The wild west metaphor often describing the lawlessness of the internet is real.
Not entirely. Back in the "lawlessness of the wild west" anyone caught doing anything like this would be strung up by the neck. Now when someone tries to do something about these sorts of attacks (like Lyco's screensaver) there is an uproar about stooping to the same low and "maybe" breaking some laws while doing so.
If years and years and years of war have taught us nothing, it is that nothing is free and fire must be fought with fire. Unless we go after those attacking us with the same tactics, we're powerless against them and BlueSecurity like closings will continue as cyber-terrorism continues unabated.
The fact that these guys won this battle will only embolden them to continue along the same path, and we all suffer.
It's anagolous to if we had sat on our hands and not declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor. Stop bowing down and declare war already. They have, why won't we?
Methinks the UK government doesn't know that what it wants is technologically infeasible....
How's THIS for a new law:
From now on, any law regarding, making mention of, or directly effecting anything digital or computer related must pass through the hands of at least one certifiably compitent expert in the field before being allowed to be brought for a vote. Name and credentials of said expert must be available upon demand.
Why is having shitty, flaky, unfixable, unsupportable binary-only drivers a breakthrough? Closed vendor drivers suck, they are designed to hide bugs in the hardware/firmware, and are written by people who don't know the first thing about the OS they are writing drivers for.
This argument is repeated time and again here on Slashdot and the fact is it is rediculous. Want to know why? Because Novell's customers want it. In fact, they want Suse Linux to run on whatever white-box thrown-together-component list they decide, and having vendors supply drivers to reach that goal makes Novell a more attractive company.
Novell isn't/. - this is the real world. Compatability = greater acceptance = better marketing position & happier customers = more sales. Period.
why the hell is the parent marked as flamebait ?
most of his facts are true, unlike the ones that the US government is telling you.
Because anyone who questions the government drafted version of the story is immediately branded as a "conspiracy theorist" which brings with it a very negative conotation of a complete whack-job.
Unfortunately, people in this country (and others) are sheep and are immediately willing to believe what they are told, despite hundreds of years of history of the US government covering things up (domestic spying in the 70s? empty Warren Commission reports on the JFK assassination?, confiscated video from the gas station, hotel, and other installation across the street from the pentagon?)
So yes, brand me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I found loose change to be eye opening. Please don't tell me that we couldn't scramble jets fast enough. We have planes that fly sorties across the world in one evening, but we can't scramble jets to intercept hijacked planes in the air for hours?
Stop blatantly accepting anything you hear. Listen to the true experts - the air-force pilots who say that the manuvers required to hit the pentagon were impossible, the firemen on the ground who have said time and again that the building was brought down by explosives. These are the boots on the ground with actual expertise, and you're believing Rumsfeld.
Apple has over 8 billion dollars in cash. Creative has a market capitalization of 452 million dollars. Apple could buy them with the equivalent of the change they found between the couch cushions.
I'll never understand why posts like this, with real numbers and information, get modded after every attempt to wax knowledgably on a subject one has no knowledge in.
It's an interesting question though. Microsoft is known the world around for purchasing what it sees as it's next big (or even small) product. Axapta, FrontPage, DOS - from now all the way back to the beginning.
I don't hear much if anything about Apple purchasing anyone. I see Jobs standing defiantly against Creative. While MS might have bought Creative, I just don't see Apple even giving it a second thought.
It's sad, but it's becoming a predictable reality that corporations prefer to litigate rather than innovate. It's especially true of companies who are circling the drain.
This is one of those headlines I read on/. and went "well it's about time." While I'm completely against software patents and believe this to be another example of the stifiling atmosphere in the industry today... I read the headline about Creative's being awarded the patent like a YEAR ago.
You knew then they were gonna try to get a piece of the iPod. I can't believe it took so long.
As unrealistic as it is, maybe this will be another case to add on top of NTP/RIM that is just a blatant slap-in-the-face kind of wake up call against software patents.
While I agree that marketing has a lot to do with it, I disagree that it is usability. I find usability in OSX to be lightyears ahead. There is very little application "installation" - drag and drop to applications folder and go.
The real power is the monopoly Microsoft was allowed to create, combined with the questionable decision on the part of Apple to sue all white-box Macintosh-clone developers out of existance.
Windows is ubiquitous and runs on a ton of third-party hardware. Choice (in hardware) + OS monopoly + brilliant marketing does indeed find Windows where it is.
IPTV _is_ feasible on normal broadband. It needs more intelligent design of the network,
Exactly. Especially in the cable internet provider domain. Currently, all 1.2M channels that I receive but do not watch on my digital cable subscription are all being streamed constantly down my pipe. If the cable companies would get their shit together and make ALL cable TV on-demand, each subscriber would be getting a single channel (or let's say 3, with DVR dual and tripple tuners all taping something) instead of 350.
Imagine the swath of bandwidth that now opens.
Progress ain't gonna stop because someone worries about bandwidth. Dial-up was replaced, and I2 will be released consumer grade at some point too. There is no way in hell that we'll be considering our 3 or 6 mbps burstable connections "broadband" in 10 years, because companies that provide bandwidth to the consumer with either step up to the plate, or go under.
Not true. If guns are harder to come by, then this will skew the types of criminals using guns. Career criminals will still use them, but stupid kids won't. And my guess is that career criminals are less likely to kill somebody than stupid kids who may well cock things up.
How is it that you consider that kids who carry guns now - heavily slopping towards urban youth who get caught up in the gang lifestyle - are any less likely to carry guns? Gun crimes carry pretty heavy penalties now, and you can see what those penalties have done to stay off gun crime.
Red herring. Prohibition of defence with lethal force does not equal prohibition of defence with force.
Defense without deadly force is hardly a defense worth worrying about if you are the agressor.
Not that I have the time, but let's us address your questions:
is the u.s. trying to capture territory?
Capture vs. control... it's one thing to fly the US flag, it's another to own the government that runs a country, especially one rich in desired fossil fuels. Do you see much of a difference?
is the u.s. actively and methodically commiting genocide?
Not really, but neither were the Nazi's for the first few years. Although never as blatant, I can see the US falling into a pattern of eugenics.
is u.s. military action taken with the belief of safeguarding national interests (whether real or perceived)?
Yes, and so was Germany's. At least to the people. After the fire at Reichstag, Hitler declared that the Poles had invaded and started the fire. Terrorism, he called it. Did people percieve the invasion of Poland as safeguarding national interests? You bet.
would concepts such as diversity, human rights, and multiculturalism exist if hitler had not been confronted and allowed to dominate the entirety of europe and asia?
Yes. This issue was being pushed long before Nazi Germany, starting early with slavery, then a series of suffrage movements in the US. To assume that the issues of multiculturalism would not exist without WWII is a pretty thin argument.
does the u.s. system have safeguards not allowing any individual to retain too much power?
In theory, but the Patriot Act is just the first in a series of laws passed that do indeed shift the balance of power towards the executive. With the judicial scared to step up and reject the "State Secrets" privledge, and Congress voting strictly upon party lines, the balance of power is quite obviously not working the way it was supposed to.
will the u.s. have a new leader in 2008?
One can hope - will that leader still be in the same pocket that GW Bush is? That remains to be seen.
will new congressmen be elected prior to that?
Sure. Will the balance of power shift? If all new congressmen were elected but the Republican party remained in the majority, nothing much would change at all.
are people leaking national security information being executed?
Yes and no. Leaking information when a government employee with security clearance is considered treason and is punsishable by death. Executions have been carried out in this country. And for the first time ever, normal citizens are being prosecuted under federal espionage acts for recieving leaked information. See this.
what about the outspoken 2 star generals?
For now, we still retain a degree of free speech. Besides, they're not saying anything that anyone didn't already know.
what particular, concrete examples can you provide of u.s. citizen privacy rights being infringed by government excess?
Illegal wiretapping, prosecuting citizens under the Espionage Act of 1917 (which will chill free speech and freedom of the press if won.) There are two. How about this story? CAAPS? Carnivore?
for all the hubub of late, there has not been one specific report of actual, identifiable privacy infringement.
Bullshit. FBI retrieval of airline information after 9/11, NSA boxes in AT&T POPs, etc., etc., etc. Check the ACLU website (of which I am NOT a member) for a whole series of lawsuits against illegal government action against its citizens.
Look, the point is, the US is heading in the wrong direction, at almost blazing speed. The US tries to hold countries accountable for human rights violations while explicitly exempting CIA agents from the same rules. This is why the international community is becoming more and more careful about what US actions it backs.
Current direction = BAD. Not a whole lot of argument to be made against that.
You've missed the point. It's a deeply symbolic right that we hold very dear due to the very nature of the reason that it was added to the Constitution to begin with.
Understand that being so young, the founding of the country is still quite prominent in the minds of at least some of the citizens of the United States. It's an ongoing reminder that freedom is never free, and has and always will cost the lives of those willing to stand for it.
Besides, the argument of legal guns killing other Americans is baseless. Some 98% of gun related crimes are committed with unregistered, illegal firearms. Taking away a citizen's right to own legal firearms will not stem the flow of illegally obtained firearms that are used to commit crimes.
To pretend that it's better in the UK is rediculous. From your own government website, gun crimes are linked to gangs and drug trade, and citizens being restricted from owning firearms have done little to stem the flow or use of illegal firearms in gun crime. Source. Yes, gun crime is low compared to the overall level of crime in the UK, but "Despite these figures, the number of overall offences involving firearms has been increasing each year since 1997/98. And crime involving imitation weapons was up 55% in 2004-05 compared to the previous year." Illegalizing guns is hardly a deterant to those ready to commit crimes.
Back to the right to keep and bear arms - crimes that are committed with guns will be committed with guns - whether the general citizenry is prohibited from owning guns or not.
Further, restricting citizen's use of guns is a thinly veiled effort to further control the populace. When only the government is allowed to defend with force, the citizen loses the ability to defend themselves at all.
So in the US, it's very symbolic in nature (not to mention the size of the UK vs the US, the available hunting area in the US, etc.) But the removal of this constitutional right, given very explicity by the men who founded the country and belived strongly in the need to have such a right, is yet another step on the rights of the citizens of the US - which is why this is such a hot-button issue.
The attitude to this is completely the opposite to the USA, here we really do not understand why Americans see carrying guns as so important.
Mostly because it is the ultimate example of citizen rights and the rights granted under the constitution. It has always been true that governments understand that it is difficult for the populace to rise up if they are denied the tools with which to do so.
The right to keep and bear arms is indeed an acknowledgement that a mere 200+ years ago this country was won with arms used to rise up against an oppresive government (you've gotten much better, UK;) and that the time may come again when action is necessary. Removal of this right - in the US, anyway - is the final straw against the very method that a common people used to win the independence of this nation.
is there any american who is proud of the way their country treats its citizens anymore?
FUCK NO.
I actually can't believe that it's gotten to this point. Every day on the news there is unveiled yet another invasion on my privacy and the privacy of my fellow citizens. Every day there is another civil liberty trounced.
Every day there is news of how Dick Cheney is getting fatter on Halbituron dollars with no-bid contracts. Every day there is news of Bush appointing an old friend or serious yes-man to some high-level position in government that causes nothing but stress.
And every day, the eyes of the people in this country glaze over and they quickly forget about the attrocities to our rights revealed from the day before. I don't understand the mentality.
I actually find myself getting physically angry these days at the hubris with which the executive operates. There is no one standing in their way. Illegal wiretapping is now all but forgotten because the executive has envoked the "State Secrets" privledge - it's not even a real law, but part of what is known as "common law" but judges won't stand UP to these people.
When you are a person hell-bent on control and dictatorship, it's hard to be stopped when the people who have the power to stop someone won't step up. Hell, just yesterday I read that GW Bush was saying how wonderful a president Jeb Bush would make. The man that botched the Florida election in 2000, the man with ties to arguably the most powerful family in the country if not the world... With two Bushes we have seen at least 3 wars.
And the country will vote for Jeb. And the Bushes will continue to reign supreme. Already GW Bush has called for an end to presidental term limits. No surprise he'd want that passed before Jeb is elected.
This country is no longer a democracy or even a republic. I get no say, and it is quite clear that the leaders in Washington in no way represent the will of the people. The country is ruled by money, greed, and power.
I really, really hate to make this analogy. I loathe it actually. But the parallels between current events in the US and Nazi Germany are striking. Germany launched war based on the call to stamp out terrorisim. They controlled the populace thorough fear of outsiders, destroyed international trust, and made the country a very us-vs-them scenario of patriotism that allowed a fanatic to sieze control. Hitler very much said (paraphrased) "I can beat terrorism but only if you grant me more power than I normally have." Hello Patriot Act. And finally, Nazi Germany was stupidly meticulous with their records, including serious amounts of domestic spying.
People. Listen. We are now under-represented if not completely un-represented. The federal government is no longer a checks-and-balances system, with unprecidented power being granted to the executive, going completely unchallenged. I have never before seen this ability to completely shut down investigations into illegal activities. Futher, no presidency has ever seen this degree of secrecy. We are governed by laws that we AREN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO READ. How can you be governed by laws that the government won't even acknowledge exist??
I have become a person I never wanted to be. Conspiracy theory fills my head. But I'm not reading this stuff on some horrible "bushkills.com" site or something. Everything I read is on the front page of/. or the NY Times or Washington Post.
So I'm afraid. Not sure there is anything I can do but try to rally people behind me and behind the very few who actually dare say "no" to the executive. I never thought I'd live in this type of fear of my government, and in fear that we may be witnessing the end of the government as our forefathers saw it.
My only solace is that things of this nature have happened in the past, and have somehow righted themselves. So let's hope that this is just another Linconesque suspension of habius corpus, and that these wrongs will eventually be righted. But with such secrecy, and so much more going on than I will ever know about...
thePlatform - HA! ok, so, i worked quite closely with thePlatform on a content delivery system of tens of thousands of on-demand streaming titles, and let me tell you, they're not that great.
to boot, they don't own a lick of their own content. they are a CDN, holding and transmitting OD content for their customers. actually, reverse that. they're not even that. basically, they're a content management system for streaming content. most of the content they manage they actually put on other CDN vendors like Akamai.
besides that, they don't own any content. Verizon uses them for VCast, and other companies for other things that are completely proprietary. last i checked, thePlatform doesn't have a lick of license to stream any content they store or broadcast beyond the OD requests of their customers.
so the deal wouldn't be made with thePlatform, it'd be made with the individual content holders. it's like - BrightCast or whoever would use thePlatform to manage the DRM on top of content that is stored at Akamai or the like to stream to your Tivo box.
And can they search these packages without any sort of warrent or anything?
And here is the real question. At what point in time did FedEx get the OK to open my mail? Is my mail shipping something that can only be illegal? Last time I checked, shipping cocaine is ALWAYS illegal. But shipping DVDs - does this mean that every time I send a DVD as a birthday gift, FedEx suddenly has MPAA (new name for the US government) permission to open my package?
If there was a line at rediculous with this **AA shit, this just blew the line away in it's dust.
Zogger - seriously - ALL CAPS DOES NOT A POINT MAKE. Further, speaking of seeing a shrink, I believe you have some anger issues.
I stopped reading your comment about a paragraph in. Your assumptions are base, your argument lacks merit. Google could have as easily written their engine to run on Windows as on Linux or UNIX or whatever they run on. They may pick up a performance boost from Python or whatever, who knows. As someone that has ported many a web and heavy app from one platform to the other, let me assure you that anything that can be done on one system can be done on any other system.
As for my arguments with NVidia vs. ATI, the argument has nothing to do with what card you buy because of your opinion of the card manufacturer. It's about allowing a particular protected method of manufacturing and running the drivers to their card to be copied, which waters down the market and provides more serious competition for a market which doesn't want any more. In business there is an understood fact - competition drives the market, but the optimal number of competitors for maxiumum profitability is two.
NVidia and ATI don't want others to know their secrets, and opening them up to the world will not automatically make their software better... but what it will do is eventually water down the market. This has nothing to do with you, but with ATI and NVidia, and them protecting their secrets and their profits.
Software like drivers are as much a protected business practice as any other. So they will never OSS their full driver package (or even their spec) but that doesn't mean I don't want drivers for their software on my Linux box.
Do you REALLY think they would sell less cards?? That is LUDICROUS.
Actually, I find your response ludicrous. Opening up proprietary drivers that a company has spent millions of dollars on R&D developing will not suddenly be helped by Joe Hacker. When MIT graduates and PHDs in EE and physics are working to make your drivers perform that much faster, the OSS comunity will contribute very little at best.
But put this argument aside for a second and let's look at the economics. OSS enables others to take the proprietary algorithms you have developed and use them in their own drivers. Since drivers are at least partially responsible for performance (I work at a company that saw a 30% boost in peformance of a commodity scanner from a driver upgrade) there is nothing to stop the market from becoming flooded with cheap knock-off cards that use the same drivers. Sure, that might benefit you, but it hardly benefits NVidia.
Step away from hardware for a second. Why do you think that Google so closely guards its algorithms? If they made their search engine OSS by your argument, they would benefit greatly from the code input of the community. Bollocks I say. Their mind-share is comparable to DARPA or NASA. The community would contribute very little. Instead, they fight the good fight against other search engines that want their revenue. Releasing their engine would allow the other engines to proport the same performance/search results as Google, thus instantly reducing their superiority claims to nothing.
Proprietary, closed source is necessary in business. OSS does a nice business too yes, in some markets. But in some, proprietary is what gives on company a slight edge over another, and that can mean millions of dollars in return.
Slashdot Mirror
Not entirely. Back in the "lawlessness of the wild west" anyone caught doing anything like this would be strung up by the neck. Now when someone tries to do something about these sorts of attacks (like Lyco's screensaver) there is an uproar about stooping to the same low and "maybe" breaking some laws while doing so.
If years and years and years of war have taught us nothing, it is that nothing is free and fire must be fought with fire. Unless we go after those attacking us with the same tactics, we're powerless against them and BlueSecurity like closings will continue as cyber-terrorism continues unabated.
The fact that these guys won this battle will only embolden them to continue along the same path, and we all suffer.
It's anagolous to if we had sat on our hands and not declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor. Stop bowing down and declare war already. They have, why won't we?
Well, yeah. Which is why the damn _hasn't_ burst, talk of impeachment _hasn't_ surfaced, etc. etc.
I'm with you. It's amazing to me that so many people so willingly allow themselves to be utterly snowed.
Actually, THIS just in - AT&Ts request for return of evidence denied.
How's THIS for a new law:
From now on, any law regarding, making mention of, or directly effecting anything digital or computer related must pass through the hands of at least one certifiably compitent expert in the field before being allowed to be brought for a vote. Name and credentials of said expert must be available upon demand.
Or "Big Brother is Watching You, and If You Try To Stop Him, You Will Go To Jail."
No.
Imagine my surprise when I wasn't modded into a flaming ball of poo... ;)
This argument is repeated time and again here on Slashdot and the fact is it is rediculous. Want to know why? Because Novell's customers want it. In fact, they want Suse Linux to run on whatever white-box thrown-together-component list they decide, and having vendors supply drivers to reach that goal makes Novell a more attractive company.
Novell isn't /. - this is the real world. Compatability = greater acceptance = better marketing position & happier customers = more sales. Period.
Because anyone who questions the government drafted version of the story is immediately branded as a "conspiracy theorist" which brings with it a very negative conotation of a complete whack-job.
Unfortunately, people in this country (and others) are sheep and are immediately willing to believe what they are told, despite hundreds of years of history of the US government covering things up (domestic spying in the 70s? empty Warren Commission reports on the JFK assassination?, confiscated video from the gas station, hotel, and other installation across the street from the pentagon?)
So yes, brand me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I found loose change to be eye opening. Please don't tell me that we couldn't scramble jets fast enough. We have planes that fly sorties across the world in one evening, but we can't scramble jets to intercept hijacked planes in the air for hours?
Stop blatantly accepting anything you hear. Listen to the true experts - the air-force pilots who say that the manuvers required to hit the pentagon were impossible, the firemen on the ground who have said time and again that the building was brought down by explosives. These are the boots on the ground with actual expertise, and you're believing Rumsfeld.
Sheep...
Competition in any market is a good thing.
The ideal number of serious competitors in a space is, and will always be, 2.
So I really don't see it being bad for the VM world.
I'll never understand why posts like this, with real numbers and information, get modded after every attempt to wax knowledgably on a subject one has no knowledge in.
It's an interesting question though. Microsoft is known the world around for purchasing what it sees as it's next big (or even small) product. Axapta, FrontPage, DOS - from now all the way back to the beginning.
I don't hear much if anything about Apple purchasing anyone. I see Jobs standing defiantly against Creative. While MS might have bought Creative, I just don't see Apple even giving it a second thought.
This is one of those headlines I read on /. and went "well it's about time." While I'm completely against software patents and believe this to be another example of the stifiling atmosphere in the industry today... I read the headline about Creative's being awarded the patent like a YEAR ago.
You knew then they were gonna try to get a piece of the iPod. I can't believe it took so long.
As unrealistic as it is, maybe this will be another case to add on top of NTP/RIM that is just a blatant slap-in-the-face kind of wake up call against software patents.
While I agree that marketing has a lot to do with it, I disagree that it is usability. I find usability in OSX to be lightyears ahead. There is very little application "installation" - drag and drop to applications folder and go.
The real power is the monopoly Microsoft was allowed to create, combined with the questionable decision on the part of Apple to sue all white-box Macintosh-clone developers out of existance.
Windows is ubiquitous and runs on a ton of third-party hardware. Choice (in hardware) + OS monopoly + brilliant marketing does indeed find Windows where it is.
Exactly. Especially in the cable internet provider domain. Currently, all 1.2M channels that I receive but do not watch on my digital cable subscription are all being streamed constantly down my pipe. If the cable companies would get their shit together and make ALL cable TV on-demand, each subscriber would be getting a single channel (or let's say 3, with DVR dual and tripple tuners all taping something) instead of 350.
Imagine the swath of bandwidth that now opens.
Progress ain't gonna stop because someone worries about bandwidth. Dial-up was replaced, and I2 will be released consumer grade at some point too. There is no way in hell that we'll be considering our 3 or 6 mbps burstable connections "broadband" in 10 years, because companies that provide bandwidth to the consumer with either step up to the plate, or go under.
So much FUD to support tiered internet pricing...
After reading TFA, it seems that this was on the top of his list of "things to avoid doing."
Not true. If guns are harder to come by, then this will skew the types of criminals using guns. Career criminals will still use them, but stupid kids won't. And my guess is that career criminals are less likely to kill somebody than stupid kids who may well cock things up.
How is it that you consider that kids who carry guns now - heavily slopping towards urban youth who get caught up in the gang lifestyle - are any less likely to carry guns? Gun crimes carry pretty heavy penalties now, and you can see what those penalties have done to stay off gun crime.
Red herring. Prohibition of defence with lethal force does not equal prohibition of defence with force.
Defense without deadly force is hardly a defense worth worrying about if you are the agressor.
Knowing this country, it will take around 8 years and dozens of scandals.
Not that I have the time, but let's us address your questions:
is the u.s. trying to capture territory?
Capture vs. control... it's one thing to fly the US flag, it's another to own the government that runs a country, especially one rich in desired fossil fuels. Do you see much of a difference?
is the u.s. actively and methodically commiting genocide?
Not really, but neither were the Nazi's for the first few years. Although never as blatant, I can see the US falling into a pattern of eugenics.
is u.s. military action taken with the belief of safeguarding national interests (whether real or perceived)?
Yes, and so was Germany's. At least to the people. After the fire at Reichstag, Hitler declared that the Poles had invaded and started the fire. Terrorism, he called it. Did people percieve the invasion of Poland as safeguarding national interests? You bet.
would concepts such as diversity, human rights, and multiculturalism exist if hitler had not been confronted and allowed to dominate the entirety of europe and asia?
Yes. This issue was being pushed long before Nazi Germany, starting early with slavery, then a series of suffrage movements in the US. To assume that the issues of multiculturalism would not exist without WWII is a pretty thin argument.
does the u.s. system have safeguards not allowing any individual to retain too much power?
In theory, but the Patriot Act is just the first in a series of laws passed that do indeed shift the balance of power towards the executive. With the judicial scared to step up and reject the "State Secrets" privledge, and Congress voting strictly upon party lines, the balance of power is quite obviously not working the way it was supposed to.
will the u.s. have a new leader in 2008?
One can hope - will that leader still be in the same pocket that GW Bush is? That remains to be seen.
will new congressmen be elected prior to that?
Sure. Will the balance of power shift? If all new congressmen were elected but the Republican party remained in the majority, nothing much would change at all.
are people leaking national security information being executed?
Yes and no. Leaking information when a government employee with security clearance is considered treason and is punsishable by death. Executions have been carried out in this country. And for the first time ever, normal citizens are being prosecuted under federal espionage acts for recieving leaked information. See this.
what about the outspoken 2 star generals?
For now, we still retain a degree of free speech. Besides, they're not saying anything that anyone didn't already know.
what particular, concrete examples can you provide of u.s. citizen privacy rights being infringed by government excess?
Illegal wiretapping, prosecuting citizens under the Espionage Act of 1917 (which will chill free speech and freedom of the press if won.) There are two. How about this story? CAAPS? Carnivore?
for all the hubub of late, there has not been one specific report of actual, identifiable privacy infringement.
Bullshit. FBI retrieval of airline information after 9/11, NSA boxes in AT&T POPs, etc., etc., etc. Check the ACLU website (of which I am NOT a member) for a whole series of lawsuits against illegal government action against its citizens.
Look, the point is, the US is heading in the wrong direction, at almost blazing speed. The US tries to hold countries accountable for human rights violations while explicitly exempting CIA agents from the same rules. This is why the international community is becoming more and more careful about what US actions it backs.
Current direction = BAD. Not a whole lot of argument to be made against that.
You've missed the point. It's a deeply symbolic right that we hold very dear due to the very nature of the reason that it was added to the Constitution to begin with.
Understand that being so young, the founding of the country is still quite prominent in the minds of at least some of the citizens of the United States. It's an ongoing reminder that freedom is never free, and has and always will cost the lives of those willing to stand for it.
Besides, the argument of legal guns killing other Americans is baseless. Some 98% of gun related crimes are committed with unregistered, illegal firearms. Taking away a citizen's right to own legal firearms will not stem the flow of illegally obtained firearms that are used to commit crimes.
To pretend that it's better in the UK is rediculous. From your own government website, gun crimes are linked to gangs and drug trade, and citizens being restricted from owning firearms have done little to stem the flow or use of illegal firearms in gun crime. Source. Yes, gun crime is low compared to the overall level of crime in the UK, but "Despite these figures, the number of overall offences involving firearms has been increasing each year since 1997/98. And crime involving imitation weapons was up 55% in 2004-05 compared to the previous year." Illegalizing guns is hardly a deterant to those ready to commit crimes.
Back to the right to keep and bear arms - crimes that are committed with guns will be committed with guns - whether the general citizenry is prohibited from owning guns or not.
Further, restricting citizen's use of guns is a thinly veiled effort to further control the populace. When only the government is allowed to defend with force, the citizen loses the ability to defend themselves at all.
So in the US, it's very symbolic in nature (not to mention the size of the UK vs the US, the available hunting area in the US, etc.) But the removal of this constitutional right, given very explicity by the men who founded the country and belived strongly in the need to have such a right, is yet another step on the rights of the citizens of the US - which is why this is such a hot-button issue.
Mostly because it is the ultimate example of citizen rights and the rights granted under the constitution. It has always been true that governments understand that it is difficult for the populace to rise up if they are denied the tools with which to do so.
The right to keep and bear arms is indeed an acknowledgement that a mere 200+ years ago this country was won with arms used to rise up against an oppresive government (you've gotten much better, UK ;) and that the time may come again when action is necessary. Removal of this right - in the US, anyway - is the final straw against the very method that a common people used to win the independence of this nation.
And that's why we hold this right so very dear.
FUCK NO.
I actually can't believe that it's gotten to this point. Every day on the news there is unveiled yet another invasion on my privacy and the privacy of my fellow citizens. Every day there is another civil liberty trounced.
Every day there is news of how Dick Cheney is getting fatter on Halbituron dollars with no-bid contracts. Every day there is news of Bush appointing an old friend or serious yes-man to some high-level position in government that causes nothing but stress.
And every day, the eyes of the people in this country glaze over and they quickly forget about the attrocities to our rights revealed from the day before. I don't understand the mentality.
I actually find myself getting physically angry these days at the hubris with which the executive operates. There is no one standing in their way. Illegal wiretapping is now all but forgotten because the executive has envoked the "State Secrets" privledge - it's not even a real law, but part of what is known as "common law" but judges won't stand UP to these people.
When you are a person hell-bent on control and dictatorship, it's hard to be stopped when the people who have the power to stop someone won't step up. Hell, just yesterday I read that GW Bush was saying how wonderful a president Jeb Bush would make. The man that botched the Florida election in 2000, the man with ties to arguably the most powerful family in the country if not the world... With two Bushes we have seen at least 3 wars.
And the country will vote for Jeb. And the Bushes will continue to reign supreme. Already GW Bush has called for an end to presidental term limits. No surprise he'd want that passed before Jeb is elected.
This country is no longer a democracy or even a republic. I get no say, and it is quite clear that the leaders in Washington in no way represent the will of the people. The country is ruled by money, greed, and power.
I really, really hate to make this analogy. I loathe it actually. But the parallels between current events in the US and Nazi Germany are striking. Germany launched war based on the call to stamp out terrorisim. They controlled the populace thorough fear of outsiders, destroyed international trust, and made the country a very us-vs-them scenario of patriotism that allowed a fanatic to sieze control. Hitler very much said (paraphrased) "I can beat terrorism but only if you grant me more power than I normally have." Hello Patriot Act. And finally, Nazi Germany was stupidly meticulous with their records, including serious amounts of domestic spying.
People. Listen. We are now under-represented if not completely un-represented. The federal government is no longer a checks-and-balances system, with unprecidented power being granted to the executive, going completely unchallenged. I have never before seen this ability to completely shut down investigations into illegal activities. Futher, no presidency has ever seen this degree of secrecy. We are governed by laws that we AREN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO READ. How can you be governed by laws that the government won't even acknowledge exist??
I have become a person I never wanted to be. Conspiracy theory fills my head. But I'm not reading this stuff on some horrible "bushkills.com" site or something. Everything I read is on the front page of /. or the NY Times or Washington Post.
So I'm afraid. Not sure there is anything I can do but try to rally people behind me and behind the very few who actually dare say "no" to the executive. I never thought I'd live in this type of fear of my government, and in fear that we may be witnessing the end of the government as our forefathers saw it.
My only solace is that things of this nature have happened in the past, and have somehow righted themselves. So let's hope that this is just another Linconesque suspension of habius corpus, and that these wrongs will eventually be righted. But with such secrecy, and so much more going on than I will ever know about...
thePlatform - HA! ok, so, i worked quite closely with thePlatform on a content delivery system of tens of thousands of on-demand streaming titles, and let me tell you, they're not that great.
to boot, they don't own a lick of their own content. they are a CDN, holding and transmitting OD content for their customers. actually, reverse that. they're not even that. basically, they're a content management system for streaming content. most of the content they manage they actually put on other CDN vendors like Akamai.
besides that, they don't own any content. Verizon uses them for VCast, and other companies for other things that are completely proprietary. last i checked, thePlatform doesn't have a lick of license to stream any content they store or broadcast beyond the OD requests of their customers.
so the deal wouldn't be made with thePlatform, it'd be made with the individual content holders. it's like - BrightCast or whoever would use thePlatform to manage the DRM on top of content that is stored at Akamai or the like to stream to your Tivo box.
And here is the real question. At what point in time did FedEx get the OK to open my mail? Is my mail shipping something that can only be illegal? Last time I checked, shipping cocaine is ALWAYS illegal. But shipping DVDs - does this mean that every time I send a DVD as a birthday gift, FedEx suddenly has MPAA (new name for the US government) permission to open my package?
If there was a line at rediculous with this **AA shit, this just blew the line away in it's dust.
Zogger - seriously - ALL CAPS DOES NOT A POINT MAKE. Further, speaking of seeing a shrink, I believe you have some anger issues.
I stopped reading your comment about a paragraph in. Your assumptions are base, your argument lacks merit. Google could have as easily written their engine to run on Windows as on Linux or UNIX or whatever they run on. They may pick up a performance boost from Python or whatever, who knows. As someone that has ported many a web and heavy app from one platform to the other, let me assure you that anything that can be done on one system can be done on any other system.
As for my arguments with NVidia vs. ATI, the argument has nothing to do with what card you buy because of your opinion of the card manufacturer. It's about allowing a particular protected method of manufacturing and running the drivers to their card to be copied, which waters down the market and provides more serious competition for a market which doesn't want any more. In business there is an understood fact - competition drives the market, but the optimal number of competitors for maxiumum profitability is two.
NVidia and ATI don't want others to know their secrets, and opening them up to the world will not automatically make their software better... but what it will do is eventually water down the market. This has nothing to do with you, but with ATI and NVidia, and them protecting their secrets and their profits.
Software like drivers are as much a protected business practice as any other. So they will never OSS their full driver package (or even their spec) but that doesn't mean I don't want drivers for their software on my Linux box.
Actually, I find your response ludicrous. Opening up proprietary drivers that a company has spent millions of dollars on R&D developing will not suddenly be helped by Joe Hacker. When MIT graduates and PHDs in EE and physics are working to make your drivers perform that much faster, the OSS comunity will contribute very little at best.
But put this argument aside for a second and let's look at the economics. OSS enables others to take the proprietary algorithms you have developed and use them in their own drivers. Since drivers are at least partially responsible for performance (I work at a company that saw a 30% boost in peformance of a commodity scanner from a driver upgrade) there is nothing to stop the market from becoming flooded with cheap knock-off cards that use the same drivers. Sure, that might benefit you, but it hardly benefits NVidia.
Step away from hardware for a second. Why do you think that Google so closely guards its algorithms? If they made their search engine OSS by your argument, they would benefit greatly from the code input of the community. Bollocks I say. Their mind-share is comparable to DARPA or NASA. The community would contribute very little. Instead, they fight the good fight against other search engines that want their revenue. Releasing their engine would allow the other engines to proport the same performance/search results as Google, thus instantly reducing their superiority claims to nothing.
Proprietary, closed source is necessary in business. OSS does a nice business too yes, in some markets. But in some, proprietary is what gives on company a slight edge over another, and that can mean millions of dollars in return.