Ashcroft is one of the big proponents of using "material witness" detentions as a way of avoiding habeus corpus. It's not being mentioned in the press because the press would rather not digify that sort of procedural bullshit. They've called it what it is: Detention without due process or habeus corpus. The press have a duty to try to be objective, but that doesn't mean they have to be gullible.
--G
Don't do it! Google is too good to be public, too innovative to be tied down to corporate short-termism and profit-seeking. Google is too clever, too innovative, too simple, and too sensible to survive the public sphere and its short-term-profit-at-any-cost shit-where-you-eat demands.
Google is better with its current benevolent dictatorship than with a democracy of ignorant stockholders.
That said, if they do IPO, I know I'll be among many others asking, where can I get some?
--G
You know, I'm glad there are scientists out there who can tell whether I've committed a crime. Because with all these bizarre and incomprehensible laws out there, I sure as heck don't know when I have. Perhaps if I get one of these chip things it will tell me when my code touches a patented technology or happens to break some loser's copy-protection technology from the mid-80s.
--G
Telemarketers who have a prior or existing business relationship with you.
[...]
Seems fair to me.
Only if you have some way of negating that "prior relationship". I don't want every company I've ever bought a product from in the last 26 years being able to call me. Why should Sprint be able to call me because I used their service a decade ago in a different state?
"Prior relationship" will be the telemarketer's next line of defense, you can be sure. Expect to get calls from Bill's auto glass which is a division of GalactoMegaCorp which also owns NachoMania from whom you once bought a bag of nachos in 1979.
Their second line of defense will be the "first hit is free" provisions of most of these laws. Most such laws provide no fine for the first offense -- this lets telemarketers simply disolve and reincorporate under a new name every time they run through their list.
--G
I don't want charity or political organizations calling me either, why can't we get rid of them?
Because politicians will never vote to restrict themselves; only targeted voter outrage will make a difference. I decided my last vote in part because I refuse to vote for telemarketing politicians, and we'll have to do so in the future for unrepentant spammers like Sen. Lieberman.
Oddly, the Democrats seem (in the limited sample set I've seen) to be the big users of spam and telemarketing. Either the Republicans are, as usual, slow in comprehending technology, or the Democrats are, as usual, quick to claim the time and resources of others.
--G
I can't think of anything better than a ban on sale to encourage people to pirate, and I can't think of any group more likely to pick up the software-sharing habit than 15-to-18 year-olds.
--G
Amen to that! I was able to raid some university store-rooms for chemicals and so had lots of chemisty-set fun growing up even in the 80s, but it just keeps getting harder and harder. It's nigh impossible for kids to get dangerous chemicals today, and our society is poorer for it.
Some day, when I have kids, I shall have to find ways to import black-market dangerous old chemistry sets from Elbonia or something.
--G
As a former employee of a member of the SALT coalition, let me promise you: It will never go anywhere.
SALT make great demoware, particularly because any half-clever programmer can make a "multimodal" telephony demo from existing technologies and say, "look! That's how cool SALT will be!" But the companies that have to implement and demploy it hate each other, the big players all have their own proprietary sytems that they might retrofit buggy-ass SALT implementations into if you happen to catch them in a good mood, and half of the potential customers have gone bankrupt since the initiative started.
And for those designers who absolutely must put speech-this-and-that into your web apps: write an XSL transform to generate VoiceXML, which crappy though it is is at least something like a standard. Or, better yet, have yourself lobotomized; it will save the rest of us from interface hell.
--G
The shirt has to be closed because we don't have adequately stretch fabrics.
Oh wait, we do.
The T-shirt is high-tech. It solves all of the problems that the old mode of dress is built around. But no, somehow, the formal thing to do is to wear an unnecessary tie to hide unnecessary buttons.
And don't even start on collars, which are there to hide the stitching which we don't need because mankind has since discovered frickin' cotton.
--G
If installing traffic surveillance systems would help enable the 5-0 to stop the... child abductors... it's in society's best-interest.
Better get ready for them to install the cameras inside your house, then: The vast majority of child abductions are committed by members of the child's immediate family.
--G
The simplest argument is that patents do not only prevent, as you say, "a company, or companies, just steal it from you, while you (the inventor) get nothing." If that is all patents did, there would be little objection.
But a patent also restricts anyone who later independently comes up with the same idea. If you invent and patent left-handed widgets and I, without knowing, also invent and start selling left-handed widgets, I'm fucked. If I sell a left-handed widget, even without knowing that anyone has patented left-handed widgets, I'm fucked.
Patent law will have some hope when independent re-invention is an absolute defense. Until then, it's just a way for people to claim ownership of ideas and deny others' the use of their own brains.
Think about it: Do you know that nothing you have built, no line of code you have written, has ever been patented by someone else? Do you know for a fact that nothing you've invented, no line of code you have written, does something that anyone else has ever done and considered important enough to sic a lawyer on? Because if you don't know that, you are walking through a legal minefield. Patents, like landmines, should be kept out of places where they might make trouble for those of us trying to get things done.
--G
You know, I'd like to believe that our esteemed medical professionals are so skilled that they don't need any safeguards like habeus corpus or the right to a fair trial.
But the fact of the matter is that there are doctors out there who will make bad calls, who are zealots about particular issues, or who want to comply with authority. And those are the ones who are going to get called.
Perhaps you've never seen a friend pulled off into legal indefinite detention becuaue his political views strike a shrink as diseased. When it happens to you, you may change your mind.
Try saying, "The right to commit suicide is a basic human right," in front of a medical professional. Then, from inside the nuthouse gates, try to believe that the first amendment still exists.
We have a legal system, courts, constitutional guarantees about "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," all because we don't want to have to trust those in authority with unlimited power. That includes nice people like doctors, too.
I firmly believe that when the first amendment is finally destroyed in this country, it will be unaccountable doctors and indefinite detention laws that do it. Nobody will call dissidents "criminals." They will call them "mentally ill", "confused," "a danger to themselves and others," or as you put it, "pretty doo-lally." After all, criminals have rights.
--G
My wife and I were married without any particularly formal engagement. Why bother with the formalism -- it's most just irritating anyway. Just pick a date and get married then. Simplest thing in the world.
It's just about flipping the 'marriage' bit. No need for a thousand dollars of comments. Just
{ /* be engaged (short engagement for demonstration purposes) */
sleep(1000); /* get married */
marriage=1; }
I wouldn't pay more than $300 for those comments, and I wouldn't use code with more commentary than that. Keep it simple. Marriage ain't rocket (or even computer) science.
--G
Blame the Romans. Lacking the technology to measure minutes of arc like us modern-types, they had to make do with low-tech measurements like "one thousand paces."
--G
The situation in Turkey is in some ways similar to that of Iran. It is an Islamic country; 99.8% Muslim according to the CIA World Factbook. There are factions that want an Islamic government, while others want a secular government.
Um, Turkey is notionally a secular country with a secular government. A much better comparison is to Iraq, which also professes secularism in government. Both regularly make crackdowns on muslim anti-secularism groups, and both are accused of having a history of genocide.
--G
Since this news is now out in the public, I'm sure the Washington DC police are already working on other secret plans for catching "the bad guy". Kinda like military technology documentaries (propaganda) that supposedly show the latest in military technology
Or, to take the conspiracy theory one more level, they never developed such a car at all, but know that spreading the rumor of it will deter car thieves:)
--G
I know that it's a mistake to think of legal documents as if legal language were source code or machine instructions for the legal system. None the less, it does seem as if we are beginning to see legal documents employing the same sort of "social engineering" and "viral behaviour" that we encounter daily in code.
What Kazaa has done is no different from what the Mellissa virus did: It presented people with a choice (install this software for Kazaa, open this document for Mellissa) that appeared to most to be benign. The means of knowing the choice was not benign were available (the license agreement for Kazaa, the actual contents of the document for Mellissa), but were obfuscated (in complex and opaque legal language, in obfuscated macros in an opaque document format) and chaffed (in one small part of a very large file/document in both cases).
Perhaps, then, we need to look upon trojans written in legal "code" the same way we look at trojans in software: As malicious and probably illegal. It is no more sensible to expect people to be able to fully comprehend a complex (and deliberately obfuscated) legal document than it is to expect people to read the binary code of every program they run. Yet our legal system presumes that you are responsible for your agreement to "run" the legal code but that you are the victim when you run the binary.
We need to treat contracts and licenses written in legal language the same way that we treat compiled code: as opaque and, when they are harmful, as malicious "exploits" of user vulnerabilities.
--G
Excellent. Now I'll just provide that address to all of those "you must provide your email address -- not that we'd ever spam you..." registration-required sites.
--G
Re:Or use the simple method....
on
Spy v. Spy
·
· Score: 2
don't forget to place it in a locked room, and you have the only key.
Hey, if you have the key, you're vulnerable to social engineering attacks. Better to destroy the only key.
--G
I am writing to urge you to reject the Hollings copy protection bill, also known as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). I strongly oppose the bill for the following reason:
Every technical measure that "protects" a piece of data from some uses (such as illegal copying) but not from others (such as legal viewing) must do so by making the data accessible only to some programs and not to others. But as there is no technical way to determine the intentions of a computer program, the decision must be made by some controlling human authority (the DVD-CCA being an example of such an authority). Moreover, since that authority cannot be present at every computer in the world, it must somehow "sign" or "authorize" the devices which it has chosen to grant access. Furthermore, that signature or authorization must be somehow rendered secret so that malicious or simply curious people are not able to duplicate the authorization on unauthorized devices.
The simple implication, then, is that every electronic device, or at least some piece of software on every electronic device, must be secret from its user. In effect, knowing how a computer works must be made impossible or illegal or both in order to implement the provisions of this bill.
The would effectively destroy the general-purpose computer by making all of its means of input, storage, and output subject to such protected secrecy. If implemented at the hardware level, it would render illegal the development of electronic devices by amateurs and hobbyists; if implemented at the software level it would render illegal all amateur or collaborative software development.
Additionally, since the majority of copyright "piracy" takes place outside of the United States and thus beyond the reach of this or any other law, the measure would be of little actual help to the media companies which have lobbied for this measure.
It would be an understatement to say that this would harm the technology industry. It would destroy the technology industry in the United States, while drastically expanding the industry in technology-friendly nations like India and China. It would compromise the mainstay of the US economy and at the same time doing irreparable damage to our global leadership and national security. Already, prominent software developers are declining to visit the United States for fear that the software they have written might run afoul of the existing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); the CBDTPA will exacerbate this problem exponentially. As a software engineer, I have seen co-workers making preparations to emigrate or seek expatriate assignments if this bill is enacted. "I will need to consult a lawyer every time I write a line of code," quipped one of my co-workers; the remark is not far from the truth.
If you really wish to protect American media companies from revenues lost to copyright violations, I urge you to support stronger enforcement of the well-tested, well-understood, and legally and constitutionally sound laws already on the books. Contrary to the language of many supporters of digital content control, copyright infringement is already illegal, and needs no additional laws to make it more so. The proposed measure, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) before it, takes a "shotgun" approach to a small and well-defined crime, and will cause tremendous injury to American technological leadership and one of the fastest- growing segments of our economy for very little compensating benefit.
I am severely disappointed in your support of the Hollings bill, and respectfully request that you remove yourself as a co-sponsor.
Click banner ads etc. if you really hate spam, so that advertisers have a worthwhile alternative.
I see absolutely no moral obligation to provide advertisers with a "worthwhile" alternative. They aren't entitled to my eyeballs.
Perhaps I should also provide murderers with an alternative if I don't like being shot? Or provide con artists with an alternative if I don't like being cheated?
The day advertisers start advertising products for their functionality, durability, and versatility, rather than sexy-lifestyle-fu and blinking lights, I'll consider advertising an honest endeavour.
--G
The truth behind the mystery...
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Slashdot Mirror
Ashcroft is one of the big proponents of using "material witness" detentions as a way of avoiding habeus corpus. It's not being mentioned in the press because the press would rather not digify that sort of procedural bullshit. They've called it what it is: Detention without due process or habeus corpus. The press have a duty to try to be objective, but that doesn't mean they have to be gullible.
--G
Don't do it! Google is too good to be public, too innovative to be tied down to corporate short-termism and profit-seeking. Google is too clever, too innovative, too simple, and too sensible to survive the public sphere and its short-term-profit-at-any-cost shit-where-you-eat demands.
Google is better with its current benevolent dictatorship than with a democracy of ignorant stockholders.
That said, if they do IPO, I know I'll be among many others asking, where can I get some?
--G
That and the whole murder-and-arrest the workers workers who try to organize thing.
One tip: arrest before you murder.
--G
You know, I'm glad there are scientists out there who can tell whether I've committed a crime. Because with all these bizarre and incomprehensible laws out there, I sure as heck don't know when I have. Perhaps if I get one of these chip things it will tell me when my code touches a patented technology or happens to break some loser's copy-protection technology from the mid-80s.
--G
Telemarketers who have a prior or existing business relationship with you.
[...]
Seems fair to me.
Only if you have some way of negating that "prior relationship". I don't want every company I've ever bought a product from in the last 26 years being able to call me. Why should Sprint be able to call me because I used their service a decade ago in a different state?
"Prior relationship" will be the telemarketer's next line of defense, you can be sure. Expect to get calls from Bill's auto glass which is a division of GalactoMegaCorp which also owns NachoMania from whom you once bought a bag of nachos in 1979.
Their second line of defense will be the "first hit is free" provisions of most of these laws. Most such laws provide no fine for the first offense -- this lets telemarketers simply disolve and reincorporate under a new name every time they run through their list.
--G
I don't want charity or political organizations calling me either, why can't we get rid of them?
Because politicians will never vote to restrict themselves; only targeted voter outrage will make a difference. I decided my last vote in part because I refuse to vote for telemarketing politicians, and we'll have to do so in the future for unrepentant spammers like Sen. Lieberman.
Oddly, the Democrats seem (in the limited sample set I've seen) to be the big users of spam and telemarketing. Either the Republicans are, as usual, slow in comprehending technology, or the Democrats are, as usual, quick to claim the time and resources of others.
--G
...'cause that's what it will do.
I can't think of anything better than a ban on sale to encourage people to pirate, and I can't think of any group more likely to pick up the software-sharing habit than 15-to-18 year-olds.
--G
Amen to that! I was able to raid some university store-rooms for chemicals and so had lots of chemisty-set fun growing up even in the 80s, but it just keeps getting harder and harder. It's nigh impossible for kids to get dangerous chemicals today, and our society is poorer for it.
Some day, when I have kids, I shall have to find ways to import black-market dangerous old chemistry sets from Elbonia or something.
--G
As a former employee of a member of the SALT coalition, let me promise you: It will never go anywhere.
SALT make great demoware, particularly because any half-clever programmer can make a "multimodal" telephony demo from existing technologies and say, "look! That's how cool SALT will be!" But the companies that have to implement and demploy it hate each other, the big players all have their own proprietary sytems that they might retrofit buggy-ass SALT implementations into if you happen to catch them in a good mood, and half of the potential customers have gone bankrupt since the initiative started.
And for those designers who absolutely must put speech-this-and-that into your web apps: write an XSL transform to generate VoiceXML, which crappy though it is is at least something like a standard. Or, better yet, have yourself lobotomized; it will save the rest of us from interface hell.
--G
The tie is there to hide the buttons.
The buttons are there to close the shirt.
The shirt has to be closed because we don't have adequately stretch fabrics.
Oh wait, we do.
The T-shirt is high-tech. It solves all of the problems that the old mode of dress is built around. But no, somehow, the formal thing to do is to wear an unnecessary tie to hide unnecessary buttons.
And don't even start on collars, which are there to hide the stitching which we don't need because mankind has since discovered frickin' cotton.
--G
If installing traffic surveillance systems would help enable the 5-0 to stop the ... child abductors ... it's in society's best-interest.
Better get ready for them to install the cameras inside your house, then: The vast majority of child abductions are committed by members of the child's immediate family.
--G
The simplest argument is that patents do not only prevent, as you say, "a company, or companies, just steal it from you, while you (the inventor) get nothing." If that is all patents did, there would be little objection.
But a patent also restricts anyone who later independently comes up with the same idea. If you invent and patent left-handed widgets and I, without knowing, also invent and start selling left-handed widgets, I'm fucked. If I sell a left-handed widget, even without knowing that anyone has patented left-handed widgets, I'm fucked.
Patent law will have some hope when independent re-invention is an absolute defense. Until then, it's just a way for people to claim ownership of ideas and deny others' the use of their own brains.
Think about it: Do you know that nothing you have built, no line of code you have written, has ever been patented by someone else? Do you know for a fact that nothing you've invented, no line of code you have written, does something that anyone else has ever done and considered important enough to sic a lawyer on? Because if you don't know that, you are walking through a legal minefield. Patents, like landmines, should be kept out of places where they might make trouble for those of us trying to get things done.
--G
You know, I'd like to believe that our esteemed medical professionals are so skilled that they don't need any safeguards like habeus corpus or the right to a fair trial.
But the fact of the matter is that there are doctors out there who will make bad calls, who are zealots about particular issues, or who want to comply with authority. And those are the ones who are going to get called.
Perhaps you've never seen a friend pulled off into legal indefinite detention becuaue his political views strike a shrink as diseased. When it happens to you, you may change your mind.
Try saying, "The right to commit suicide is a basic human right," in front of a medical professional. Then, from inside the nuthouse gates, try to believe that the first amendment still exists.
We have a legal system, courts, constitutional guarantees about "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," all because we don't want to have to trust those in authority with unlimited power. That includes nice people like doctors, too.
I firmly believe that when the first amendment is finally destroyed in this country, it will be unaccountable doctors and indefinite detention laws that do it. Nobody will call dissidents "criminals." They will call them "mentally ill", "confused," "a danger to themselves and others," or as you put it, "pretty doo-lally." After all, criminals have rights.
--G
My wife and I were married without any particularly formal engagement. Why bother with the formalism -- it's most just irritating anyway. Just pick a date and get married then. Simplest thing in the world.
/* be engaged (short engagement for demonstration purposes) */
/* get married */
It's just about flipping the 'marriage' bit. No need for a thousand dollars of comments. Just
{
sleep(1000);
marriage=1;
}
I wouldn't pay more than $300 for those comments, and I wouldn't use code with more commentary than that. Keep it simple. Marriage ain't rocket (or even computer) science.
--G
I have no idea how the 5280' mile got its length.
Blame the Romans. Lacking the technology to measure minutes of arc like us modern-types, they had to make do with low-tech measurements like "one thousand paces."
--G
The situation in Turkey is in some ways similar to that of Iran. It is an Islamic country; 99.8% Muslim according to the CIA World Factbook. There are factions that want an Islamic government, while others want a secular government.
Um, Turkey is notionally a secular country with a secular government. A much better comparison is to Iraq, which also professes secularism in government. Both regularly make crackdowns on muslim anti-secularism groups, and both are accused of having a history of genocide.
--G
Since this news is now out in the public, I'm sure the Washington DC police are already working on other secret plans for catching "the bad guy". Kinda like military technology documentaries (propaganda) that supposedly show the latest in military technology
:)
Or, to take the conspiracy theory one more level, they never developed such a car at all, but know that spreading the rumor of it will deter car thieves
--G
I know that it's a mistake to think of legal documents as if legal language were source code or machine instructions for the legal system. None the less, it does seem as if we are beginning to see legal documents employing the same sort of "social engineering" and "viral behaviour" that we encounter daily in code.
What Kazaa has done is no different from what the Mellissa virus did: It presented people with a choice (install this software for Kazaa, open this document for Mellissa) that appeared to most to be benign. The means of knowing the choice was not benign were available (the license agreement for Kazaa, the actual contents of the document for Mellissa), but were obfuscated (in complex and opaque legal language, in obfuscated macros in an opaque document format) and chaffed (in one small part of a very large file/document in both cases).
Perhaps, then, we need to look upon trojans written in legal "code" the same way we look at trojans in software: As malicious and probably illegal. It is no more sensible to expect people to be able to fully comprehend a complex (and deliberately obfuscated) legal document than it is to expect people to read the binary code of every program they run. Yet our legal system presumes that you are responsible for your agreement to "run" the legal code but that you are the victim when you run the binary.
We need to treat contracts and licenses written in legal language the same way that we treat compiled code: as opaque and, when they are harmful, as malicious "exploits" of user vulnerabilities.
--G
UCE@FTC.GOV
Excellent. Now I'll just provide that address to all of those "you must provide your email address -- not that we'd ever spam you..." registration-required sites.
--G
don't forget to place it in a locked room, and you have the only key.
Hey, if you have the key, you're vulnerable to social engineering attacks. Better to destroy the only key.
--G
I am writing to urge you to reject the Hollings copy protection bill, also known as
the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). I
strongly oppose the bill for the following reason:
Every technical measure that "protects" a piece of data from some uses (such as
illegal copying) but not from others (such as legal viewing) must do so by making
the data accessible only to some programs and not to others. But as there is no
technical way to determine the intentions of a computer program, the decision
must be made by some controlling human authority (the DVD-CCA being an
example of such an authority). Moreover, since that authority cannot be present
at every computer in the world, it must somehow "sign" or "authorize" the devices
which it has chosen to grant access. Furthermore, that signature or authorization
must be somehow rendered secret so that malicious or simply curious people are
not able to duplicate the authorization on unauthorized devices.
The simple implication, then, is that every electronic device, or at least some piece
of software on every electronic device, must be secret from its user. In effect,
knowing how a computer works must be made impossible or illegal or both in order
to implement the provisions of this bill.
The would effectively destroy the general-purpose computer by making all of its
means of input, storage, and output subject to such protected secrecy. If
implemented at the hardware level, it would render illegal the development of
electronic devices by amateurs and hobbyists; if implemented at the software level
it would render illegal all amateur or collaborative software development.
Additionally, since the majority of copyright "piracy" takes place outside of the
United States and thus beyond the reach of this or any other law, the measure
would be of little actual help to the media companies which have lobbied for this
measure.
It would be an understatement to say that this would harm the technology industry.
It would destroy the technology industry in the United States, while drastically
expanding the industry in technology-friendly nations like India and China. It would
compromise the mainstay of the US economy and at the same time doing
irreparable damage to our global leadership and national security. Already,
prominent software developers are declining to visit the United States for fear that
the software they have written might run afoul of the existing Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA); the CBDTPA will exacerbate this problem exponentially.
As a software engineer, I have seen co-workers making preparations to emigrate
or seek expatriate assignments if this bill is enacted. "I will need to consult a lawyer
every time I write a line of code," quipped one of my co-workers; the remark is not
far from the truth.
If you really wish to protect American media companies from revenues lost to
copyright violations, I urge you to support stronger enforcement of the well-tested,
well-understood, and legally and constitutionally sound laws already on the books.
Contrary to the language of many supporters of digital content control, copyright
infringement is already illegal, and needs no additional laws to make it more so.
The proposed measure, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) before it,
takes a "shotgun" approach to a small and well-defined crime, and will cause
tremendous injury to American technological leadership and one of the fastest-
growing segments of our economy for very little compensating benefit.
I am severely disappointed in your support of the Hollings bill, and respectfully
request that you remove yourself as a co-sponsor.
legally speaking, but it sure sounds uncomfortable.
--G
Click banner ads etc. if you really hate spam, so that advertisers have a worthwhile alternative.
I see absolutely no moral obligation to provide advertisers with a "worthwhile" alternative. They aren't entitled to my eyeballs.
Perhaps I should also provide murderers with an alternative if I don't like being shot? Or provide con artists with an alternative if I don't like being cheated?
The day advertisers start advertising products for their functionality, durability, and versatility, rather than sexy-lifestyle-fu and blinking lights, I'll consider advertising an honest endeavour.
--G
.NET is mlife.
--G
This is f*cking brilliant. I love it. I imagine a little variable-color smiley-frowny-pissed-off face next to each link...
--G