Step 1. Build site with small print in ToS "It will be in violation of this site's policies for you to ever close this website, to stop looking at the website, to move away from the computer displaying this website, to perform any voluntary actions apart from looking at this site, or to allow the computer displaying the site to ever be powered off". Step 2. Send mails with links saying "Urgent! Please take a look at this site. New wikileaks stuff here! Pure dynamite!", to Obama administration and DoJ officials. Step 3. Do we really need a step 3 after step 2?
Humans are 60-70% water aren't they? We really need a way to dehydrate folks before they board the planes. I propose feeding people to a giant sugarcane crusher, as soon as they clear security!
(Laugh if you must, this will probably soon be implemented by folks who brought us the arrest-pilot-for-mentioning-that-searching-pilots-for-weapons-is-stupid-since-they-can-crash-planes-anyways and kick-kid-off-plane-for-reading-book-with-bomb-image-on-cover!!! you never know!)
Dear clueless, opting out does not mean you do not get searched/screened. You can only opt-out of this specific mode of screening and be screened by an alternate method instead. But I guess you are either an exhibitionist or a voyeur, depending on which side of the scanner you happen to be. Personally I would prefer a non-xray and zero-health-risk form of scanning that obscures my actual body by representing it as silhouette or line drawing instead. We need machines that are sophisticated enough to accommodate the fact that the security personnel do not need to look at every mole and scar on my body, and need only to look at the external objects I am carrying on my person(and/or hidden objects concealed inside the body).
But seriously, way too many more folks die in just road accidents. Why are we wasting all this effort and money on this instead of putting all that funding into automated driver-less cars, instead of going overboard with something that has statistically caused far few deaths... I mean assuming the goal is actually to save human lives and not just massage the ego of certain countries.
Collaboration as a species only works if the other portion of the said species is also interested in such a collaboration.
What you need to be asking is, is this a friendly nation? or is it a rival? And if latter, then will you be comfortable if the rival supersedes you at some point, or has an equal military technology/might? Last I checked, this situation did not sit so well between USA and USSR. And China happens be yet another semi-communist/fascist country, if I am not wrong.
Missing the point that in either case, it is none of government's business. All this focus to eradicate just one minor way I might possibly die. And here, I thought far more people died from motor vehicle accidents.
Really? So when I hire a cab to drive me around, I need some special government permission or license in order to do it? What others things are not a right according to you? How about breathing? Learn to think logically please.
If god wanted to test our faith with impossible stuff, he could have simply made a huge mountain-sized boulder magically float in air over the vatican, defying gravity. Miracles are more appreciated when they are closer home.
Let us see, prosecuting "freedom fighters" or dissidents who kill/blow up innocents. Good.
Prosecuting dissidents who did not actually kill/hurt anyone and were simply disagreeing with you. Bad.
I am not sure why you are advocating apathy. We cannot obviously hand freedom and rights on a silver platter to others. They have to be desired and fought for, and thus earned. But there is no reason why we should be unsympathetic or become an accomplice towards making their lives even worse.
We are not debating cutting off all options. We are talking about intent.
Cisco can hardly be blamed if they were not aware that their product will be used for censorship and trampling of human rights. If you sell me a knife assuming I was going to use it to cut vegetables, and I go and use it to kill a bunch of kids, you are not accountable.
However, if I practically came and told you "Hey, I wanna slash the throats of a bunch of infants, what kind of knife would recommend for that?" and you *still* sold me the knife, you deserve to go straight to jail.
If you cannot see the difference between the two, you should consider getting some therapy yourself. It is not about whether you can eradicate murder from the face of the earth. It is about whether you helped a murderer yourself.
We are not debating law. We are debating ethics. Just because ethics don't always have a law enforcing them, doesn't means they are useless or unnecessary. It is not about "pushing" our laws or ethics at that. Basic human rights are not something that a country/government should be allowed to ignore, immaterial of whether it is USA or China. And it is our downright *duty* to push at least those, on the countries that do not honor them.
There is a difference between merely manufacturing a gun(which may be used by police etc.) and to knowingly sell it to a well-known certified nutcase who you *know*, is going to use it to commit random mass-murder.
What is being argued is that Cisco was *aware* of the purpose that their technology was to be used for, and still went along with the deal to make a profit.
A company's right to make a profit comes with certain implicit restrictions. Companies are not allowed to provide supplies to the enemies in times of war, for example. It is considered treason, in such a case. Cisco was expected as part of its social responsibilities as an entity that is theoretically immortal and that cannot be jailed etc., to not deliberately participate in trampling human rights. Why do you think people were so outraged with Nike using kids in their sweat-shops? Profit is not supposed to be everything.
Problem that you quote about Indian office, seems to be of poor recruiting/interviewing process. And plus apparently there was little done by your company, in way of motivation, training or even in terms of policy formulation(to retain the said knowledge). Which is exactly what the article is talking about. It showed a successful example with Indian employees/company even. The flaw is with American management that is going the way of dinosaur.
Occasionally, my parents drag me for religious functions and rituals. Just because I humor them and play along, does not in the least bit imply that I am a very religious person.
Have you considered that most of the congress may have been just playing along to humor a few folks who cared a lot about this sort of a thing? Probably not. One thing I have noticed about a lot of religious folks, is that they prefer to interpret things only in the way that suits them, and tend to think in just black and white. Just because the few religious folks who were mentioned above didn't get thrown to lions on the spot, must *definitely* imply that everyone present was a 100% bible-thumping religious person.
You should have read the comment properly. There was an implicit acknowledgement that yes, ripping content you own comes under fair usage and is not illegal in US.. for NOW. I had merely raised a "yet". Considering the other insane laws RIAA has managed to pass, on what basis are you guaranteeing that RIAA will not be able to get a law to curtail this? There are already bills forbidding lip-syncing to songs for example, on youtube etc. As long as the treaty stands, it doesn't matters what you define to NOT be a crime in UK, if there is a strong chance that US will soon deem the same to be illegal or if it already has. Ask O'Dwyer, for example.
Okay, I am curious. How does this matter in the long run? As per the US-UK extradition treaty, US laws trump UK laws anyways. If it is illegal in USA, a UK citizen can get arrested and extradited regardless. And considering the kind of laws RIAA/MPAA lobbying has managed to get passed("economic terrorism"), it will be eventually illegal, once RIAA does gets around to getting a rider attached to some important bill to get fair-use rights eroded. And at that point, the treaty means that it will be illegal in UK as well for all practical purposes automatically. Or am I misinterpreting this somehow?
So basically a bunch of foreigners come and blow up some planes/buildings and your government's reaction is to declare all its *citizens* i.e. the victims, to be suspected terrorists... and morons like you, instead of finding this weird, are trying to JUSTIFY this. Dude, please don't breed. Seriously.
PS. Contrary to common belief people are not convicted of rape in Sweden for 'forgetting to use a condom'.
No worries, I am sure USA can arrange for there to be a first time for such.
The good old USA, where it is okay to get foreigners residing in other countries brought into domestic jurisdiction via state-sponsored kidnapping. Yep, it has happened. Not surprised, Assange refused the airport offer.
Too bad most governments don't agree with that logic, when they sends you the bill for the electricity from the power-plants funded with your tax money.
I guess I will need to be more explicit. It shouldn't matter here whether it was a "corporation" doing this or if it was a bunch of people doing it. Is the thing they are doing, a problem in itself?
And it is hard to scale up open-source/crowd-sourced projects? What have you been smoking? You lack the imagination, I am afraid. But for hints, I will recommend a look at the entire Linux community or even all of the flicker/twitter/internet/whatnot(when you consider that it is "a bunch of people"(pretty much everyone) who are providing the content. To be more specific, any of the "corporation" is essentially a "bunch of people" hiding behind a fake entity. Let us say they are hiring a team of 80 developers to work on google maps. Are you saying that same cannot be theoretically done by another group of equally-skilled 80 developers who join a similar project voluntarily? Much of satellite images that Googlemaps uses, are in public domain anyways. And what will you do then???? Will you be okay with the images being uploaded then? Community run projects can run sufficient revenue as well btw, via donations or ads etc.
What is to stop Google from "donating" to such a community project(developer time/cash/servers) and come up with exactly the same thing that they have now? What will you do then? Stop corporations from donating anything to opensource projects(linux/apache etc) completely?
So basically your gripe is not whether someone can upload pics of your house on the net or not. Your problem is simply "I dislike xyz. I will allow everyone except xyz to upload such pics". Which is kind of silly.
Corporation as people is indeed stupid. But your sole argument here seems to be "Corporations are evil! I will never allow them to do stuff". It is you who seems to be arguing that a corporation is a separate entity instead of just "a bunch of people" hiding behind a fake name.
What we were talking about was, whether there is actually any problem with the act of taking photos of public streets etc.
But the short lifespan you mentioned is the core argument. Democracies that have a fair amount of well-thought balance and checks, at least have a chance of surviving for a pretty long period. Communism implementations by default have to rely mostly on force, and as such are corrupted much faster.
If ideologies were horses, you would probably buy one which was likely to live for a long time, rather than the one which was bound to not last even the year.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 1. Build site with small print in ToS "It will be in violation of this site's policies for you to ever close this website, to stop looking at the website, to move away from the computer displaying this website, to perform any voluntary actions apart from looking at this site, or to allow the computer displaying the site to ever be powered off".
Step 2. Send mails with links saying "Urgent! Please take a look at this site. New wikileaks stuff here! Pure dynamite!", to Obama administration and DoJ officials.
Step 3. Do we really need a step 3 after step 2?
>We shouldn't allow water in planes, I tell you.
Humans are 60-70% water aren't they? We really need a way to dehydrate folks before they board the planes. I propose feeding people to a giant sugarcane crusher, as soon as they clear security!
(Laugh if you must, this will probably soon be implemented by folks who brought us the arrest-pilot-for-mentioning-that-searching-pilots-for-weapons-is-stupid-since-they-can-crash-planes-anyways and kick-kid-off-plane-for-reading-book-with-bomb-image-on-cover!!! you never know!)
Dear clueless, opting out does not mean you do not get searched/screened. You can only opt-out of this specific mode of screening and be screened by an alternate method instead. But I guess you are either an exhibitionist or a voyeur, depending on which side of the scanner you happen to be. Personally I would prefer a non-xray and zero-health-risk form of scanning that obscures my actual body by representing it as silhouette or line drawing instead. We need machines that are sophisticated enough to accommodate the fact that the security personnel do not need to look at every mole and scar on my body, and need only to look at the external objects I am carrying on my person(and/or hidden objects concealed inside the body).
But seriously, way too many more folks die in just road accidents. Why are we wasting all this effort and money on this instead of putting all that funding into automated driver-less cars, instead of going overboard with something that has statistically caused far few deaths... I mean assuming the goal is actually to save human lives and not just massage the ego of certain countries.
Collaboration as a species only works if the other portion of the said species is also interested in such a collaboration.
What you need to be asking is, is this a friendly nation? or is it a rival? And if latter, then will you be comfortable if the rival supersedes you at some point, or has an equal military technology/might? Last I checked, this situation did not sit so well between USA and USSR. And China happens be yet another semi-communist/fascist country, if I am not wrong.
I am curious. Where does the building material for these 4 million stations you are proposing, comes from?
Missing the point that in either case, it is none of government's business. All this focus to eradicate just one minor way I might possibly die. And here, I thought far more people died from motor vehicle accidents.
Really? So when I hire a cab to drive me around, I need some special government permission or license in order to do it? What others things are not a right according to you? How about breathing? Learn to think logically please.
>>God made it that way to test your faith.
If god wanted to test our faith with impossible stuff, he could have simply made a huge mountain-sized boulder magically float in air over the vatican, defying gravity. Miracles are more appreciated when they are closer home.
I don't think I can stop you from bashing this helpless guy's brains out with a rock.
Tell you what? Since I cannot stop you from finding a rock anyways, allow me to loan you my hammer to kill him.
It is not totalitarian at all.
Let us see, prosecuting "freedom fighters" or dissidents who kill/blow up innocents. Good.
Prosecuting dissidents who did not actually kill/hurt anyone and were simply disagreeing with you. Bad.
I am not sure why you are advocating apathy. We cannot obviously hand freedom and rights on a silver platter to others. They have to be desired and fought for, and thus earned. But there is no reason why we should be unsympathetic or become an accomplice towards making their lives even worse.
We are not debating cutting off all options. We are talking about intent.
Cisco can hardly be blamed if they were not aware that their product will be used for censorship and trampling of human rights. If you sell me a knife assuming I was going to use it to cut vegetables, and I go and use it to kill a bunch of kids, you are not accountable.
However, if I practically came and told you "Hey, I wanna slash the throats of a bunch of infants, what kind of knife would recommend for that?" and you *still* sold me the knife, you deserve to go straight to jail.
If you cannot see the difference between the two, you should consider getting some therapy yourself. It is not about whether you can eradicate murder from the face of the earth. It is about whether you helped a murderer yourself.
We are not debating law. We are debating ethics. Just because ethics don't always have a law enforcing them, doesn't means they are useless or unnecessary. It is not about "pushing" our laws or ethics at that. Basic human rights are not something that a country/government should be allowed to ignore, immaterial of whether it is USA or China. And it is our downright *duty* to push at least those, on the countries that do not honor them.
There is a difference between merely manufacturing a gun(which may be used by police etc.) and to knowingly sell it to a well-known certified nutcase who you *know*, is going to use it to commit random mass-murder.
What is being argued is that Cisco was *aware* of the purpose that their technology was to be used for, and still went along with the deal to make a profit.
A company's right to make a profit comes with certain implicit restrictions. Companies are not allowed to provide supplies to the enemies in times of war, for example. It is considered treason, in such a case. Cisco was expected as part of its social responsibilities as an entity that is theoretically immortal and that cannot be jailed etc., to not deliberately participate in trampling human rights. Why do you think people were so outraged with Nike using kids in their sweat-shops? Profit is not supposed to be everything.
Problem that you quote about Indian office, seems to be of poor recruiting/interviewing process. And plus apparently there was little done by your company, in way of motivation, training or even in terms of policy formulation(to retain the said knowledge). Which is exactly what the article is talking about. It showed a successful example with Indian employees/company even. The flaw is with American management that is going the way of dinosaur.
Interesting.
Occasionally, my parents drag me for religious functions and rituals. Just because I humor them and play along, does not in the least bit imply that I am a very religious person.
Have you considered that most of the congress may have been just playing along to humor a few folks who cared a lot about this sort of a thing? Probably not. One thing I have noticed about a lot of religious folks, is that they prefer to interpret things only in the way that suits them, and tend to think in just black and white. Just because the few religious folks who were mentioned above didn't get thrown to lions on the spot, must *definitely* imply that everyone present was a 100% bible-thumping religious person.
Maybe the aliens somewhere, were playing spore? :p
You should have read the comment properly. There was an implicit acknowledgement that yes, ripping content you own comes under fair usage and is not illegal in US.. for NOW. I had merely raised a "yet". Considering the other insane laws RIAA has managed to pass, on what basis are you guaranteeing that RIAA will not be able to get a law to curtail this? There are already bills forbidding lip-syncing to songs for example, on youtube etc. As long as the treaty stands, it doesn't matters what you define to NOT be a crime in UK, if there is a strong chance that US will soon deem the same to be illegal or if it already has. Ask O'Dwyer, for example.
Okay, I am curious. How does this matter in the long run? As per the US-UK extradition treaty, US laws trump UK laws anyways. If it is illegal in USA, a UK citizen can get arrested and extradited regardless. And considering the kind of laws RIAA/MPAA lobbying has managed to get passed("economic terrorism"), it will be eventually illegal, once RIAA does gets around to getting a rider attached to some important bill to get fair-use rights eroded. And at that point, the treaty means that it will be illegal in UK as well for all practical purposes automatically. Or am I misinterpreting this somehow?
So basically a bunch of foreigners come and blow up some planes/buildings and your government's reaction is to declare all its *citizens* i.e. the victims, to be suspected terrorists... and morons like you, instead of finding this weird, are trying to JUSTIFY this. Dude, please don't breed. Seriously.
No worries, I am sure USA can arrange for there to be a first time for such.
The good old USA, where it is okay to get foreigners residing in other countries brought into domestic jurisdiction via state-sponsored kidnapping. Yep, it has happened. Not surprised, Assange refused the airport offer.
For *that*, we already have the domestic surveillance program...
Too bad most governments don't agree with that logic, when they sends you the bill for the electricity from the power-plants funded with your tax money.
I didn't claim any such thing.
I guess I will need to be more explicit. It shouldn't matter here whether it was a "corporation" doing this or if it was a bunch of people doing it. Is the thing they are doing, a problem in itself?
And it is hard to scale up open-source/crowd-sourced projects? What have you been smoking? You lack the imagination, I am afraid. But for hints, I will recommend a look at the entire Linux community or even all of the flicker/twitter/internet/whatnot(when you consider that it is "a bunch of people"(pretty much everyone) who are providing the content. To be more specific, any of the "corporation" is essentially a "bunch of people" hiding behind a fake entity. Let us say they are hiring a team of 80 developers to work on google maps. Are you saying that same cannot be theoretically done by another group of equally-skilled 80 developers who join a similar project voluntarily? Much of satellite images that Googlemaps uses, are in public domain anyways. And what will you do then???? Will you be okay with the images being uploaded then? Community run projects can run sufficient revenue as well btw, via donations or ads etc.
What is to stop Google from "donating" to such a community project(developer time/cash/servers) and come up with exactly the same thing that they have now? What will you do then? Stop corporations from donating anything to opensource projects(linux/apache etc) completely?
So basically your gripe is not whether someone can upload pics of your house on the net or not. Your problem is simply "I dislike xyz. I will allow everyone except xyz to upload such pics". Which is kind of silly.
Corporation as people is indeed stupid. But your sole argument here seems to be "Corporations are evil! I will never allow them to do stuff". It is you who seems to be arguing that a corporation is a separate entity instead of just "a bunch of people" hiding behind a fake name.
What we were talking about was, whether there is actually any problem with the act of taking photos of public streets etc.
So you will have no problems with this, if Google maps was an open-source project run by "a bunch of people" instead of a corporation?
Focusing on the wrong thing, aren't we?
I fully agree with everything you said.
But the short lifespan you mentioned is the core argument. Democracies that have a fair amount of well-thought balance and checks, at least have a chance of surviving for a pretty long period. Communism implementations by default have to rely mostly on force, and as such are corrupted much faster.
If ideologies were horses, you would probably buy one which was likely to live for a long time, rather than the one which was bound to not last even the year.