Fine, true enough about Carnivore's retirement. If you want to be pedantic, do this on my post::%s/Carnivore/tcpdump/g...or Ethereal, or any other packet sniffer/logger. Throw in some AI to parse all those packets and check for data the feds would consider "of interest".
Happy? My main point remains regardless of the technology the FBI chooses...
Are you a lawyer? Because if you're not, well, the author of TFA *is*:
SecurityFocus columnist Mark D. Rasch, J.D., is a former head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit, and now serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Security Counsel at Solutionary Inc.
I'm inclined to believe him before I believe you, unless you have anything resembling his credentials, which I greatly doubt...
You can't possiblely monitor all traffic from "just one country", because like it or not traffic on the internet bounces like a rubber ball. No one knows where the site is hosted untill the data has been sent/recieved in many cases.
You could come darn close if you were a government agency funded by a basically limitless supply of taxpayer money.
Setup Carnivore boxes just beyond the border routers of all the major ISPs (AOL, Earthlink, NetZero, Comcast, RoadRunner, SBC, every university (esp. publicly-funded ones), etc.) and you've captured a vast majority of domestic American traffic right there.
Setup a few more Carnivore boxes just outside the routers leading to major websites -- Google, MSN, Hotmail, AOL, IBM, Microsoft, and so forth.
Sure, you miss the mom-n-pop ISPs and the smaller websites, but you can get to those too eventually. Besides, the bigger fish are typically on broadband, and guess what? Broadband providers, unlike the dialup providers of yesteryear, are *vastly* more centralized, and thus, easier to monitor.
This is just one more reason why I've come to believe we need a new, physically-separate Internet from the existing Internet (much as the U.S. military has its own network, SIPRNET); one which legally-bans all government employees and agencies from accessing and using it, which bans all businesses not explictly allowed-in by a local, popular vote by the members, etc...
My understanding is that Windows 2000/XP's TCP/IP stack is mostly based off of the BSD implementation, and I do know that their FTP client (ftp.exe) is basically a straight-up BSD implementation (complete with the BSD license in the executable code! Run "strings" on it for words from the BSD license), but beyond that, Windows has little in common with BSD.
You might be thinking of OSX, which at least uses FreeBSD's userland apps, but even there, the kernel is a Mach kernel, not a FreeBSD kernel...
Do you believe that Linux and the open-source community can be stopped - or at least redirected - from writing software which competes increasingly-directly with your company's software, but does so at a price point of zero?
It can be argued that there are hidden costs to Linux, e.g. support costs, setup time, etc. but as time goes on, such costs tend to be ironed out and reduced, if not eliminated; this is the history of technological development (witness the advance from hard-to-use punch cards on mainframes, to command-lines, to easy-to-use GUIs which could control apps, to easier-to-use GUIs which can control everything - the cost in time of managing the OS has plummeted considerably, or alternately, remained about constant as the feature-richness of the OS has risen). Hence, Microsoft's argument that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux, assuming the claim is accurate to begin with, is by no means a guarantee the long-run; it is, at best, a medium-term truth.
Given that it is in Microsoft's best interest to stop the Linux and open-source community from eating MSFT's lunch, what do you believe it will take to accomplish this? Or, alternatively, will Microsoft have to learn to adapt to the new reality of open software development, as IBM and Novell have, as Sun is grudgingly doing?
Do you foresee a point at which OSS developers realize they aren't being paid for their development time (that they are working for free for the profit of others), and an "Atlas Shrugged" occurs, wherein developers largely stop writing publicly-available commercial software (relegating their works to private, in-house developments never released into the public), and thus the only remaining publicly-available software being written is that which is written by hobbyists?
From my perspective, OSS is a sea-change, and cannot, and probably should not, be stopped; I view Linux and OSS as an "adapt or die" situation for those opposing it in the industry.
That's one way... But that's so ugly and inefficient...
Actually, I'd really like to be able to just use the site on the Zaurus directly, in the Opera browser the Zaurus has. But maps.google.com doesn't support Opera yet, so...
I'd like to be able to save maps onto my PDA (Zaurus) that Google outputs, rather than print them out. Unfortunately, I see no way to save Google maps...:(
There's 2 basic levels on which your vision could be implemented: the logical level and the physical level.
Logically, we could create another layer of networking on top of TCP/IP, similar to creating a large VPN. See also the unfortunately-failed Freenet Project.
Physically, we could create our own network, in hardware, which is separate from the Internet, going point-to-point between peoples' homes, and require that all additions to the network be voted-on by people local to the potential joiner, so that we limit only trustworthy nodes onto the network. For instance, we could require that no government employees are allowed access, that no businesses may join., etc. -- only individuals in their homes (or, more-permissively, we might allow businesses which agree to a set of anti-net-pollution rules on the network).
There are enough people interested in a logical net, as Freenet was about 2 years ago demonstrating, but unfortunately, it's also a lower barrier-to-entry, because anybody can download the app and join up.
OTOH, the physical net is *much* harder to set up and connect -- problems with property rights, distance from more-remote nodes, FCC regulations, etc. would abound. And then there's the basic question of what hardware would be used to begin with, which in large part would dictate how those above problems are solved...
Should the money I pay the government be used for something I want, would use, and enjoy?
Should somebody else be required by law to pay the government for something you want (but they don't), would use (but they wouldn't), and enjoy (but they wouldn't)?
After all, that's precisely what happens when something is run by the government and funded through taxes, rather than run privately and funded by only those who are interested in using the service.
The Nazi government in Germany instituted largely a system of socialism for its economic system buddy.
Care to try again on the economic history? Or are you going to continue to claim to know what you're talking about in reference to Nazis and socialism?
After all, I got a good deal on a cheap new Zaurus 6000L! Originally listed for $700, then dropped to $400 when sales were too low for Sharp to continue selling them in the U.S..
But the device is fantastic; now that I've found software to do almost everything I want, I could scarcely be happier with it. I wouldn't mind NES, SNES, and Genesis emulators running faster on it, nor would I mind a better media player than Sharp's (and before anybody mentions OZ, I'm not upgrading to the OZ ROM until at least the first bugfix release, and (very) unfortunately, OpiePlayer doesn't run on the Sharp ROM).
But for everything else I would want to do w/ a PDA -- including some limited web-surfing -- it's awesome. Thanks for not buying 'em guys.:P
As with most things, life's about balance. You don't want to get stuck doing something you love and not be able to support yourself or your family, but at the same time, you don't want to do something you hate just because you get paid truckloads of money to do it.
The trick is finding something that pays adequately and is also enjoyable enough to do it 8-10 hours/day...
And on that tangential note, I think I have a similar problem: too many academic interests, not enough focus on a single one. I'm about to finish a BSCS with a minor in Econ. There's little overlap between the two areas besides their requirements for math and statistics courses, and I rather like it that way. But the law also interests me... So I still don't know if I want to go for a JD, a master's in CS or Econ, an MBA, or if I even want to go to grad/law school at all.:-/
(I suppose I'm fortunate to be able to ponder these things without a family or child to support, at least!)
I think you are having a little trouble with your reading comprehension. What would you take the parenthetical "(or at cost, but inseparable)" to mean?
Quite a civil debater I see...
You (parenthetically) argued that radios included in cars are strictly-speaking not free, but may as well be for the purposes of the argument.
I argue that that is too economically-lazy a way to look at the situation, because there exist reasonable options (again, selling it) when the radio is viewed as a separate cost from the rest of the vehicle.
Heh. I'm about as liberal as they come. They make fun of me at work all the time for my personal and political beliefs. That you are so clueless that you can't figure out what someone's beliefs are, and so myopic that you feel the need to put everone in a pidgeon hole just further reenforces my initial impression of you.
Glad you're happy. Quite odd though to find a liberal defending private property rights whilst arguing for FCC limitations on foul language over the airwaves. Lieberman Democrat? Eh, whatever, it doesn't really matter.
Oh, and the "liberal" stance is for control of that which affects everyone. Part of the rules in trade when they get to use the limited public resource of useful EM spectrum is that they have to follow certain rules.
By that logic, the government may control *everything* having to do with our lives, because every single thing which occurs in this nation, no matter how disconnected it may seem, affects each of us. (The question inevitably is: for the sake of simplicity, at what point do we cut off the chain of dependencies?) For example:
* How you vote in whatever state you're from affects (minimally) the outcome of a national election which affects both of us.
* Your usage of gasoline in your vehicle deprives me (and everybody else) the use of the same gasoline; that's why you pay a price for it (the price of using that gasoline to the exclusion of others). Same goes for land and any other natural resource.
* Your downloads of software from some server may deprive somebody else of some amount of bandwidth -- that somebody else may be me, or it may be a 3rd person (or 4th, or 5th) who in turn deprives me of bandwidth, etc.. (this is assuming a server with a constantly nonzero bytes/sec flow of traffic, e.g. Windows Update)
And so forth. They're indirect, yet tangible examples which follow the (greatly over-exaggerated) theory that "a butterfly which flaps its wings in one part of the world causes a hurricane in another." And after all, they are examples of "that which affects everyone", or at least, people besides yourself, and since your support control of "that which affects everyone," you would support (government, I assume) control of all these things.
Perhaps you're right -- you *are* a liberal of the far-leftie type (rather than the American classical type), for only a hardened leftie would (perhaps not knowingly though, to be fair) advocate a position on government which ultimately devolves (as happened in Soviet Russia, China, N. Korea, and so forth) into totalitarian socialist systems.
I'll generously assume you didn't intend to make such a logically-blanketing statement though...
I, for one, prefer govn't control only in scenarios where there exists no real means for the 2 (or more) involved parties to work things out between themselves, whether in or out of a courtroom. Certain EPA regulations of factories and vehicles (which pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink, etc.) come to mind.
But of FCC regulation of foul language on the air and broadcast TV waves, that is far from one of those problems... Show me an on/off switch or power plug to the receiving device and I'll point out that the practical solution to your problem is in your hands.
maybe that's why there is such a big push for "tort reform."
So the Republicans running our government can abuse our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms? Wouldn't surprise me one bit. >:(
I'm inclined to think it's more a matter of piles of donations from industries bearing the brunt of the legal industry, e.g. the gun industry, the insurance industry, etc., but the social conservatives (read: religious right) are probably a considerable influence there as well...
Excellent analogy. I wish more people understood this point.
Seeing as I like to look at everything from an economist's eyes, I look at the OSS movement, and what I see are idealistic college students and Europeans whose welfare states enable them to live in meager homes with meager food and no job so they may sit at home and write code. As with any hierarchical structure (in this case, of recognition), a few get paid well (the Linus Torvalds' of the world, who can afford to live on the California coast and drive a BMW), but the rest get little, if anything.
As a hobbyist economist, I look for other fields in which the same sort of suicidal tendencies occur. Music? Arguably this is the best analogy. Musicians often play for free, in order to gain recognition (fans), and once they gain enough recognition, they begin charging for their work (to see live shows, buy CDs, etc.). Perhaps they even sign a record deal (analogous to joining Novell or Sun or IBM on your OSS recognition), and then get paid a decent living. But relative to the number of other musicians attempting the same thing, the number who succed in that venture is small.
So it will be with the open-source world: a few highly-skilled coders get paid while the rest find other work and code in their spare time, receiving only recognition to boost their ego and cock size as payment.
Musicians do this too. And they're (in)famously-poor...
I love OSS as much as anybody else and have happily been using Linux and FreeBSD and their associated apps for years, because it doesn't cost me anything, the code is generally of fast, usable, stable quality, and I can change the source if need be (which I've done in some cases to make a particular app compile). Insofar as I have the freedom to do almost anything I want with it and obtain it legally at no charge, it's wonderful. And anybody who is not a developer feels the same way: it's great feeling like you're getting "something for nothing."
But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch; you can't get your "money for nothin and your chicks for free." Nor is software really ever "free" as in economically-free. But leave it to the leftists of the software world to fail to realize this...
Open-source developers are collectively coding their way out of paying jobs, and unless it becomes as common as the GPL to use a license which does one or more of the following: * charges money for the source * charges money for the binaries * requires a support contract for a fee * prevents all for-profit and governmental use (thereby legally requiring the various businesses and governments to pony up for the software, even while allowing private individuals to use it for free)
-- I don't see how OSS developers will survive unless they get into another career and code in their spare time, unless they wish to live like musicians...
The OSS community really needs to look farther down the road and realize that OSS is a *development* model, not a *business* model. And anybody without a business model (even if your "business" is simply selling your time to some employer for 40 hours/week) becomes poor...
What we really need is a license that simultaneously allows and enforces a means of openly-available source to which all may contribute and work on, but which also charges a fee. I could almost see a system of micropayments coming into play here (e.g. developers get paid in micropayments based on how much work they're doing in accordance with the revenues of the software sold to non-developers)... Almost.
(Actually, might that be doable? e.g. by limiting developer access (and payment, obviously) only to those signed up as employees of the project? But then you'd get the problem of people signing up to be developers who would never develop anything but instead download and compile the code themselves, then release the binaries to "average" people. I suppose that could be included in the developer license though...)
Look, any field you get into is going to say "don't do it for the money, do it because you like it!"
Computer geeks say it about IT.
Lawyers say it about law.
Doctors say it about medicine.
But what about the fields NOBODY likes? Did you ever hear Joe Toiletscrubber say "don't clean toilets for the money, do it because you like it!"? Highly doubtful.
The truth is, people do go into fields for the money -- including the computer geeks, the lawyers (especially corporate and IP lawyers), the doctors, and so forth. People take up jobs as garbage collectors, NOT because they're passionate about it, but because it's a job few other people are willing to do -- and it pays well because of that fact. Garbage collectors do it for the money.
So do strippers. And prostitutes (indeed, prostitutes in Nevada have been known to work for about 3-4 years, then retire for life with over $1 million in income for their time in bed).
There are people who get PhD's in the natural sciences NOT because they enjoy their academic field of study, but because they know they will make more money with a PhD than a lesser degree.
Telling people to "do it because you love it" is a nice ideal. But ultimately, all things revolve around money, and people will work in IT because there is decent money to be made there (yes, even now with the offshoring and the lack of dot-bombs to leech from, IT is still a relatively well-paying career path).
Be honest: are YOU passionate about processing business reports? How about maintaining 25 year-old COBOL apps? I sure as hell am not (though the theoretical side of "computer science" does interest me).
Are you even passionate about writing code for other people in general when the project is not one of your choice or even really particularly interesting? I'm not -- but I do it anyway, because there are far worse jobs (waiting tables, shoveling shit in Louisiana) that pay far-less too, and I can find ways to trick myself into liking the work I'm not interested in.
Anybody who says "do it for the love of the work" probably enjoys their work so much that they're at the top of the pack -- and Torvalds is probably the best example in the world. If you love your labor, more power to you.
The rest of us, however, will work at what we do because we're competent enough to get paid for it and we enjoy it just enough not to do something else we enjoy more instead -- but we're mentally-balanced enough not to revolve our lives around our work.
We do hear a bevy of jokes about no females reading/....but what really is the reason?
Women tend to be more social than men? Men have a greater enjoyment of technical problems than women? Boys play with dump trucks and military characters and Legos and Erector sets (more individual, technically-creative toys), while girls play with Barbies and lipstick and new clothes (more social, more fashionably-creative items)?
Some would say it's because men ostracize women in the workplace, but that ignores the fact that men go into Computer Science schools in a ratio of about 20:1, and engineering schools (what I've seen of them, anyway) in ratio of like 10:1 or 5:1. Perhaps this stems from earlier-childhood ostracization from letting girls play with dump trucks and BB guns and Legos and other activities which might turn them into a "tomboy"?
Or perhaps it's simply a product of genetic evolution which tells men to take technical problems in greater proportion than women (evolutionary history summed up as follows -- man: hunt for food and fend off predators and other men using innovative killing tools; woman: cook food, wash clothes, take care of kids)?
We may all be equal under the law (as we should be), but let's not kid ourselves - men and women *are* different, and that fact is as bluntly-obvious as the fact that we have different sex organs. And the difference, IMO, probably manifests itself in other factors of "manhood" or "womanhood" as well.
(Disclaimer: these are all vague sociological generalizations which will not apply in specific scenarios. But isn't that what sociology is about - vague over-generalization?:P )
They are provided free (or at cost, but inseparable)
Basic economics: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
When you buy a car, you are paying for the radio along with the rest of the car. The radio is included by the manufacturer (a private entity) because they are inexpensive to manufacture and extremely popular.
I challenge you to buy a car without getting a radio. There are perhaps 5-10 of the 300+ models out there which you can opt to get the vehicle without a radio.
Then there apparently exists a demand for vehicles without even a radio (or with the option to remove it). Even given the inexpense of radio manufacture, there is consumer demand for radio-less vehicles.
In any case, nothing prevents you from removing the radio and selling it to somebody looking to replace theirs (indeed, my car is a domestic 2005 model, and yet, I've had mine replaced 3 times by the dealer because Delphi's design is garbage).
If a radio is in your possession, however (as I would bet one or more are), you're still forgetting one convenient device that is built into nearly every one of them: the "off" button. You are free at any time to turn off programs which may be offensive. You are free to change the station/channel. Even as an owner of a radio (or TV, or computer with Internet access), nobody is stopping you from avoiding the interception of programs which are in bad taste -- even the automakers who include radios in their cars.
I still fail to why foul language needs regulation when there are a variety of simple things you can do to take such language out of your life, and all these techniques follow established legal principles, such as the "no solicitors" sign example you yourself cited.
If you want government regulation of speech, the U.S. is (fortunately) among the worst nations to live in. You might find Iran or China or North Korea or Russia or even France (they ban so-called "hate speech") to be more palatable...
(BTW, I do get a kick out of arguing with supposed "conservatives" who claim to believe in the principle of limited government, only to find them hypocritically calling for bigger government when it suits their moral whims. (you may not be such a conservative, as you haven't explicitly indicated either way, but your views are consistent with that stance))
I will let you have your useless assumptions in your non-representative world.
Please cite a "useless assumption" I made. In the context of economics, you are still paying for the radio (it's hidden in the price of the car, as you note), and you can still sell the radio if you are required to take one as part of a deal (such as is the case with automobiles). That is entirely representative of the real world.
Requiring a Warrant to monitor URL's and Content would basically put Google and Netcraft out of existence.
What?! How? Google and Netcraft are *privately-run* entities. They do not need warrants to monitor URLs, because unlike the FBI, they are not part of the government.
I think a warrant should be required only to intrude upon private networks and encrypted communication protocols. So, in my mind, the FBI should be able to snoop on my iChat activity
For encrypted communications, do you think the FBI should have a backdoor into the conversation? Or should they be required to keep our private keys in escrow?
The FBI can sniff my GPG-encrypted emails and IPSEC or SSL-encrypted traffic all they like, but without the private keys or some other way of efficiently bypassing the encryption, the only way they will be able to make sense of it is to brute-force the encryption password (or physically coerce me into helping them).
This is the current state of encryption, and this is how it *ought* to be, IMO.
Are you saying I have no right to any say regarding someone hitting me with radiation?
It was a practical question. You're also bombarded by the sound waves of people speaking out of their mouths in public spaces (some of which can be quite loud and obnoxious!). Do you have the right to stop those sound waves? On your own property, yes, absolutely. On public property? No.
So you can certainly build a wall around your property to keep out the sound of those people talking. But you can't go out and tell them to stop talking.
Likewise, you can take steps to prevent radio waves from coming into your home -- line your home with tinfoil, if it's that much of a concern. But you can't go out and tell the radio broadcasters not to broadcast (although you may be able to reach some kind of agreement for them to change the way they broadcast).
At least, that's the ideal situation. Legal case history and usurpations of the Constitution via legislation have altered that reality somewhat...
However, with LCDs rising in popularity, if that was your guess or implication, that would be wrong...
That's true, LCDs don't radiate EM waves, unlike CRTs (which still emit less radiation over the course of a human lifetime than you would receive from a single X-ray, IIRC).
No, they are questions of both content and delivery. You have freedom of speech. I have freedom to not listen. If I put up a "no soliciting" sign on my door, you do not have the "freedom of speech" to tell me something. I've told you to go away, and it is my property. The method of transmitting the words (door to door delivery) changes your rights to speech, because my right of privacy trumps it.
Indeed. But I'm referring to the regulations within the FCC which prevent Howard Stern from using foul language on the radio. That is a question of the logical contents carried by the medium, not the medium itself.
Since I can't hang a sign on my door that says, "no Howard Stern," then there are rules to make sure that the content is not overly objectionable.
By hanging a sign on your door which says "no solicitors," you are taking voluntary action of your own accord to restrict people from selling on your doorstep. You have every right to do so, but the default case is that they may bring that message to your door.
The same is true of radio. The default is to allow those radio waves to pass through you and your home. In order to prevent that, you must - as with solicitors - take action on your own to stop them, be it encasing every room in a Faraday cage, embedding tinfoil behind the walls, or whatever; it's still action required on your part, not on the part of somebody else.
Radio that someone subscribes to is not regulated for content at all. They agree to the terms and can not access it without the subscription.
Explain how the purchase of a device is irrelevent in the means of accessing content.
In order to access non-subscribed radio waves, I need to buy a radio. In order to access subscription-based radio waves (over which digital transmissions are sent, e.g. from Sirius or XM), I must also purchase a radio. The only difference is that one requires an ongoing subscription fee, the other does not. But both have a barrier to access -- the purchase of the physical device required to receive those signals.
The same is true of subscription TV. Something that you could accidentally run across (radios are in nearly every home, as are TVs, as well as every place of work I've ever been in, and nearly every car - in fact, most cars can't be had without a radio, so no pretending that you have to go out of your way to run across an RF tuning device) that is blasted onto your property without your permission that you don't have the capability of preventing
You have the capability; the only question is whether you're willing to take the initiative to do so....should be treated
Presumably, the reason for special consideration for the radio is that radio spectrum is a finite resource. This should not be wasted on foul language.
I can see that as reasoning originally, although even then, it strikes me as very very weak reasoning. But then, all bandwidth is finite: there's only a certain amount of land on which we can sell newspapers, and there's only a certain amount of bandwidth through which radio waves may travel. Taken to logical extremes, the argument of finiteness of the resource is a failed one... (especially taken to merely reasonable extremes, i.e., we can slice up bandwidth more-carefully now, and we have an increased ability to share that bandwidth that we did when the FCC was formed. So in particular, from reasonable extremes, the restriction of foul language on the basis of finiteness is even weaker.)
I don't know. Are you suggesting they may have considered it, and decided that this was something they wanted to encourage?
I sincerely doubt the wanted to encourage it, and I doubt it crossed their mind (only because there's no way it could've been as prevalent as it is now). Even if it had, theirs was such a prudish society that it likely never would've been brought up.
That said, I could see many of the Founding Fathers taking the position that if such pictures are legally-available, it becomes easier to socially-demonize those who take part in their production and consumption and prosecute the sickos who engage in the *actual* act of child molestation. That is, it would be possible to regulate the consumption side via social pressure, rather than legal mandate, while prosecuting the production side from the perspective of individual liberty (i.e., the child's freedom to be left alone by sexual predators) -- even if the texts and images themselves are not illegal, the acts which they portray, *if* they involve real people, would be. (This view would additionally be backed, in spirit at least, by the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling which ruled as legal artificial (e.g. computer-generated) child porn, but not porn involving real, actual children.)
Still, that may well be an over-estimation of their consideration of the issue. The Founders may simply have feared the intrusion of government into even this part of peoples' lives (having quartered the British military in their own homes against their will, among other things) more than the effects of child porn on society...
It should have become apparent at least after a certain time that there would be military secrets that would need protection.
Given that Washington was the first President, and also given that he was the Commander-in-Chief in the American Revolution (that's how he became well-known enought to be nominated for President, even though he wasn't very keen on being President in the first place), wouldn't it seem clear to him, of all people, that protecting military secrets would be of great importance? If so, why didn't he do anything about it?
Perhaps it was that same fear of over-powerful government the other Founding Fathers had? i.e., the fear that the military would one day be too powerful for the citizenry to control (as has been the case for roughly 200 years), and hence, it was necessary to keep open for future generations the military's information so that their sad and messy history could be read by its light?
This begs the question: in present times, can we afford to open up our NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) weapons secrets to the nation? Open up the ongoing undercover operations of the CIA? In the case of the former, I would say no, because their magnitude of destruction is uncontrollably-great w.r.t. the individuals which may be harmed, and our ability to prevent their use on ourselves by attackers (e.g. terrorists) is quite inadequate. The latter, however, I'm remain unconvinced and open to persuasion either way. The CIA has a
You know, once in a great while, I've heard radio signals coming in on my computer speakers. Radio waves are EM transmissions, so if the speaker wires are getting enough EM current to make the speaker move, then I suppose it's possible.
But when I had braces, I never received radio signals, nor do I know of anybody who ever has. It seems like an urban legend to me...
Assuming that does happen though, then those people should be entitled to compensation to resolve the problem (if they think it's a problem) from the offending radio station.
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Fine, true enough about Carnivore's retirement. If you want to be pedantic, do this on my post: :%s/Carnivore/tcpdump/g ...or Ethereal, or any other packet sniffer/logger. Throw in some AI to parse all those packets and check for data the feds would consider "of interest".
Happy? My main point remains regardless of the technology the FBI chooses...
I'm inclined to believe him before I believe you, unless you have anything resembling his credentials, which I greatly doubt...
You could come darn close if you were a government agency funded by a basically limitless supply of taxpayer money.
Setup Carnivore boxes just beyond the border routers of all the major ISPs (AOL, Earthlink, NetZero, Comcast, RoadRunner, SBC, every university (esp. publicly-funded ones), etc.) and you've captured a vast majority of domestic American traffic right there.
Setup a few more Carnivore boxes just outside the routers leading to major websites -- Google, MSN, Hotmail, AOL, IBM, Microsoft, and so forth.
Sure, you miss the mom-n-pop ISPs and the smaller websites, but you can get to those too eventually. Besides, the bigger fish are typically on broadband, and guess what? Broadband providers, unlike the dialup providers of yesteryear, are *vastly* more centralized, and thus, easier to monitor.
This is just one more reason why I've come to believe we need a new, physically-separate Internet from the existing Internet (much as the U.S. military has its own network, SIPRNET); one which legally-bans all government employees and agencies from accessing and using it, which bans all businesses not explictly allowed-in by a local, popular vote by the members, etc...
The feds want to spy on wives heading down the road for some Ho-Hos?
Why does that not surprise me...
football teams (watched in the home)
canned ham spread (eaten in the home)
vacuum cleaners (used in the home)
FreeBSD (used on the home server box)
FreeBSD (used on the private business' backoffice server that nobody except the sysadmin sees)
My understanding is that Windows 2000/XP's TCP/IP stack is mostly based off of the BSD implementation, and I do know that their FTP client (ftp.exe) is basically a straight-up BSD implementation (complete with the BSD license in the executable code! Run "strings" on it for words from the BSD license), but beyond that, Windows has little in common with BSD.
You might be thinking of OSX, which at least uses FreeBSD's userland apps, but even there, the kernel is a Mach kernel, not a FreeBSD kernel...
Mr. Taylor,
Do you believe that Linux and the open-source community can be stopped - or at least redirected - from writing software which competes increasingly-directly with your company's software, but does so at a price point of zero?
It can be argued that there are hidden costs to Linux, e.g. support costs, setup time, etc. but as time goes on, such costs tend to be ironed out and reduced, if not eliminated; this is the history of technological development (witness the advance from hard-to-use punch cards on mainframes, to command-lines, to easy-to-use GUIs which could control apps, to easier-to-use GUIs which can control everything - the cost in time of managing the OS has plummeted considerably, or alternately, remained about constant as the feature-richness of the OS has risen). Hence, Microsoft's argument that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux, assuming the claim is accurate to begin with, is by no means a guarantee the long-run; it is, at best, a medium-term truth.
Given that it is in Microsoft's best interest to stop the Linux and open-source community from eating MSFT's lunch, what do you believe it will take to accomplish this? Or, alternatively, will Microsoft have to learn to adapt to the new reality of open software development, as IBM and Novell have, as Sun is grudgingly doing?
Do you foresee a point at which OSS developers realize they aren't being paid for their development time (that they are working for free for the profit of others), and an "Atlas Shrugged" occurs, wherein developers largely stop writing publicly-available commercial software (relegating their works to private, in-house developments never released into the public), and thus the only remaining publicly-available software being written is that which is written by hobbyists?
From my perspective, OSS is a sea-change, and cannot, and probably should not, be stopped; I view Linux and OSS as an "adapt or die" situation for those opposing it in the industry.
Yours,
MfN
That's one way... But that's so ugly and inefficient...
Actually, I'd really like to be able to just use the site on the Zaurus directly, in the Opera browser the Zaurus has. But maps.google.com doesn't support Opera yet, so...
I'd like to be able to save maps onto my PDA (Zaurus) that Google outputs, rather than print them out. Unfortunately, I see no way to save Google maps... :(
Mapquest lets me do it though.
There's 2 basic levels on which your vision could be implemented: the logical level and the physical level.
Logically, we could create another layer of networking on top of TCP/IP, similar to creating a large VPN. See also the unfortunately-failed Freenet Project.
Physically, we could create our own network, in hardware, which is separate from the Internet, going point-to-point between peoples' homes, and require that all additions to the network be voted-on by people local to the potential joiner, so that we limit only trustworthy nodes onto the network. For instance, we could require that no government employees are allowed access, that no businesses may join., etc. -- only individuals in their homes (or, more-permissively, we might allow businesses which agree to a set of anti-net-pollution rules on the network).
There are enough people interested in a logical net, as Freenet was about 2 years ago demonstrating, but unfortunately, it's also a lower barrier-to-entry, because anybody can download the app and join up.
OTOH, the physical net is *much* harder to set up and connect -- problems with property rights, distance from more-remote nodes, FCC regulations, etc. would abound. And then there's the basic question of what hardware would be used to begin with, which in large part would dictate how those above problems are solved...
Should the money I pay the government be used for something I want, would use, and enjoy?
Should somebody else be required by law to pay the government for something you want (but they don't), would use (but they wouldn't), and enjoy (but they wouldn't)?
After all, that's precisely what happens when something is run by the government and funded through taxes, rather than run privately and funded by only those who are interested in using the service.
Wow, compare a socialist government to Nazis, always a good way to indicate that you don't know what the f*ck you're talking about.
Do you know what the term "Nazi" is short for?
Nazi = "National Socialist"
The Nazi government in Germany instituted largely a system of socialism for its economic system buddy.
Care to try again on the economic history? Or are you going to continue to claim to know what you're talking about in reference to Nazis and socialism?
After all, I got a good deal on a cheap new Zaurus 6000L! Originally listed for $700, then dropped to $400 when sales were too low for Sharp to continue selling them in the U.S..
:P
But the device is fantastic; now that I've found software to do almost everything I want, I could scarcely be happier with it. I wouldn't mind NES, SNES, and Genesis emulators running faster on it, nor would I mind a better media player than Sharp's (and before anybody mentions OZ, I'm not upgrading to the OZ ROM until at least the first bugfix release, and (very) unfortunately, OpiePlayer doesn't run on the Sharp ROM).
But for everything else I would want to do w/ a PDA -- including some limited web-surfing -- it's awesome. Thanks for not buying 'em guys.
As with most things, life's about balance. You don't want to get stuck doing something you love and not be able to support yourself or your family, but at the same time, you don't want to do something you hate just because you get paid truckloads of money to do it.
:-/
The trick is finding something that pays adequately and is also enjoyable enough to do it 8-10 hours/day...
And on that tangential note, I think I have a similar problem: too many academic interests, not enough focus on a single one. I'm about to finish a BSCS with a minor in Econ. There's little overlap between the two areas besides their requirements for math and statistics courses, and I rather like it that way. But the law also interests me... So I still don't know if I want to go for a JD, a master's in CS or Econ, an MBA, or if I even want to go to grad/law school at all.
(I suppose I'm fortunate to be able to ponder these things without a family or child to support, at least!)
I think you are having a little trouble with your reading comprehension. What would you take the parenthetical "(or at cost, but inseparable)" to mean?
Quite a civil debater I see...
You (parenthetically) argued that radios included in cars are strictly-speaking not free, but may as well be for the purposes of the argument.
I argue that that is too economically-lazy a way to look at the situation, because there exist reasonable options (again, selling it) when the radio is viewed as a separate cost from the rest of the vehicle.
Heh. I'm about as liberal as they come. They make fun of me at work all the time for my personal and political beliefs. That you are so clueless that you can't figure out what someone's beliefs are, and so myopic that you feel the need to put everone in a pidgeon hole just further reenforces my initial impression of you.
Glad you're happy. Quite odd though to find a liberal defending private property rights whilst arguing for FCC limitations on foul language over the airwaves. Lieberman Democrat? Eh, whatever, it doesn't really matter.
Oh, and the "liberal" stance is for control of that which affects everyone. Part of the rules in trade when they get to use the limited public resource of useful EM spectrum is that they have to follow certain rules.
By that logic, the government may control *everything* having to do with our lives, because every single thing which occurs in this nation, no matter how disconnected it may seem, affects each of us. (The question inevitably is: for the sake of simplicity, at what point do we cut off the chain of dependencies?) For example:
* How you vote in whatever state you're from affects (minimally) the outcome of a national election which affects both of us.
* Your usage of gasoline in your vehicle deprives me (and everybody else) the use of the same gasoline; that's why you pay a price for it (the price of using that gasoline to the exclusion of others). Same goes for land and any other natural resource.
* Your downloads of software from some server may deprive somebody else of some amount of bandwidth -- that somebody else may be me, or it may be a 3rd person (or 4th, or 5th) who in turn deprives me of bandwidth, etc.. (this is assuming a server with a constantly nonzero bytes/sec flow of traffic, e.g. Windows Update)
And so forth. They're indirect, yet tangible examples which follow the (greatly over-exaggerated) theory that "a butterfly which flaps its wings in one part of the world causes a hurricane in another." And after all, they are examples of "that which affects everyone", or at least, people besides yourself, and since your support control of "that which affects everyone," you would support (government, I assume) control of all these things.
Perhaps you're right -- you *are* a liberal of the far-leftie type (rather than the American classical type), for only a hardened leftie would (perhaps not knowingly though, to be fair) advocate a position on government which ultimately devolves (as happened in Soviet Russia, China, N. Korea, and so forth) into totalitarian socialist systems.
I'll generously assume you didn't intend to make such a logically-blanketing statement though...
I, for one, prefer govn't control only in scenarios where there exists no real means for the 2 (or more) involved parties to work things out between themselves, whether in or out of a courtroom. Certain EPA regulations of factories and vehicles (which pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink, etc.) come to mind.
But of FCC regulation of foul language on the air and broadcast TV waves, that is far from one of those problems... Show me an on/off switch or power plug to the receiving device and I'll point out that the practical solution to your problem is in your hands.
maybe that's why there is such a big push for "tort reform."
So the Republicans running our government can abuse our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms? Wouldn't surprise me one bit. >:(
I'm inclined to think it's more a matter of piles of donations from industries bearing the brunt of the legal industry, e.g. the gun industry, the insurance industry, etc., but the social conservatives (read: religious right) are probably a considerable influence there as well...
Excellent analogy. I wish more people understood this point.
Seeing as I like to look at everything from an economist's eyes, I look at the OSS movement, and what I see are idealistic college students and Europeans whose welfare states enable them to live in meager homes with meager food and no job so they may sit at home and write code. As with any hierarchical structure (in this case, of recognition), a few get paid well (the Linus Torvalds' of the world, who can afford to live on the California coast and drive a BMW), but the rest get little, if anything.
As a hobbyist economist, I look for other fields in which the same sort of suicidal tendencies occur. Music? Arguably this is the best analogy. Musicians often play for free, in order to gain recognition (fans), and once they gain enough recognition, they begin charging for their work (to see live shows, buy CDs, etc.). Perhaps they even sign a record deal (analogous to joining Novell or Sun or IBM on your OSS recognition), and then get paid a decent living. But relative to the number of other musicians attempting the same thing, the number who succed in that venture is small.
So it will be with the open-source world: a few highly-skilled coders get paid while the rest find other work and code in their spare time, receiving only recognition to boost their ego and cock size as payment.
Musicians do this too. And they're (in)famously-poor...
I love OSS as much as anybody else and have happily been using Linux and FreeBSD and their associated apps for years, because it doesn't cost me anything, the code is generally of fast, usable, stable quality, and I can change the source if need be (which I've done in some cases to make a particular app compile). Insofar as I have the freedom to do almost anything I want with it and obtain it legally at no charge, it's wonderful. And anybody who is not a developer feels the same way: it's great feeling like you're getting "something for nothing."
But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch; you can't get your "money for nothin and your chicks for free." Nor is software really ever "free" as in economically-free. But leave it to the leftists of the software world to fail to realize this...
Open-source developers are collectively coding their way out of paying jobs, and unless it becomes as common as the GPL to use a license which does one or more of the following:
* charges money for the source
* charges money for the binaries
* requires a support contract for a fee
* prevents all for-profit and governmental use (thereby legally requiring the various businesses and governments to pony up for the software, even while allowing private individuals to use it for free)
-- I don't see how OSS developers will survive unless they get into another career and code in their spare time, unless they wish to live like musicians...
The OSS community really needs to look farther down the road and realize that OSS is a *development* model, not a *business* model. And anybody without a business model (even if your "business" is simply selling your time to some employer for 40 hours/week) becomes poor...
What we really need is a license that simultaneously allows and enforces a means of openly-available source to which all may contribute and work on, but which also charges a fee. I could almost see a system of micropayments coming into play here (e.g. developers get paid in micropayments based on how much work they're doing in accordance with the revenues of the software sold to non-developers)... Almost.
(Actually, might that be doable? e.g. by limiting developer access (and payment, obviously) only to those signed up as employees of the project? But then you'd get the problem of people signing up to be developers who would never develop anything but instead download and compile the code themselves, then release the binaries to "average" people. I suppose that could be included in the developer license though...)
The best co
Look, any field you get into is going to say "don't do it for the money, do it because you like it!"
Computer geeks say it about IT.
Lawyers say it about law.
Doctors say it about medicine.
But what about the fields NOBODY likes? Did you ever hear Joe Toiletscrubber say "don't clean toilets for the money, do it because you like it!"? Highly doubtful.
The truth is, people do go into fields for the money -- including the computer geeks, the lawyers (especially corporate and IP lawyers), the doctors, and so forth. People take up jobs as garbage collectors, NOT because they're passionate about it, but because it's a job few other people are willing to do -- and it pays well because of that fact. Garbage collectors do it for the money.
So do strippers. And prostitutes (indeed, prostitutes in Nevada have been known to work for about 3-4 years, then retire for life with over $1 million in income for their time in bed).
There are people who get PhD's in the natural sciences NOT because they enjoy their academic field of study, but because they know they will make more money with a PhD than a lesser degree.
Telling people to "do it because you love it" is a nice ideal. But ultimately, all things revolve around money, and people will work in IT because there is decent money to be made there (yes, even now with the offshoring and the lack of dot-bombs to leech from, IT is still a relatively well-paying career path).
Be honest: are YOU passionate about processing business reports? How about maintaining 25 year-old COBOL apps? I sure as hell am not (though the theoretical side of "computer science" does interest me).
Are you even passionate about writing code for other people in general when the project is not one of your choice or even really particularly interesting? I'm not -- but I do it anyway, because there are far worse jobs (waiting tables, shoveling shit in Louisiana) that pay far-less too, and I can find ways to trick myself into liking the work I'm not interested in.
Anybody who says "do it for the love of the work" probably enjoys their work so much that they're at the top of the pack -- and Torvalds is probably the best example in the world. If you love your labor, more power to you.
The rest of us, however, will work at what we do because we're competent enough to get paid for it and we enjoy it just enough not to do something else we enjoy more instead -- but we're mentally-balanced enough not to revolve our lives around our work.
We do hear a bevy of jokes about no females reading /....but what really is the reason?
:P )
Women tend to be more social than men? Men have a greater enjoyment of technical problems than women? Boys play with dump trucks and military characters and Legos and Erector sets (more individual, technically-creative toys), while girls play with Barbies and lipstick and new clothes (more social, more fashionably-creative items)?
Some would say it's because men ostracize women in the workplace, but that ignores the fact that men go into Computer Science schools in a ratio of about 20:1, and engineering schools (what I've seen of them, anyway) in ratio of like 10:1 or 5:1. Perhaps this stems from earlier-childhood ostracization from letting girls play with dump trucks and BB guns and Legos and other activities which might turn them into a "tomboy"?
Or perhaps it's simply a product of genetic evolution which tells men to take technical problems in greater proportion than women (evolutionary history summed up as follows -- man: hunt for food and fend off predators and other men using innovative killing tools; woman: cook food, wash clothes, take care of kids)?
We may all be equal under the law (as we should be), but let's not kid ourselves - men and women *are* different, and that fact is as bluntly-obvious as the fact that we have different sex organs. And the difference, IMO, probably manifests itself in other factors of "manhood" or "womanhood" as well.
(Disclaimer: these are all vague sociological generalizations which will not apply in specific scenarios. But isn't that what sociology is about - vague over-generalization?
They are provided free (or at cost, but inseparable)
Basic economics: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
When you buy a car, you are paying for the radio along with the rest of the car. The radio is included by the manufacturer (a private entity) because they are inexpensive to manufacture and extremely popular.
I challenge you to buy a car without getting a radio. There are perhaps 5-10 of the 300+ models out there which you can opt to get the vehicle without a radio.
Then there apparently exists a demand for vehicles without even a radio (or with the option to remove it). Even given the inexpense of radio manufacture, there is consumer demand for radio-less vehicles.
In any case, nothing prevents you from removing the radio and selling it to somebody looking to replace theirs (indeed, my car is a domestic 2005 model, and yet, I've had mine replaced 3 times by the dealer because Delphi's design is garbage).
If a radio is in your possession, however (as I would bet one or more are), you're still forgetting one convenient device that is built into nearly every one of them: the "off" button. You are free at any time to turn off programs which may be offensive. You are free to change the station/channel. Even as an owner of a radio (or TV, or computer with Internet access), nobody is stopping you from avoiding the interception of programs which are in bad taste -- even the automakers who include radios in their cars.
I still fail to why foul language needs regulation when there are a variety of simple things you can do to take such language out of your life, and all these techniques follow established legal principles, such as the "no solicitors" sign example you yourself cited.
If you want government regulation of speech, the U.S. is (fortunately) among the worst nations to live in. You might find Iran or China or North Korea or Russia or even France (they ban so-called "hate speech") to be more palatable...
(BTW, I do get a kick out of arguing with supposed "conservatives" who claim to believe in the principle of limited government, only to find them hypocritically calling for bigger government when it suits their moral whims. (you may not be such a conservative, as you haven't explicitly indicated either way, but your views are consistent with that stance))
I will let you have your useless assumptions in your non-representative world.
Please cite a "useless assumption" I made. In the context of economics, you are still paying for the radio (it's hidden in the price of the car, as you note), and you can still sell the radio if you are required to take one as part of a deal (such as is the case with automobiles). That is entirely representative of the real world.
Requiring a Warrant to monitor URL's and Content would basically put Google and Netcraft out of existence.
What?! How? Google and Netcraft are *privately-run* entities. They do not need warrants to monitor URLs, because unlike the FBI, they are not part of the government.
I think a warrant should be required only to intrude upon private networks and encrypted communication protocols.
So, in my mind, the FBI should be able to snoop on my iChat activity
For encrypted communications, do you think the FBI should have a backdoor into the conversation? Or should they be required to keep our private keys in escrow?
The FBI can sniff my GPG-encrypted emails and IPSEC or SSL-encrypted traffic all they like, but without the private keys or some other way of efficiently bypassing the encryption, the only way they will be able to make sense of it is to brute-force the encryption password (or physically coerce me into helping them).
This is the current state of encryption, and this is how it *ought* to be, IMO.
Are you saying I have no right to any say regarding someone hitting me with radiation?
...should be treated
It was a practical question. You're also bombarded by the sound waves of people speaking out of their mouths in public spaces (some of which can be quite loud and obnoxious!). Do you have the right to stop those sound waves? On your own property, yes, absolutely. On public property? No.
So you can certainly build a wall around your property to keep out the sound of those people talking. But you can't go out and tell them to stop talking.
Likewise, you can take steps to prevent radio waves from coming into your home -- line your home with tinfoil, if it's that much of a concern. But you can't go out and tell the radio broadcasters not to broadcast (although you may be able to reach some kind of agreement for them to change the way they broadcast).
At least, that's the ideal situation. Legal case history and usurpations of the Constitution via legislation have altered that reality somewhat...
However, with LCDs rising in popularity, if that was your guess or implication, that would be wrong...
That's true, LCDs don't radiate EM waves, unlike CRTs (which still emit less radiation over the course of a human lifetime than you would receive from a single X-ray, IIRC).
No, they are questions of both content and delivery. You have freedom of speech. I have freedom to not listen. If I put up a "no soliciting" sign on my door, you do not have the "freedom of speech" to tell me something. I've told you to go away, and it is my property. The method of transmitting the words (door to door delivery) changes your rights to speech, because my right of privacy trumps it.
Indeed. But I'm referring to the regulations within the FCC which prevent Howard Stern from using foul language on the radio. That is a question of the logical contents carried by the medium, not the medium itself.
Since I can't hang a sign on my door that says, "no Howard Stern," then there are rules to make sure that the content is not overly objectionable.
By hanging a sign on your door which says "no solicitors," you are taking voluntary action of your own accord to restrict people from selling on your doorstep. You have every right to do so, but the default case is that they may bring that message to your door.
The same is true of radio. The default is to allow those radio waves to pass through you and your home. In order to prevent that, you must - as with solicitors - take action on your own to stop them, be it encasing every room in a Faraday cage, embedding tinfoil behind the walls, or whatever; it's still action required on your part, not on the part of somebody else.
Radio that someone subscribes to is not regulated for content at all. They agree to the terms and can not access it without the subscription.
Explain how the purchase of a device is irrelevent in the means of accessing content.
In order to access non-subscribed radio waves, I need to buy a radio. In order to access subscription-based radio waves (over which digital transmissions are sent, e.g. from Sirius or XM), I must also purchase a radio. The only difference is that one requires an ongoing subscription fee, the other does not. But both have a barrier to access -- the purchase of the physical device required to receive those signals.
The same is true of subscription TV. Something that you could accidentally run across (radios are in nearly every home, as are TVs, as well as every place of work I've ever been in, and nearly every car - in fact, most cars can't be had without a radio, so no pretending that you have to go out of your way to run across an RF tuning device) that is blasted onto your property without your permission that you don't have the capability of preventing
You have the capability; the only question is whether you're willing to take the initiative to do so.
Presumably, the reason for special consideration for the radio is that radio spectrum is a finite resource. This should not be wasted on foul language.
I can see that as reasoning originally, although even then, it strikes me as very very weak reasoning. But then, all bandwidth is finite: there's only a certain amount of land on which we can sell newspapers, and there's only a certain amount of bandwidth through which radio waves may travel. Taken to logical extremes, the argument of finiteness of the resource is a failed one... (especially taken to merely reasonable extremes, i.e., we can slice up bandwidth more-carefully now, and we have an increased ability to share that bandwidth that we did when the FCC was formed. So in particular, from reasonable extremes, the restriction of foul language on the basis of finiteness is even weaker.)
I don't know. Are you suggesting they may have considered it, and decided that this was something they wanted to encourage?
I sincerely doubt the wanted to encourage it, and I doubt it crossed their mind (only because there's no way it could've been as prevalent as it is now). Even if it had, theirs was such a prudish society that it likely never would've been brought up.
That said, I could see many of the Founding Fathers taking the position that if such pictures are legally-available, it becomes easier to socially-demonize those who take part in their production and consumption and prosecute the sickos who engage in the *actual* act of child molestation. That is, it would be possible to regulate the consumption side via social pressure, rather than legal mandate, while prosecuting the production side from the perspective of individual liberty (i.e., the child's freedom to be left alone by sexual predators) -- even if the texts and images themselves are not illegal, the acts which they portray, *if* they involve real people, would be. (This view would additionally be backed, in spirit at least, by the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling which ruled as legal artificial (e.g. computer-generated) child porn, but not porn involving real, actual children.)
Still, that may well be an over-estimation of their consideration of the issue. The Founders may simply have feared the intrusion of government into even this part of peoples' lives (having quartered the British military in their own homes against their will, among other things) more than the effects of child porn on society...
It should have become apparent at least after a certain time that there would be military secrets that would need protection.
Given that Washington was the first President, and also given that he was the Commander-in-Chief in the American Revolution (that's how he became well-known enought to be nominated for President, even though he wasn't very keen on being President in the first place), wouldn't it seem clear to him, of all people, that protecting military secrets would be of great importance? If so, why didn't he do anything about it?
Perhaps it was that same fear of over-powerful government the other Founding Fathers had? i.e., the fear that the military would one day be too powerful for the citizenry to control (as has been the case for roughly 200 years), and hence, it was necessary to keep open for future generations the military's information so that their sad and messy history could be read by its light?
This begs the question: in present times, can we afford to open up our NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) weapons secrets to the nation? Open up the ongoing undercover operations of the CIA? In the case of the former, I would say no, because their magnitude of destruction is uncontrollably-great w.r.t. the individuals which may be harmed, and our ability to prevent their use on ourselves by attackers (e.g. terrorists) is quite inadequate. The latter, however, I'm remain unconvinced and open to persuasion either way. The CIA has a
You know, once in a great while, I've heard radio signals coming in on my computer speakers. Radio waves are EM transmissions, so if the speaker wires are getting enough EM current to make the speaker move, then I suppose it's possible.
But when I had braces, I never received radio signals, nor do I know of anybody who ever has. It seems like an urban legend to me...
Assuming that does happen though, then those people should be entitled to compensation to resolve the problem (if they think it's a problem) from the offending radio station.