How will we know when the War On Terror is over? George W. Bush said, on 9/20/2001, that it "will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated". How the hell are we going to determine that? Who can possibly predict how long that'll take?
We have always been at war. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
It's a copy of a recording of a song. The encoding is not the issue. Claiming that an MP3 is a "recipe" for a song is silly and disingenuous. It doesn't matter if a song is in MP3, CDDA, tape, vinyl, wax cylinders or whatever; it's a copy of a recording of a song.
It is no more disingenuous than claiming that copying said recording is "stealing." Applying tangible property terms to an intangible item is what is silly. You can't "own" an idea and certainly can't accuse me of stealing if I have the same idea.
And besides, an mp3 is precisely a recipe for a particular implementation of a song; a particular set of sounds. Maybe you could see it a little clearer if I wrote the ones and zeros on paper so you could compare them side by side to the sheet music. You do realize that there is a comparable computer encoding format for sheet music called MIDI.
The theater companies were licensed and limited in number and each had a patron high up in the court of Elizabeth and James
And some day we may find 21st century copyright law just as absurd as we find licensing actors today.
Distribution is not production.
Absolutely. However, as iTunes' success has proven, the true market value of a single track is (about) $1.00. Both the producer and distributer receive compensation. Breakdown of the costs of a CD are roughly the same per track except in that case you actually receive a tangible piece of property. Distribution costs for p2p are borne entirely upon the consumer and and therefore a zero cost to both producer and distributer.
You are not buying a random set of bits, you are paying for an edited copy of an original work of art.
Not exactly. Just like your Twinkie analogy, I am paying for the recipe to recreate an edited work of art on my home electronic gizmos.
In Pixar's case, the source material represents five years of creative effort by over 400 people and an investment of $100 million dollars.
And they will recoup that investment within a year of its release to the public or they never will. Does that justify 90 years of copyright protections? May I refer you to the Constitution of the United States?
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
I fail to see why 90 years is necessary to "promote the useful arts" nor do I see 90 years as "limited times" unless you are discussing geological time.
I am sure the rights agencies would be more than pleased to recover $1 per upload/download based on a statistical estimate of a file's exposure on the P2P nets.
In somewhat the same manner as a broadcaster pays royalties based on the size of his estimated audience.
Don't confuse ASCAP with the RIAA. The RIAA members actually PAY Broadcasters through "independent" promoters to air their songs. ASCAP collects royalties for the writers of the songs, not those performers you are so worried about.
And don't forget, copyright is not a God given moral right. It is a legal right bestowed by the government. It can be revoked just as easily.
A recipe for Twinkies, in music, would be more like sheet music. Or a description of how to hum the song, or something like that.
MP3s are more like taking the actual Twinkies
Are you claiming that an MP3 is the same as a song? No matter how hard I listen, none of the mp3s on my hard drive make any noise at all until I parse them on my computer and pipe the output to my speakers. In fact an MP3 is just a "recipe" that my electronic gizmos use to recreate a particular instance of a song on my speakers. Sheet music may be a basic outline of the song, but an mp3 is just the "recipe" for a particular implementation of a song. No more, no less.
The groundling paid one penny, a day's wages for the working man, for standing-room at the Globe. Who would have attended an original Shakespeare production? That's at least a $50-$70 ticket in modern terms.
The groundling paid because the true market value of the ticket was one penny. Artificial scarcity through copyright was not an issue in his choice. The true market value of the series of bits which make up a music track is very low. You could argue that the value could not exceed $1 since this is the going rate at iTunes and even that value is inflated by copyright issues.
P2P is a middle class entitlement.
And copyright terms of 120 years are corporate entitlement.
Example, Americans love Twinkies. But I don't see a million people going into 7/11s and just taking twinkies off the rack and walking out with them because someone made that product, and has asked for the consumer to pay.
I picked up a great recipe for Twinkies off the web. You would swear it was a real Twinkie. Should Hostess feel I am stealing their lively hood?(SIC)
Copyright is not a moral right, it is a government issued legal right. And guess who the government is? We are. Despite the bleating and brainwashing of the entertainment industry, it is not stealing, it is copyright infringement. Copyrights can be given and they can be taken away. And my respect for the entertainment industry's interpretations of copyright is right on par with the entertainment industry's respect for the general public's ideas about fair use.
b) You're ignoring fair use, among other things. That is, in fact, what turnitin.com argues makes it legal to use the papers in the manner that they do.
And I might add that it is an untested legal theory. MP3.com thought they were within "fair use" before they were shut down but the courts. Music "sampling" has been declared infringment despite "fair use" claims. Google is being sued right now for indexing news sites which directly parallels the business model Turnitin has chosen. They have already lost their case in Belgium. They settled in France and have cases pending in the US for indexing books.
If Turnitin wasn't copying and archiving poor students' content they would have been sued out of existence long ago. Remember the courts have decided that even the activity of loading a computer program into memory can constitute "copying." That is how shrink wrap licenses are enforced.
And at that point, it's up to the plaintiffs to prove that they're being harmed by this activity and/or that this isn't fair use.
Just claiming fair use isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. The burden of proof is still on the defendant to prove his case for fair use. Does it meet the statutory requirements? The plaintiff only has to prove copying. The defendant has to prove that any copying was legal.
c) No, I don't get to decide. But neither do you, fortunately. My *opinion*, however, is every bit as valid as yours.
True, but irrelevant. Damages only relate to equity claims. If a single successful suit is ruled to be infringement but with minimal or no damages, Turnitin cannot continue their current business model. One smart lawyer can draw up a class action lawsuit forcing them to completely scrap their database. Nobody in the class will get rich, just the lawyer.
As for selling off your paper, it could be argued that to pass off a submission as your own work is fraud. As such, protecting your right to sell your work to someone else to do that is not something that the law has any real need to be doing.
Possibly, but the content owner is still not committing any fraud. Maybe the purchaser might commit fraud with his purchase, but that is irrelevant to the issue of rights of copyright control over his creation. Somebody might commit murder when I sell him a gun. Does this trump my right to sell my gun?
The law has to protect everybody, not just the Disneys or the Time Warners or the Sonys of the world. Just because you have no respect or compassion for the poor and powerless, doesn't mean the law has to. Turnitin is making their living copying, indexing, and archiving the creative works of authors that they have no express consent to do. In fact, many have expressly denied this right. They choose to ignore it.
Think about it this way. Suppose I arbitrarily decide to create a business that samples and indexes music. I allow musicians to upload their works to compare against my database to make sure they are not accidentally copying the baseline beats. How long would I stay in business if I started indexing RIAA controlled songs? Especially if my "reports" contained music samples from "similar" music? Statutory damages could be $150,000 per incident plus attorney's fees.
The only reason Turnitin exists is because victims haven't the resources to sue. So far...
b) You're asserting your conclusion, not arguing for it. As such, I find this pretty unconvincing.
Then you must have missed the key point of his argument: i.e. "the schools and the service have no right to copy or distribute the work unless it is granted."
Since you agree in (a) that copyright is assigned upon creation, the question becomes, "By what argument has the owners copyright been subrogated against his will? Clearly, rights have not been expressly granted. The burden of proof is on the side of the Turnitin service, not the copyright holder.
c)...There's a world of difference between a 10-foot wall in my front yard (which does real harm) and submitting my work to an anti-plagarism website (which cases no inherent harm to the student).
And do you get to decide the extent of the ultimate harm of usurping the content creators copyrights? If I want to sell my paper and/or copyright to another student, it has become nearly worthless. Harm is proven. And, yes, I realize that is the point of this service.
So a problem he created that had nothing to do with what I had done, had become my problem.
That happened to me one time too. I learned my lesson. Now I never install anything on a client's machine that wasn't there before. I may suggest to them that they add something to make their machine safer or to perform better, but I leave it up to them. If they screw their machine up again, they pay me again to fix it. I make sure they have nobody to blame but themselves.
I am astonished that people with no understanding of computers or OSs will
1. not accept advice to install anti-spyware (SpyBot, Ad-Aware),
2. not take the time to update or run antivirus software,
3. disable the software firewall,
4. download any damn program off the Internet and run it
and then blame me , their technical support specialist, when their system quits working!
You too? I wish I had $100 for every idiot that pulled that trick with me.
Oh wait... I do. I show no mercy anymore. If they fsck up something on their machine that I fixed and come back, I charge them again. They pay me and learn a lesson on owning and maintaining a computer or they don't come back to me ever again. Either way, I have solved my problem.
I don't do favors for friends anymore because of the lifetime warranty situations. I charge for my time and those that don't follow the simplest advice, I point toward Best Buy's Geek Squad. They can deal with the "problem children."
If a "problem child" comes back a second time to me, I image their disk. Any time they come back after that, I still charge $100 - $200, but I simply do a 15 minute image restore.
If you want to reduce our dependency on IP and strong foreign IP laws, go start a manufacturing business that produces in America at rates that can replace China and Taiwan.
No problem. Can I sign you up to work for me for $3.00 a day?
Ohio election law requires a paper audit trail for every ballot cast.
Then why are all these lefty-loonies whining about Diebold "promising to deliver" Ohio in 2004?
As somebody posted earlier, Democrats don't realize that when they make these irrational accusations, it makes their party less appealing. As much as I want the current administration out, when I hear stuff like this from Democrats, it makes me feel like I am being asked to vote for Dale Gribble.
Would he be so happy if you blocked people who were libertarians or shose last name began with a W?
No, but I wouldn't do that while managing his server. If Spamhaus began arbitrarily blocking those, I would simply chose another SBL. Spamhaus is not the only player on the block.
Or even if Spamhaus listed some sites he wanted to receive email from?
They already do. I whitelist two sites to get around this problem. The CEO is fine with this.
This has absollutely nothing to do with the rights of the sender. It's all about the rights of the recipient.
My sentiments exactly. You have every right to send stand atop the highest hill you can find and scream to the top of your lungs. I have every right to put my hands over my ears and ignore you.
Your job is to block as much spam as possible whilst blocking absolutely no legitimate email ever.
Yes, and I do just that. I am not perfect, just as Spamhaus is not perfect, but Spamhaus makes my job considerably easier. I might have to tweak the server every now and then, but for the company, it is worthwhile considering the benefits. I am willing to bet that I block less legitimate email than was lost while sorting through thousands of spams each day before SBL implementation. Employees would waste hours each day sorting through email.
Incidentally - I've thought of another possible objection people may have. These lists are also used as a means to bully others into not sending spam, or to get ISPs to remove spammers from their servers.
I have no problem with that at all. In fact I find it abhorrent that any ISP would knowingly host a spammer. Putting pressure on rogue ISPs this way is not so different from boycotting, a time honored tradition. If an ISP wants to make money hosting a spammer (illegal is many states) then it must live with those consequences.
Some people have objections to a self appointed third party decising who may and may not send email.
Their objections are misplaced. Spamhaus does not prevent ANYONE from sending email. Spamhaus allows recipients to make decisions about who they want to accept mail from. BIG DIFFERENCE!
I can block you if I don't like your tie or bacause you lastname starts with a "W" or because you voted Libertarian.
Indeed you can. You have every right to. Can you also block email addresses of users of a server you administrate based on these same criteria?
You betcha I can. I administer a server for a smallish company and the CEO is absolutely tickled with the antispam efforts I have put in place. One of those efforts is Spamhaus. So far, I have had to whitelist only two servers for legitimate business. I also administer a server for a small group of friends. The general consensus amoung them is that they want to add greylisting to the antispam effort.
As I said before, nothing gives you the inalienable right to send me your email, spam or otherwise. You may not like it, but I don't have to accept your email. I do my very best to listen to my users and make sure they receive the email they need to do their jobs (and I don't monitor use or disallow personal use of company email), but if they disagree with the policy, they are perfectly welcome to get a free email account with any of the multitudes on the net.
Spam is a huge problem and I mean huge. It is unfortunate that such drastic measures must be taken, but when you get 2000 messages a day and only 20 of them are legitimate, something must be done. If it is a problem for an "innocent" server, you simply route your mail through an reputable server upstream or change providers.
Diebold machines were used in about half the state's counties in 2005, so if you want to rail about that, go right ahead.
As an Ohioan that voted in 2005, I have to say that the machine I used did indeed have a paper trail. Before the vote was affirmed, a paper tape was displayed inside a locked compartment with a glass window. Each and every choice I made was printed on that paper. I was given an opportunuity to review the entire tape before I affrimed my vote. The paper was then moved into another nonviewable locked compartment. I never had the opportunity to actually touch the paper.
That sounds very much like an audit trail to me...
First, allow me to apologize for my comments on your reply being cryptic and rambling. I only just realized that English is not your native tongue.
Oil situation is out of control incrementally since the late 70s. Opec is a power that can start worldwide crises, they are more leaning on europe with passing time, and europe is more at odds with u.s. big money.
OPEC has been losing political clout since their peak of power in the 70s. Oil exports from countries like Venezuela, Russia, and Nigeria have eroded its power dramatically. Saudi Arabia is the biggest player in OPEC and they are scared shitless of their own people. They expect the USA to keep them safe and are working diligently to make sure they stay on our good side.
The current "oil crisis" which is really only a spike in prices is due mostly to China's dramatic economic boom. You can blame expensive oil on China's good fortune.
Also theres the issue of depleting oil supplies in near future. They have 'liberated' iraq. now guess what ? iraq is under occupation practically. And who are getting all the deals of "reconstruction" there ? The neocons behind bush crowd.
This is all post election. The original thread was about the old, tired complaint of "stolen elections."
They were knee deep in enron, they needed money. The oil situation was getting out of hand, they needed control. And tons of other shit that would tire us if we listed them one by one.
It does not take a decade long research to deduct that a group that is in the money had staged an elaborate plan in order to enforce their own agenda.
I'm not sure I even understand what you are trying to say. Are you accusing the bulk of the US Supreme Court of "enforcing" Bush's "oil" agenda? I'm don't know what "oil situation" was supposedly getting out of hand. As far as I can recall, there was no "oil situation" in 2000. There was a spike in electric prices due to speculative trading and the onset of deregulation. Enron's collapse didn't begin until October of 2001, long after Bush was in office and had much more to do with electric and natural gas prices than with oil. It looks like oil prices were around $27 per barrel in 2000, which is hardly a crisis.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to offer more than a cryptic, rambling, leftist rant with no offers of proof, reasoning, or even credibility.
They add IPs to the list knowing full well that those IPS will be blocked, intending that those IPs will be blocked, with the result that those IPs are blocked. For practical purposes, what is the difference between this and actually blocking them?
How about the fact that they don't actually block them?
I have never understood the controversy around SBLs unless you are a spammer. If I subsribe to a SBL it means I don't want your email when you are on the blocked list. If the SBL blocks email that I want, I simply don't use them. I can be arbitrary and capricious about my email. I can block you if I don't like your tie or bacause you lastname starts with a "W" or because you voted Libertarian. Spamhaus does not block anybody, I do. Spamhaus just provides me with a convenient list of addresses that they believe harbors spammer.
What makes you or anyone else think that you have some inalienable right to send me email that I don't want? If it affects your business, I say tough shit. You can't come into my house and force me to watch your commercials either. If I rip out all the ads in my latest issue of Islands Magazine, you can't do Jack about it either. SBLs are a Godsend when it comes to spam reduction.
Lets look at the end result rather than the details - what happened in the end is that u.s. people are dying in foreign soil, for the benefit of some midwest oil people.
That's a different complaint then, isn't it? You may have a justified argument if you want to discuss policy errors, executive edicts and the like, but to complain about "stolen elections" just because you like the way one court rules (which was IMHO in error) but you don't like the way another rules (which was IMHO in error) makes your position look weak.
I personally intend to vote against any and every incumbent at the Federal and State levels this November. I am infuriated at the lack of Congressional oversight at the many things being done by the administration. These people are not Republicans. They are trying to build a police state. Republicans are against "big" government. Republicans are against micromanagement regulations on every aspect of your life. Republicans are against spending beyond your means.
Q: Is there any mechanism by which the court can compel my cooperation and are there any penalties for steadfastly refusing to provide it (encryption password)?
A: There will probably be a lot of litigation over privacy issues in the hard drive inspection thing. But if you just want to play hardball, the judge would probably just strike your answer and give the RIAA a money judgment by default.
I suggest using a Truecrypt hidden partition. I have working (but clean) home directory in my non-hidden Truecrypt partiton and a Bit Torrent enabled home directory in the hidden partition. If I am compelled to divulge the password, I reveal the non-hidden image. They cannot prove that the hidden image even exists as I have revealed a valid encrypted image. I also have a "junk" Truecrypt hidden image which I use for/tmp when I have my hidden home directory mounted. When I upgrade to Edgy, I plan on using one-time-key swap partition encryption too. Just in case...
If a judge were to grant default judgment, I should have a valid case for appeal, as I have fully cooperated and, as far as I know, it is not (yet) illegal to use encryption.
Are you referring to the Florida State Supreme Court?
You do realize that Justices O'Connor, Breyer and Souter all agreed that Florida screwed up. They're not exactly bastions of Neoconism. Only Ginsburg and Souter disagreed.
Give it a rest. If the Florida State Supreme Court hadn't arbitrarily decided to write their own election law, The US Supreme Court wouldn't have had to smack them down. I don't like what the USSC did, but I like even less what the FSSC tried to do.
And if you still think Bush "stole" Ohio, you obviously don't live in Ohio.
...the powers that you question, and they are granted to him by the Constitution. You know that nastly little document that is the frameworks for our government.
The FISA court was created in 1978 or so because Congress felt the need to stick their noses in places it doesn't belong.
Mr. Constitutional scholar needs to read the fourth amendment a little more carefully.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
won't even get into how Apple is bundling everything they can under the sun into OS X when the same actions by MS would be tantamount to kicking the interwebs dog.
Effective monopoly
If you think unfettered monopolies are good for the consumer/end user, then you need to take a trip to the DMV. Anybody that has ever had to stand in line at that hellhole can't possibly argue in favor of monopolies.
Slashdot Mirror
We have always been at war. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
It is no more disingenuous than claiming that copying said recording is "stealing." Applying tangible property terms to an intangible item is what is silly. You can't "own" an idea and certainly can't accuse me of stealing if I have the same idea.
And besides, an mp3 is precisely a recipe for a particular implementation of a song; a particular set of sounds. Maybe you could see it a little clearer if I wrote the ones and zeros on paper so you could compare them side by side to the sheet music. You do realize that there is a comparable computer encoding format for sheet music called MIDI.
And some day we may find 21st century copyright law just as absurd as we find licensing actors today.
Absolutely. However, as iTunes' success has proven, the true market value of a single track is (about) $1.00. Both the producer and distributer receive compensation. Breakdown of the costs of a CD are roughly the same per track except in that case you actually receive a tangible piece of property. Distribution costs for p2p are borne entirely upon the consumer and and therefore a zero cost to both producer and distributer.
Not exactly. Just like your Twinkie analogy, I am paying for the recipe to recreate an edited work of art on my home electronic gizmos.
And they will recoup that investment within a year of its release to the public or they never will. Does that justify 90 years of copyright protections? May I refer you to the Constitution of the United States?
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
I fail to see why 90 years is necessary to "promote the useful arts" nor do I see 90 years as "limited times" unless you are discussing geological time.
Don't confuse ASCAP with the RIAA. The RIAA members actually PAY Broadcasters through "independent" promoters to air their songs. ASCAP collects royalties for the writers of the songs, not those performers you are so worried about.
And don't forget, copyright is not a God given moral right. It is a legal right bestowed by the government. It can be revoked just as easily.
Um... Yes...
Are you claiming that an MP3 is the same as a song? No matter how hard I listen, none of the mp3s on my hard drive make any noise at all until I parse them on my computer and pipe the output to my speakers. In fact an MP3 is just a "recipe" that my electronic gizmos use to recreate a particular instance of a song on my speakers. Sheet music may be a basic outline of the song, but an mp3 is just the "recipe" for a particular implementation of a song. No more, no less.
The groundling paid because the true market value of the ticket was one penny. Artificial scarcity through copyright was not an issue in his choice. The true market value of the series of bits which make up a music track is very low. You could argue that the value could not exceed $1 since this is the going rate at iTunes and even that value is inflated by copyright issues.
And copyright terms of 120 years are corporate entitlement.
Copyright is not a moral right, it is a government issued legal right. And guess who the government is? We are. Despite the bleating and brainwashing of the entertainment industry, it is not stealing, it is copyright infringement. Copyrights can be given and they can be taken away. And my respect for the entertainment industry's interpretations of copyright is right on par with the entertainment industry's respect for the general public's ideas about fair use.
And I might add that it is an untested legal theory. MP3.com thought they were within "fair use" before they were shut down but the courts. Music "sampling" has been declared infringment despite "fair use" claims. Google is being sued right now for indexing news sites which directly parallels the business model Turnitin has chosen. They have already lost their case in Belgium. They settled in France and have cases pending in the US for indexing books.
If Turnitin wasn't copying and archiving poor students' content they would have been sued out of existence long ago. Remember the courts have decided that even the activity of loading a computer program into memory can constitute "copying." That is how shrink wrap licenses are enforced.
Just claiming fair use isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. The burden of proof is still on the defendant to prove his case for fair use. Does it meet the statutory requirements? The plaintiff only has to prove copying. The defendant has to prove that any copying was legal.
True, but irrelevant. Damages only relate to equity claims. If a single successful suit is ruled to be infringement but with minimal or no damages, Turnitin cannot continue their current business model. One smart lawyer can draw up a class action lawsuit forcing them to completely scrap their database. Nobody in the class will get rich, just the lawyer.
Possibly, but the content owner is still not committing any fraud. Maybe the purchaser might commit fraud with his purchase, but that is irrelevant to the issue of rights of copyright control over his creation. Somebody might commit murder when I sell him a gun. Does this trump my right to sell my gun?
The law has to protect everybody, not just the Disneys or the Time Warners or the Sonys of the world. Just because you have no respect or compassion for the poor and powerless, doesn't mean the law has to. Turnitin is making their living copying, indexing, and archiving the creative works of authors that they have no express consent to do. In fact, many have expressly denied this right. They choose to ignore it.
Think about it this way. Suppose I arbitrarily decide to create a business that samples and indexes music. I allow musicians to upload their works to compare against my database to make sure they are not accidentally copying the baseline beats. How long would I stay in business if I started indexing RIAA controlled songs? Especially if my "reports" contained music samples from "similar" music? Statutory damages could be $150,000 per incident plus attorney's fees.
The only reason Turnitin exists is because victims haven't the resources to sue. So far...
Since you agree in (a) that copyright is assigned upon creation, the question becomes, "By what argument has the owners copyright been subrogated against his will? Clearly, rights have not been expressly granted. The burden of proof is on the side of the Turnitin service, not the copyright holder.
And do you get to decide the extent of the ultimate harm of usurping the content creators copyrights? If I want to sell my paper and/or copyright to another student, it has become nearly worthless. Harm is proven. And, yes, I realize that is the point of this service.
That happened to me one time too. I learned my lesson. Now I never install anything on a client's machine that wasn't there before. I may suggest to them that they add something to make their machine safer or to perform better, but I leave it up to them. If they screw their machine up again, they pay me again to fix it. I make sure they have nobody to blame but themselves.
You too? I wish I had $100 for every idiot that pulled that trick with me.
Oh wait... I do. I show no mercy anymore. If they fsck up something on their machine that I fixed and come back, I charge them again. They pay me and learn a lesson on owning and maintaining a computer or they don't come back to me ever again. Either way, I have solved my problem.
I don't do favors for friends anymore because of the lifetime warranty situations. I charge for my time and those that don't follow the simplest advice, I point toward Best Buy's Geek Squad. They can deal with the "problem children."
If a "problem child" comes back a second time to me, I image their disk. Any time they come back after that, I still charge $100 - $200, but I simply do a 15 minute image restore.
As somebody posted earlier, Democrats don't realize that when they make these irrational accusations, it makes their party less appealing. As much as I want the current administration out, when I hear stuff like this from Democrats, it makes me feel like I am being asked to vote for Dale Gribble.
They already do. I whitelist two sites to get around this problem. The CEO is fine with this.
My sentiments exactly. You have every right to send stand atop the highest hill you can find and scream to the top of your lungs. I have every right to put my hands over my ears and ignore you.
Yes, and I do just that. I am not perfect, just as Spamhaus is not perfect, but Spamhaus makes my job considerably easier. I might have to tweak the server every now and then, but for the company, it is worthwhile considering the benefits. I am willing to bet that I block less legitimate email than was lost while sorting through thousands of spams each day before SBL implementation. Employees would waste hours each day sorting through email.
I have no problem with that at all. In fact I find it abhorrent that any ISP would knowingly host a spammer. Putting pressure on rogue ISPs this way is not so different from boycotting, a time honored tradition. If an ISP wants to make money hosting a spammer (illegal is many states) then it must live with those consequences.
Their objections are misplaced. Spamhaus does not prevent ANYONE from sending email. Spamhaus allows recipients to make decisions about who they want to accept mail from. BIG DIFFERENCE!
You betcha I can. I administer a server for a smallish company and the CEO is absolutely tickled with the antispam efforts I have put in place. One of those efforts is Spamhaus. So far, I have had to whitelist only two servers for legitimate business. I also administer a server for a small group of friends. The general consensus amoung them is that they want to add greylisting to the antispam effort.
As I said before, nothing gives you the inalienable right to send me your email, spam or otherwise. You may not like it, but I don't have to accept your email. I do my very best to listen to my users and make sure they receive the email they need to do their jobs (and I don't monitor use or disallow personal use of company email), but if they disagree with the policy, they are perfectly welcome to get a free email account with any of the multitudes on the net.
Spam is a huge problem and I mean huge. It is unfortunate that such drastic measures must be taken, but when you get 2000 messages a day and only 20 of them are legitimate, something must be done. If it is a problem for an "innocent" server, you simply route your mail through an reputable server upstream or change providers.
As an Ohioan that voted in 2005, I have to say that the machine I used did indeed have a paper trail. Before the vote was affirmed, a paper tape was displayed inside a locked compartment with a glass window. Each and every choice I made was printed on that paper. I was given an opportunuity to review the entire tape before I affrimed my vote. The paper was then moved into another nonviewable locked compartment. I never had the opportunity to actually touch the paper.
That sounds very much like an audit trail to me...
OPEC has been losing political clout since their peak of power in the 70s. Oil exports from countries like Venezuela, Russia, and Nigeria have eroded its power dramatically. Saudi Arabia is the biggest player in OPEC and they are scared shitless of their own people. They expect the USA to keep them safe and are working diligently to make sure they stay on our good side.
The current "oil crisis" which is really only a spike in prices is due mostly to China's dramatic economic boom. You can blame expensive oil on China's good fortune.
This is all post election. The original thread was about the old, tired complaint of "stolen elections."
I'm not sure I even understand what you are trying to say. Are you accusing the bulk of the US Supreme Court of "enforcing" Bush's "oil" agenda? I'm don't know what "oil situation" was supposedly getting out of hand. As far as I can recall, there was no "oil situation" in 2000. There was a spike in electric prices due to speculative trading and the onset of deregulation. Enron's collapse didn't begin until October of 2001, long after Bush was in office and had much more to do with electric and natural gas prices than with oil. It looks like oil prices were around $27 per barrel in 2000, which is hardly a crisis.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to offer more than a cryptic, rambling, leftist rant with no offers of proof, reasoning, or even credibility.
How about the fact that they don't actually block them?
I have never understood the controversy around SBLs unless you are a spammer. If I subsribe to a SBL it means I don't want your email when you are on the blocked list. If the SBL blocks email that I want, I simply don't use them. I can be arbitrary and capricious about my email. I can block you if I don't like your tie or bacause you lastname starts with a "W" or because you voted Libertarian. Spamhaus does not block anybody, I do. Spamhaus just provides me with a convenient list of addresses that they believe harbors spammer.
What makes you or anyone else think that you have some inalienable right to send me email that I don't want? If it affects your business, I say tough shit. You can't come into my house and force me to watch your commercials either. If I rip out all the ads in my latest issue of Islands Magazine, you can't do Jack about it either. SBLs are a Godsend when it comes to spam reduction.
That's a different complaint then, isn't it? You may have a justified argument if you want to discuss policy errors, executive edicts and the like, but to complain about "stolen elections" just because you like the way one court rules (which was IMHO in error) but you don't like the way another rules (which was IMHO in error) makes your position look weak.
I personally intend to vote against any and every incumbent at the Federal and State levels this November. I am infuriated at the lack of Congressional oversight at the many things being done by the administration. These people are not Republicans. They are trying to build a police state. Republicans are against "big" government. Republicans are against micromanagement regulations on every aspect of your life. Republicans are against spending beyond your means.
I suggest using a Truecrypt hidden partition. I have working (but clean) home directory in my non-hidden Truecrypt partiton and a Bit Torrent enabled home directory in the hidden partition. If I am compelled to divulge the password, I reveal the non-hidden image. They cannot prove that the hidden image even exists as I have revealed a valid encrypted image. I also have a "junk" Truecrypt hidden image which I use for
If a judge were to grant default judgment, I should have a valid case for appeal, as I have fully cooperated and, as far as I know, it is not (yet) illegal to use encryption.
You do realize that Justices O'Connor, Breyer and Souter all agreed that Florida screwed up. They're not exactly bastions of Neoconism. Only Ginsburg and Souter disagreed.
Give it a rest. If the Florida State Supreme Court hadn't arbitrarily decided to write their own election law, The US Supreme Court wouldn't have had to smack them down. I don't like what the USSC did, but I like even less what the FSSC tried to do.
And if you still think Bush "stole" Ohio, you obviously don't live in Ohio.
Mr. Constitutional scholar needs to read the fourth amendment a little more carefully.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Effective monopoly
If you think unfettered monopolies are good for the consumer/end user, then you need to take a trip to the DMV. Anybody that has ever had to stand in line at that hellhole can't possibly argue in favor of monopolies.
who read this as the CERN Large Hardon Collider?