like) then it will certainly put a damper on these plans. Even better would be a protocol that provided for a peer to peer exchange of the tracker information -- i.e: all they see you connect to is a bunch of peers, not known tracker IP addresses.
Well, you have to understand... the studios didn't want the strike. The WGA are a greedy bunch of bastards that expect royalties off internet sales and other so-called "new media". Yeah, right! The studios have no way of knowing how much that new media is worth, so how are they going to pay royalties to the writers?
Don't the writers know that it's clearly impossible for the studios to calculate how much something is worth.... unless it's being pirated of course, then it's clearly worth billions of dollars and costs thousands of jobs ;)
In all seriousness though (and so my whole post isn't sarcasm), J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) has some interesting things to say about the writers strike. It's a good perspective into what motivates the rank and file of the WGA.
Uhh, how much bandwidth do you have? I'm at 5.0Mbits and stream at their highest quality and I can't discern any difference between watching a DVD and using Instant View.
You wouldn't even need a faster one. I've become a huge fan of the instant view feature on Netflix and somehow I managed to luck out and get unlimited time instead of the 1 hr per dollar limit.
I have 5Mbits down. It will max that out -- but not for the entire length of the movie. Averaged out it seems to be about 1.5 - 1.8Mbits -- and that's for the highest quality that they offer. Supposedly you can use the service on 768k DSL, though they obviously increase the compression rate and lower the image quality.