Why do you think anyone outside of the high-tech-business-complex takes email seriously?
Write your congressman. Type your letter on good bond paper, in a high quality envelope, properly addressed. Make your case as well-reasoned and literate as you possibly can. Send them letters
worthy of a head of state or elected official.
Do not simply write your congressman "one and done." Develop a relationship with your representative's office over a period of years, by writing letters, participating in their campaign, or even joining the political party that they represent.
Don't send them an email during the busiest time they have ever had, and then act surprised that they didn't take the time to read your rant.
> This is good because IIRC RICO is a CRIMINAL
> action, and leaves the companies open to
> everything from fines to revocation of charters.
It allows for something else that I find delicious: Prison time for executives.
And the best part? You can end up in prison
because you are the highest level of authority
that "knew or should have known" about the violation.
That means you don't even have to have your manicured hands dirty to be escorted out of your
ivory tower in handcuffs. Even if you "don't know" about the corruption in your organization,
if the FBI can prove that you "should have known",
you're responsible.
I love RICO. OSHA is pretty good like this as well...
"If the recording industry was found to have
misused its copyright material, it might not be able to successfully pursue an infringement claim on those works. If the recording industry was found to have misused its copyright material, it might not be able to successfully pursue an infringement claim on those works."
I have two problems with that sentence.
First, it is purely editorial, and
not derived from the facts of the story. Judge
Patel did not say anything so strong.
Secondly, it bothers me that the subjunctive case
has nearly been lost in the English language, even
among journalists. That sentence should start
"If the recording industry were found..."
As it is written, it has a possibly different meaning than the writer intended. Forgetting how
and when to use the subjunctive limits the range
of verbal expression when a distinction is needed
between events that have happened in the past and
hypothetical events.
Will it surprise anybody when some toy/entertainment corporation makes
this scientific endeavor stop using
their trademarked name? Or puts a
stop to the research altogether with
some huge lawsuit? Preposterous? Really?
>Um, and IBM isn't? If you already have one of Earth's
>largest companies spending over $1 billion to promote
>Linux
When you walk into an IBM office, you see IBM computers
running Windows. They may be "promoting linux" with their
left hand, but their right hand is actively supporting Microsoft.
Cray wanted to make money, and that university
lab was a sucker to agree to those terms in the
first place... and whoever bought it from them
was also a sucker.
> If you don't have the original box, jewel
>case, and receipt, you very probably DON'T have
>a legal copy to sell.
Baloney. I have lots of legit CD's, without
the rest of that stuff. These guys aren't selling CDR's of Win98. They are trying to
resell a product just like they do all their
other merch.
>When deciding on a punishment, you have to decide what >the aim of punishment is and how best to achieve that aim.
The aim of any punishment in our current system
is to increase the revenue of the Prison Industrial Complex.
That's right, prisons are profitable, and the more people
they lock up, the more profitable they are. And the whole
time they can complain about how much it costs to incarcerate someone, without putting that costs side by
side with how much money goes INTO the prison system.
Making "computer crimes" rise to the same legal level
as say, cutting a stewardess' throat and crashing a plane
into a building, does NOT serve to increase the magnitude
of "computer crimes", it rather LOWERS the magnitude of
the truly serious crimes. If you can expect the same punishment for something like defacing a web page
as you can for blowing up a car bomb, then that means
a car bomb suddenly isn't such a bad crime.
It's like saying Marijuana is the same thing as Heroin.
It doesn't make marijuana "worse", it implies that heroin
is somehow no more or less acceptable.
There might be parallels in the abortion==murder campaign as well.
>We can stop Bin Laden from attacking America without
>destroying his organization.
Western thinking does not allow us to understand any military organization other than a hierarchical chain of command.
Osama (who I will not call by his formal name, as that is an honorary courtesy in his culture that he has not earned from me), almost certainly does not give any sort of direct
command down his chain of leadership to perform specific acts at specific times. It may even turn out that he learned about Tuesday's attacks ON TUESDAY, when the rest of us did.
Osama lives the life of a holy man. A madman, yes, but he still dwells in the shamanistic state enjoyed by holy men throughout history in all cultures. Has no use for a telephone, probably never watches TV.
Because of his status to his followers, he is able to lead without command. This is incredibly difficult to comprehend if your only understanding of a military organization is hierarchy! There might have been ZERO communication between Osama and his followers in the US
regarding the attacks. His involvement might extend as far as "tacit complicity", and his foreknowledge of the specifics of the attack probably are only of the most vague sort.
Finding the picture of Osama along with the Koran and a flight manual, is no different in the eyes of his followers than say, a bible and a picture of Jesus. (I'm sure I'm now
some kind of heretic among people who don't understand
what I am saying to them).
Cryptography never entered into this crime. I don't even see evidence that it was committed in secrecy. While I doubt the hijackers were wearing t-shirts that said WTC 911 and brandishing their knives, I also doubt they had any need for tactical communications by the time the plan was in motion.
If we, that is, Western Civilization, are to ever understand the motivations of these people, we might do well to try to understand their culture and religion. If we succumb to the temptation to try to frame our understanding of the tragedy in terms of American society, Western military structure and command, or Christianity, we will fail totally, because these concepts have not even come into play.
If we can't understand what motivates and enables our attackers, we will be forever vulnerable. Make no mistake:
Killing Osama would not affect his ability to command something like Tuesday's attack.
I believe the US government understands this as well as they ever will, and I also believe that is why President Bush's
speeches are so obviously targeted at qwelling the mass rage brewing among his countrymen. He knows as well as I do that you cannot fight a spirit. He may still bring us the
head of Osama, but I fear that will simply escalate, rather than end, the war.
> I also fear that too many will, as Ben Franklin said, be
>willing to give up essential freedoms for perceived safety.
I'm not convinced that Ben Franklin actually said this, since
it appears to be credited to several different people. However, it has been often said. And if Franklin or anyone else saw a need to say it then, it stands to reason that there was a prevailing move to surrender freedoms to government
then, just as now.
I think we may be hitting some type of wall in accordance with human nature...
> Can you conceive of how bad the situation would be if any
>cop could walk into your house and take whatever he
>wanted without need of a warrant and not violate the law in
>doing so?
There are only two ways for this to go.
One, it leads to a WHOLE LOT of dead cops.
The other, it leads to us becoming our own
worst enemy....
> Your country needs you. U.S. military >recruting links:
Just like after Desert Storm started, people will flock to enlist in the armed forces. Perhaps they do not realize that the forces are quite completely staffed with volunteers, and
that every new recruit costs resources. Three meals a day and housing are not free, and consuming these resources means less is devoted to dealing with the tasks at hand. It is also important to consider that if you try to enlist NOW, you probably won't have much choice in the job you get, and your possibilities for advancement will probably be much more limited than they would be had you enlisted at a time when there wasn't a glut of volunteers.
If you were considering joining the military already, then by all means, talk to a recruiting officer. If you just decided to go enlist because of some romantic notion engendered by the current crisis, consider it carefully before you go half-cocked and make a binding, longterm career decision that you can't back out of if you regret it, and consider that however imminent war may seem today, it might only last a short time before it's business as usual. It will be over, and you will still be guarding some abandoned airfield in Nebraska for the next 4 years.
If you go and enlist NOW, you're hurting more than helping! That's 3 meals a day and housing that needs to go to someone on active duty, and that's only the start. Most jobs in the military are occupied already by volunteers. Don't go half cocked and join the army
now! People did that after we started "liberating Kuwait", and many regretted it (and kept regretting it for the years they had to spend in the military.)
All those who are worried about the draft, again, the armed forces aren't equipped to deal with large numbers of people who don't want to be there.
I don't think you understand the historical pretext of revolution. Farmers with plowshares beaten into polearms and swords, or hunting rifles and shotguns, aren't what we're talking about. Before a modern revolution can begin, the situation must be such that entire military divisions turn against the current authority.
I don't see any "concerned mothers" disarming the military. Did you think the Confederate Army came out of nothing? Didn't you realize that many of the soldiers in the War for Independence had been trained and provisioned by the British?
There may be a force of law. He was under a grand jury indictment at one point, and has admitted to tax evasion. I'd be in hiding too,
in some country that does not have an extradition treaty with the USA...
> This seems incredible to me, that anyone
>playing someone of the caliber of Short can
>move all his pawns one square forward (giving
>Short 8 moves to develop his attack,
>essentially)---and still win!
ion, it sounds like
I want to see this line. It makes all the difference in the world in what order he moved the pawns, and whether he could do it and win with either side. The loss in tempo and development is pretty obnoxious, but if you knew what to do next with the wall of pawns on the 3rd rank, it might be very interesting. You haven't developed anything, but the pawn moves give the pieces some space. By that time the opponent has utter control of the middle, has both his bishops and both his knights out, and probably has either the queen or a rook developed. But it's not as if you've given up 8 moves! It looks like a really bad position, but it might be salvageable.
Here's Gnuchess getting a draw out of the situation (white opening with each pawn one square from A-H). But if your opponent knows what you're up to, and you open with different pawns at each move different lines of the reply possibilites exist. I really wish we could see and analyze these games.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you think anyone outside of the high-tech-business-complex takes email seriously?
Write your congressman. Type your letter on good bond paper, in a high quality envelope, properly addressed. Make your case as well-reasoned and literate as you possibly can. Send them letters
worthy of a head of state or elected official.
Do not simply write your congressman "one and done." Develop a relationship with your representative's office over a period of years, by writing letters, participating in their campaign, or even joining the political party that they represent.
Don't send them an email during the busiest time they have ever had, and then act surprised that they didn't take the time to read your rant.
> This is good because IIRC RICO is a CRIMINAL
> action, and leaves the companies open to
> everything from fines to revocation of charters.
It allows for something else that I find delicious: Prison time for executives.
And the best part? You can end up in prison
because you are the highest level of authority
that "knew or should have known" about the violation.
That means you don't even have to have your manicured hands dirty to be escorted out of your
ivory tower in handcuffs. Even if you "don't know" about the corruption in your organization,
if the FBI can prove that you "should have known",
you're responsible.
I love RICO. OSHA is pretty good like this as well...
"If the recording industry was found to have
misused its copyright material, it might not be able to successfully pursue an infringement claim on those works. If the recording industry was found to have misused its copyright material, it might not be able to successfully pursue an infringement claim on those works."
I have two problems with that sentence.
First, it is purely editorial, and
not derived from the facts of the story. Judge
Patel did not say anything so strong.
Secondly, it bothers me that the subjunctive case
has nearly been lost in the English language, even
among journalists. That sentence should start
"If the recording industry were found..."
As it is written, it has a possibly different meaning than the writer intended. Forgetting how
and when to use the subjunctive limits the range
of verbal expression when a distinction is needed
between events that have happened in the past and
hypothetical events.
> that is a different micromachines
Will it surprise anybody when some toy/entertainment corporation makes
this scientific endeavor stop using
their trademarked name? Or puts a
stop to the research altogether with
some huge lawsuit? Preposterous? Really?
>Prisoner rapes [yahoo.com] could be stopped
You don't get it, do you?
The fear of anal rape in prison is one of the
things that makes it undesirable.
The threat of anal rape in prison is one of the
main weapons in the war on drugs.
US Law is enforced, ultimately, by the threat of anal sex...
>Um, and IBM isn't? If you already have one of Earth's
>largest companies spending over $1 billion to promote
>Linux
When you walk into an IBM office, you see IBM computers
running Windows. They may be "promoting linux" with their
left hand, but their right hand is actively supporting Microsoft.
Cray wanted to make money, and that university
lab was a sucker to agree to those terms in the
first place... and whoever bought it from them
was also a sucker.
> If you don't have the original box, jewel
>case, and receipt, you very probably DON'T have
>a legal copy to sell.
Baloney. I have lots of legit CD's, without
the rest of that stuff. These guys aren't selling CDR's of Win98. They are trying to
resell a product just like they do all their
other merch.
> Say someone hax0rs an air traffic
> control system, do they deserve life
> imprisonment?
Yes, they do. For attempted murder, not for
computer crime. They should be tried and executed
or imprisoned for the crime, not for the means.
If we raise the computer crime to the level of a
capital offense, we DIMINISH the meaning of the
capital offenses we already have.
>When deciding on a punishment, you have to decide what >the aim of punishment is and how best to achieve that aim.
The aim of any punishment in our current system
is to increase the revenue of the Prison Industrial Complex.
That's right, prisons are profitable, and the more people
they lock up, the more profitable they are. And the whole
time they can complain about how much it costs to incarcerate someone, without putting that costs side by
side with how much money goes INTO the prison system.
Making "computer crimes" rise to the same legal level
as say, cutting a stewardess' throat and crashing a plane
into a building, does NOT serve to increase the magnitude
of "computer crimes", it rather LOWERS the magnitude of
the truly serious crimes. If you can expect the same punishment for something like defacing a web page
as you can for blowing up a car bomb, then that means
a car bomb suddenly isn't such a bad crime.
It's like saying Marijuana is the same thing as Heroin.
It doesn't make marijuana "worse", it implies that heroin
is somehow no more or less acceptable.
There might be parallels in the abortion==murder campaign as well.
>You won't notice 50ms in anything but the most
>demanding applications.
I'll notice 12ms in the least demanding audio production environment. Video is even worse affected by jitter in the
time domain.
" it was taxation that prompted the American revolution"
Taxation was the last straw, not the first.
You don't give any useful information about your particular notebook... How could you expect an answer to your question?
>Bullshit. I can understand it just fine.
Then could you please explain to President Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that bombing the Middle East won't stop terrorism, Osamist or otherwise?
>We can stop Bin Laden from attacking America without
>destroying his organization.
Western thinking does not allow us to understand any military organization other than a hierarchical chain of command.
Osama (who I will not call by his formal name, as that is an honorary courtesy in his culture that he has not earned from me), almost certainly does not give any sort of direct
command down his chain of leadership to perform specific acts at specific times. It may even turn out that he learned about Tuesday's attacks ON TUESDAY, when the rest of us did.
Osama lives the life of a holy man. A madman, yes, but he still dwells in the shamanistic state enjoyed by holy men throughout history in all cultures. Has no use for a telephone, probably never watches TV.
Because of his status to his followers, he is able to lead without command. This is incredibly difficult to comprehend if your only understanding of a military organization is hierarchy! There might have been ZERO communication between Osama and his followers in the US
regarding the attacks. His involvement might extend as far as "tacit complicity", and his foreknowledge of the specifics of the attack probably are only of the most vague sort.
Finding the picture of Osama along with the Koran and a flight manual, is no different in the eyes of his followers than say, a bible and a picture of Jesus. (I'm sure I'm now
some kind of heretic among people who don't understand
what I am saying to them).
Cryptography never entered into this crime. I don't even see evidence that it was committed in secrecy. While I doubt the hijackers were wearing t-shirts that said WTC 911 and brandishing their knives, I also doubt they had any need for tactical communications by the time the plan was in motion.
If we, that is, Western Civilization, are to ever understand the motivations of these people, we might do well to try to understand their culture and religion. If we succumb to the temptation to try to frame our understanding of the tragedy in terms of American society, Western military structure and command, or Christianity, we will fail totally, because these concepts have not even come into play.
If we can't understand what motivates and enables our attackers, we will be forever vulnerable. Make no mistake:
Killing Osama would not affect his ability to command something like Tuesday's attack.
I believe the US government understands this as well as they ever will, and I also believe that is why President Bush's
speeches are so obviously targeted at qwelling the mass rage brewing among his countrymen. He knows as well as I do that you cannot fight a spirit. He may still bring us the
head of Osama, but I fear that will simply escalate, rather than end, the war.
> I also fear that too many will, as Ben Franklin said, be
>willing to give up essential freedoms for perceived safety.
I'm not convinced that Ben Franklin actually said this, since
it appears to be credited to several different people. However, it has been often said. And if Franklin or anyone else saw a need to say it then, it stands to reason that there was a prevailing move to surrender freedoms to government
then, just as now.
I think we may be hitting some type of wall in accordance with human nature...
> Can you conceive of how bad the situation would be if any
>cop could walk into your house and take whatever he
>wanted without need of a warrant and not violate the law in
>doing so?
There are only two ways for this to go.
One, it leads to a WHOLE LOT of dead cops.
The other, it leads to us becoming our own
worst enemy....
>we should find out why these people felt the
>need to attack us
They want a different answer besides the truth.
There are always at least 30 wars raging in the world, and the US calls it peace.
> the asbestos levels in the air are either safe
>or nonexistent
The problem with Asbestos is that the only safe level of exposure is zero.
> Your country needs you. U.S. military >recruting links:
Just like after Desert Storm started, people will flock to enlist in the armed forces. Perhaps they do not realize that the forces are quite completely staffed with volunteers, and
that every new recruit costs resources. Three meals a day and housing are not free, and consuming these resources means less is devoted to dealing with the tasks at hand. It is also important to consider that if you try to enlist NOW, you probably won't have much choice in the job you get, and your possibilities for advancement will probably be much more limited than they would be had you enlisted at a time when there wasn't a glut of volunteers.
If you were considering joining the military already, then by all means, talk to a recruiting officer. If you just decided to go enlist because of some romantic notion engendered by the current crisis, consider it carefully before you go half-cocked and make a binding, longterm career decision that you can't back out of if you regret it, and consider that however imminent war may seem today, it might only last a short time before it's business as usual. It will be over, and you will still be guarding some abandoned airfield in Nebraska for the next 4 years.
If you go and enlist NOW, you're hurting more than helping! That's 3 meals a day and housing that needs to go to someone on active duty, and that's only the start. Most jobs in the military are occupied already by volunteers. Don't go half cocked and join the army
now! People did that after we started "liberating Kuwait", and many regretted it (and kept regretting it for the years they had to spend in the military.)
All those who are worried about the draft, again, the armed forces aren't equipped to deal with large numbers of people who don't want to be there.
I don't think you understand the historical pretext of revolution. Farmers with plowshares beaten into polearms and swords, or hunting rifles and shotguns, aren't what we're talking about. Before a modern revolution can begin, the situation must be such that entire military divisions turn against the current authority.
I don't see any "concerned mothers" disarming the military. Did you think the Confederate Army came out of nothing? Didn't you realize that many of the soldiers in the War for Independence had been trained and provisioned by the British?
>No one forced Fischer to become a recluse.
There may be a force of law. He was under a grand jury indictment at one point, and has admitted to tax evasion. I'd be in hiding too,
in some country that does not have an extradition treaty with the USA...
> This seems incredible to me, that anyone
>playing someone of the caliber of Short can
>move all his pawns one square forward (giving
>Short 8 moves to develop his attack,
>essentially)---and still win!
ion, it sounds like
I want to see this line. It makes all the difference in the world in what order he moved the pawns, and whether he could do it and win with either side. The loss in tempo and development is pretty obnoxious, but if you knew what to do next with the wall of pawns on the 3rd rank, it might be very interesting. You haven't developed anything, but the pawn moves give the pieces some space. By that time the opponent has utter control of the middle, has both his bishops and both his knights out, and probably has either the queen or a rook developed. But it's not as if you've given up 8 moves! It looks like a really bad position, but it might be salvageable.
Here's Gnuchess getting a draw out of the situation (white opening with each pawn one square from A-H). But if your opponent knows what you're up to, and you open with different pawns at each move different lines of the reply possibilites exist. I really wish we could see and analyze these games.
1. a3 Nc6 2. b3 Nf6 3. c3 e5 4. d3 Be7 5. e3 d5 6. f3 O-O 7. g3 Bf5 8. h3 e4 9. Kf2 Rb8 10. dxe4 dxe4 11. Qxd8 Rfxd8 12. Nd2 Ne5 13. f4 Nd3+ 14. Bxd3 exd3 15. Ngf3 Kf8 16. Bb2 Ra8 17. g4 Bd7 18. Ne5 Be6 19. Kf3 Rd6 20. f5 Nd7 21. c4 Bf62 2. Nxd7+ Bxd7 23. Bxf6 Rxf6 24. e4 Re8 25. g5 Rd6 26. c5 Rd4 27. Rae1 Bc6 28. Rhg1 Re5 29. Ke3 Rd7 30. Rc1 g6 31. f6 h6 32. gxh6 Rh5 33.Rg3 Rxh6 34. a4 Ke8 35. Rc3 Rh5 36. Rf3 Kd8 37. Rg3 Ke8 38. Kf4 Rh4+ 39.Ke3 Rh5
{draw} 1/2-1/2