"Just like the market in sulphur emissions that GHW Bush helped create back in the day, that took acid rain from a big problem to a minor one."
Did it really, now? Or was it the cheap (yeah, all those corpses were cheap next to $2.00/gal gas) oil? Or did it happen at all? The reduction to a minor problem, that is. In realilty, not politically. I wouldn't mind seeing some figures.
However, for the sake of argument, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Notice however, that we are no closer to production fusion reactors or even fast-breeder fission to charge up all those "green" electric and "non-polluting" hydrogen cars with.
So how about we have a market on radionuclide emssions from coal-fired or even oil-burning power plants? Yeah, I can't see any politicians touching that one with a ten foot pole, either. But yes, logically, while you are correct in theory, at least in the limited context of reducing any given pollutant, you are overlooking 1) avarice and greed mixed with politics stacking the deck, as happened with the prototypical marketization of externalities, wetlands mitigation, and 2) the fact that this whole approach is a bandaid solution to begin with, rife with unintended and unwelcome consequences, not the least of which is further erosion of seemingly unrelated freedoms, economic repression, and stfling of true innovation. It's squeezing the little guy completely out of the picture. And you ignore him at your peril.
You really want to end pollution and environmental disaster, get Congress to stop creating and subsidizing monopolies with measures such as this. Slash spending and entitlements. There is no more money anyway. Repudiate debts, or they will be repudiated for you. Abolish the Fed, repeal the income tax and a bunch of others, and hang the bankers and insurance companies, or at least stop using the U.S. taxpayer as a neverending sink for their obligations, which they weasel out of anyway. Let *real" markets work. It's never really been tried before. The "Robber Baron" era, often cited as unbridled capitalism, was not free markets by any means, and could not have happened without corrupt legislatures waiving liabilities, lavishing grants and subsidies to privilieged elites to start with.. But I digress.
I'm not holding my breath, of course, but don't delude yourself either that cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, etc. will do a damned thing about climate change, except determine who gets air-conditioning and who gets to sweat to pay for it.
I'm sorry. I'm just not in a very optimistc mood today.
"They found carbon dioxide spewing from rocks under such enormous subsea pressure that it emerged as a bubbling liquid in one site named "champagne vent." And they had to back their equipment away from one ongoing eruption at a site named "Brimstone Pit" when the belching sulfur, acid, boiling water and rocks became too intense."
Anyone have any figures on how many millions of tons of C02 per hour are released by volcanoes? Some of the ones around Guam have apparently been erupting contnously for years. It doesn't all get dissolved, either.
I predict that cap-and-trade, if it happens, will work about like wetlands mitigation. In other words, a totally rigged dog-and-pony show further entrenching the incumbent "stakeholders" at the table of "governance". It will have to, just to pass. Them and a whole new layer of bureaucrats, snitches, and telephone sanitizers.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
What part of "no law" do people not understand? Despite this, the FTC has been regulating free speech for 40 years or so, if memory serves. Yet we put up with it. Corporate speakers have long since made their deal with this devil (recent example to wit: Disney shill Miley Cyrus pimping the "cyberbullying" bill, ie. political speech about ostensible civility, but inevitably about polictical speech, in other words, precisely the thing the Founders thought necessary to forestall with a 1st amendment.)
It's complete B.S. You cannot legislate ethics, you cannot compel honesty, and you don't alter reality by passing a bill or promulgating a new regulation. Unless and until people start fighting in court and in the legislatrures this insanity will only get worse.
We now return you to your previously scheduled carping about Iranian journalists being rounded up. Don't worry, of course it can't happen here.
Or it could be that the military does not wish to give the civilian bureaucrats over at DHS/NAO (National Applications Office) any excuse to wrest further control over military satellites from the DOD. As conditioned as we are to give facile short shrift to the military establishment's motives in these kinds of secret matters, it may be that this is very definitely the lesser of two evils. The loss to science, or even to national security, is regrettable. Perhaps, esp. in light of the latter, this data is at least being archived for possible scientific analysis at some future date.
I don't guess you can get any more circumspect than that.
I wouldn't mind paying $19.95 or so a month if it included full search and retrieval from the archives. $20 is worth the convenience of kibo'ing or hypertexting back to the antebellum era. Abstracts suck. All they're good for is knowing which microfiche to request when you go to reference room at the library. That's extra work, time, and expense, but mainly, you could miss something important. $5-10 per full text retrieved is sheer larceny, though, when you can print it for 25 cents per page from a microfiche reader.. Many if not most papers that maintain comprehensive online morgues charge these kinds of outrageous fees for fair use and research. That's their privilige, but as we all know, information wants to be free. Now, one-time reprint rights for a single article might be worth $5 (Yes, or more. That's negotiable), but the information is and should be priceless. $20/mo. is reasonable fee for the service of providing easy online access, though. That's negotiable, too, of course, but I'd consider it a reasonable figure. ~$49/mo. might be reasonable for a bundle of all the major dailies in the country, or all the newspapers of record in a single state. And so on and so forth.
Remeber, Mr. Publisher, despite the name, copyright is a privilege, not a right, and there's more than one way to skin a cat. So play nice.
"Craigslist's lawsuit cites an interview McMaster gave to Fox News on Monday, in which he likened the site 'to a hotel or motel owner that knows prostitution is going on on their premises and fails to do anything about it especially after having been told."
Or like the local vice cop/Drug Task Force detective/cointelpro operative for the local gentry who lets the whores ply their trade at the motel in exchange for setting up, for politically and/or economically convenient drug busts, the clueless johns, or errant dealers who've crossed one of the local distributors (say, the one whose wife who has a nice sinecure at city hall), in exchange for leniency in their cases, if they'll narc on others, or sometimes for other considerations which shall remain unspecified here?
Nah, such things don't happen in S.C. or neighboring states, not with such stalwart defenders of justice like Hank in charge.
Whores are incredibly useful people to know, sometimes. Make you want to just tear your hair out, others, like when trying to get one anywhere a witness stand, but I digress. Thank goodness for tape recorders, though.
...much as some would like. Aside from giving small independent ISP's and VISP's short shrift, Doctorow is ignoring providers like Earthlink, AOL, Netzero, etc., who don't get access to the broadband wires for free (or in some cases AT ALL), not by a long shot. He might as well be a shill for Comcast or Verizon here.
Now, if you were a small ILEC, whose mere existance was basicly an indulgence from Bellsouth, and the FCC had let you off the hook on access to your DSLAMs, you might understandably not allow anyone else to offer DSL over your wires, given a cable internet franschise and wireless broadband in the same city, and the looming specter of VOIP.
Conversely if I were a small ISP in the same area I might then consider you a profiteering glutton abusing a monopoly nonetheless, especially if you used that position to muscle in on the PC repair business and city council seats in town as well. Talk about your cartels. The words sub-rosa prior restraint (cf. the fed troll the other day wanting to know if we'd "help host" material detrimental to a PD), tortuous interference, and rackeetering would come to mind as well.
Unless, of course you didn't kick if I used one of my neighbor's CPE wireless routers in a non-commercial manner, as unobtrusively as possible, until I could afford to get at least a couple of T1's installed, now that your line leases have fallen into a reasonable ballpark. Strictly hypothetically speaking, of course.
I have nothing to add to the other comments on Doctorow's main argument.
Please, please, please, no more "well-intentioned" broad, sweeping, "reforms" or rights initiatives. Not only do they actually take away the very rights they assert, by putting them directly in the hands of those who would and do abuse them, but this is a band-aid approach to start with. It only futher entrenches the underlying problems.
You can give the Emperor a shiny new suit of clothes, but we can still smell his crusty drawers.
It's a holdover from the minicomputer days, when the CPU consisted of one or more typically 4-10U sized chassis. Contrast to mainframes where the CPU might consist of whole racks full of gear.
I admit I use "CPU" interchangeably for both the microprocessor and "the big box", just because so many users consider the "computer" to be the display unit. Saves time, although you still get, "Oh, you mean the [modem/floppy disk/hard disk/CD-RM/LAN]."
You mean "Ferrous Metal Recoil Injury", aka frying pan upside the head? Now there's a mapping I could believe in.
Seriously, this study seems to be lacking in the methodology and protocols department. Unless there's something we're not being told, it seems rather unscientific, what with the investigator stroking the subject's hand to calm him and so forth.
That's a minor quibble, though. I just reject the notion that a functional MRI mapping, which is just a glorified polygraph, with all the limitations and drawbacks, can ever tell us anything about love or any other emotion, merely its chemical history and signature, barring the development of true AI.
I reject Newell and Simon's physical symbol system hypothesis, but that day may not be far off regardless. On the other hand, there are some needed quantum leaps that I haven't seen made yet, so the poets may be able to relax a while longer. Granted, I haven't been able to keep up with the field lately.
Mixing trite metaphors, a rose by any other name is known only by its thorns.:-)
The phenomenologists have some parlor tricks analogous to metonymy wrt non-verbal, non-conceptual mental processes and artifacts. There is probably some generalizable mechanism in the human nervous system at work here.
I've had an actual repair tech tell me a machine was dead. I pop the case cover off, blow out the dust completely clogging the CPU heat sink, regrease with heatsink compound, and, voila, she boots and runs no problem. Guy went on to work in the IT dept. at a large airplane mfr, last I heard. Made more than me at the time. Yeah, go figure. Names withheld to protect the guilty.
The other day a friend batted her eyes and told me her CV joint had broken. Pulled hard to the right, nearly put her in the ditch. Noise, metal bits emanating from the right front wheel. Okay... Since I wanted to see what a CV joint looked like on a 2WD Blazer, I took the bait and said, yeah, have it towed over here and I'll look at it, might cost $200 or so. and immediately started hunting a front hub assembly. Guy who towed it got the job, though. $60 labor, plus the tow. She got the hub herself, $120+tax. I would have charged $40 and made a few bucks on the hub, but so it goes. Maybe I'll get to do the front brakes, which are also worn out.
Unless you have a magic decoder ring, just get the user to tell you what happened. Or is that the magic decoder ring? At any rate, customer diagnoses may or may not be based on any kind of a clue, (hard to tell which is worse sometimes), but definitely don't assume that they are.
See my reply to anzwebfoot for my personal view of this scenario, but to answer your questions directly:
Question 1, Would I host?
You bet. Pay the fee, read the TOS, and remember you are solely responsible for the content you publish.
Question 2, What steps would I take to protect your content?
At present we don't have a formal SLA or uptime guaurantees, but backups are your responsibility in any case. We take appropriate and reasonable steps to ensure the security and integrity of your site, but ultimately you are responsible.
Question 3, What steps would I take to protect myself?
Against what? Exactly what would I have to be concerned about here? Oh, by the way, those rumors about the RPG, the.50 cal., and the thermate are completely unfounded.
Depends. I won't say the Wikileaks editors are overtly biased. Let someone else say that. Don't get me wrong, Mend...er Julian et al. really are ace, crack investigators, and I respect the principles they aspire to, but I sometimes wonder if there aren't some hidden agendas or ideological blind spots there.
There are some items Wikileaks won't touch, and I also wonder if the Kenyan populace wouldn't rather have had them not publish those corruption exposes in such a seemingly politically timed manner. I hope nobody really wanted all those people to get killed in the resulting unrest, at least.
The same of course can be said for the FBI, DOJ, state investigators, etc. Prosecuting attorneys as well. Sometimes, if not often, they're "part of the problem", in fact. If it's a "Brubaker" level and scope of endemic corruption, odds are good anyone of the grand juror class could have vested interests, or were chosen, consciously or otherwise, for their sympatico with the DA.
It's possible this information may be some innocent, entrapped, or otherwise victimized party's get out of jail card, too. We really don't know the circumstances here, but their defense attorney may be the best judge of how to publicize this kind of information.
Finding a really good attorney who isn't in on the racket can be a problem, but that's outside the scope of this reply. Sometimes you have to work with what you've got, too. Sometimes it's best not to need a lawyer, too. Wups, I didn't say that.
However, if it's just protection from searches, subpoenas, etc. that's needed, a Tor hidden server might be a solution.
Bear in mind it's entirely possible that it could be difficult to divulge the information without revealing identity. Could be a death sentence, or expose parties to all kinds of dirty tricks, hardball tactics, character assassinatin, ruination, Kafkaesque treatment, harrassment, intimdation, threats, blackmail, entrapment attempts, psyops, mindfucks, etc. Yeah, yeah, life ain't fair. On the bright side, though, payback's a bitch.
If, though, this information really must be published despite all that, put backup copies in safe places, buy your own separate hosting so prosecutorial grandstanding doesn't impinge on someone else's production site, and just publish it. Rinse and repeat as required. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, especially if you've got nothing to hide.
Finally, call it profiteering or just compensation, but don't overlook the money-making opportunities here. What's sauce for the goose, etc. Sorry if that seems cynical, or even corrupt in itself, but why should one have to bleed on a cross for justice while the villains prosper? No good reason I can see, and I thought we supposed to be past human sacrifice, so OC's correspondent should just publish their own damned expose site.
Well, money talks, as a little snot from Philly in leather breeches and a carload of hotties once told me when he tried to cut in line at the car wash I was running, long, long ago. Apparently it works in San Fran, though.
Seriously, I'm sympathetic, but I can't get too worked up about this as long as prostitution remains illegal, as wrong this or any other money-talking prohibition may be. Yes, you either believe in the 1st amendment or you don't, and I do, but it seems some people are wanting to have their cake and eat it here, at the expense of more deserving causes.
You could of course say the same thing about the personals and "escort services" in the back of your local newsrag. If Craigslist isn't going to fight it, though, for sure don't ask me to go out on a limb.
Slashdotters might really want to be concerned instead about HR 1966, the Online Passive-Aggressive Enablement bill. Take a look at that one for some real 1st amendment shudders.
We don't speak of "states' rights" too much here in the South, anymore. That became a code word for segregationism, so it's too easy to be marginalized as a racist crank or an Uncle Tom if you invoke it.
The system of federal bribery and funding extortion is typically (though not exclusively) applied to evade responsibility and bypasses rights reserved to the *people* under the Constitution, explicitly or otherwise, in any case. As in the present example. This is the first time I've seen access to Federal jurisdictions threatened. Presumably some kind of exception will be made for Federal detainees. One hopes the same consideration will be extended to plaintiffs from non-complying states suing the govt in Federal court, because there will be some.
However, RealID amounts to a major jurisdictional as well as bureaucratic (and contractor) turf war, so we may yet see states's rights legitimized once again. The states haven't lost them, they just haven't mustered the backbone to exercise them enough in the past. Even the most pliant state legislatures can see the menace in RealID, though. It really amounts to turning ths States into mere provinces. They've allowed themselves to be treated that way for some time; now Congress is just deciding to go ahead and make it official, albeit using it's patented, behind-its-ass-to-get-to-its-elbow, indirect approach in order to duck accountablity, as usual.
No, but not for the reason you appear to be suggesting. I laugh at court orders and injunctions, and scoff at federal marshalls, etc. but if I posted something that originated from somebody that signed a gag order to get a big settlement rather than argue their case in open court in front of a jury, I'd probably feel like a kind of a tool.
How is this different from what Wikileaks is proposing? From what I gather, we're talking about people getting the shit beat of them, tortured, raped, killed, etc., not just losing a tort, or maybe a job.
I can smell the contracts for high-quality AI now. It would certainly elevate the art of rhetoric (spin-doctoring) to new heights, too.
Well, you're right, talk is cheap, and they are promsing an awful lot. It's certainly technically concievable what they propose. but whether they have an actual working system yet that is ready for prime time, I dunno, I haven't seen it. They are going to have to produce something demostrable RSN as a result of the premature publicity, but it's not a scam. They've been soliciting server operators for at least 3-4 years now, and at that time openly under some of their own names, though the exact nature of the project was not disclosed at that time.
Whether it's a good idea or not, nobody can really say. Nothing even close to this has ever been done before. A historical experiment of incalculable proportions. I'm thinking we ought to at least have the opportunity to find out, and there's only one way to do that. Just do it. I'm ready to offer up a server or two if it'll help, and I can afford it. Would be nice, though, if Soros, the CIA, a bunch of dissaffected Republicans who lost their seats last year, the Russian mafia, Sprint, Verizon, or whoever, would put up some funds to pay for hosting bills, backbone access, routers, switches, modem banks, WiFi, EVDO, and Wimax gateways, antennas, server spares, disk, RAM, and processor upgrades, admin and programmer salaries, backup generators, security, plant, etc. I might do even more, then. And just let the chips fall where they may. We're all on the side of the angels here, right?
So far no answer, though. I do hope they can get the show on the road. Their previous work has been top-notch.
jbdigriz
--- "The time has come...to say "fair's fair"...to pay the rent...to pay our share"
-Mignight Oyl, "Beds are Burning"
" The identification policy requires airline passengers to present identification to airline personnel before boarding or be subjected to a search that is more exacting than the routine search that passengers who present identification encounter."
In other words you get to choose which right to forfeit for no good reason.
"The very page describing the case says that he would have been allowed to travel at SFO without ID if he submitted to a search. That alone devastates the "secret ID law" claim, as allowing him to fly without ID, search or not, would have been in violation of that law."
What law? That's what Gilmore was trying to find out! And he did submit to a search; it was after that, upon boarding the plane after having been passed, that he was stopped. Weird, almost like somebody was throwing him a slow pitch.
"First of all, his primary question is: Do citizens currently need to show ID in order to travel in their own country?"
"The answer is a resounding "no". He is free to travel by foot, bike, motorcycle, car, boat, or other device himself while not violating applicable pedestrian or traffic laws, or by bus or train, entirely anonymously."
Not on public domain, or by bus or train, which are common carriers, just like airlines, not necessarily. You don't believe me? Go drive without a license on a routine basis. I did that for a while after my state passed a DL fingerprint law and was doing things like passing prints along to the M.A.T.R.I.X. project, until the state A.G. stepped in and put a stop to it. Please note I only drove insured vehicles, and in the course of employment or emergencies, just to not complicate things, though it really doesn't matter.
Anyway, I got a couple of tickets for driving on an expired license and ended up almost going to a jury trial in State court, until the legislature revoked the fingerprint requirement. The county solicitor and I reached a gentleman's agreement reducing the charges to a warning once the law went into effect and I got a license. He refered to me to the judge as "our civil libertarian" which was kind of gratifying, though it may be a moot point now that the federal RealID law is going into effect next year. We'll have to see what the legislature does about that. Read up on that one if you think anonymous travel is going to be possible unless you grow wings or take the Underground Railroad.
Upon reflection, I don't think that. That's just the vicious cycle repeating. There's no good-guy badges to be had here either. The system is hosed. Don't mean to apologize for the assholes and crooks of the world. I wouldn't blame anyone for going Nomen Nescio on them, either, 'cuz I've been there, and some people should probably get medals, as long as they only go after the ones the KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, have screwed them and others over, but in the long run that doesn't make the world a better place.
What does make the world a better place is, like I a said elsewhere, grist for another mill, but it's clear the DOJ's plan as outlined is an attack on civil liberties and more than an invitation, no, a recipe, for abuse. And it will be abused, mightily, because the info systems in place today are routinely abused for political ends and material gain.
So, excuse me for goofing in the previous post. Apologies to Arlo, btw. Also, I have found that father-rapers are an overrated menace. Leastwise all the ones I know have more sense than to fuck with me.
1 person, they may think he's really sick, and they won't take him.
2 peeople do it, they may think they're both faggots, and not take either one.
But can you imagine 3 people a day coming in and singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant? They may think it's an organization. 50 a day, and they may think it's a Movement. And that's what it would be. The Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement. Comforting thought for the blood-thirsty among us, but they'll Columbine you with that one.
Myself, I think corrupt judges, dishonest cops, crooked politicians, etc. should get a chance to go sit on the Group W bench with the father-rapers just like everyone else.
Psychologists and their other secular brethren in the "social sciences" have pretty much taken the place of clergymen in the U.S. legal system. That's why clergymen are so jealous of the profession. Doesn't stop them from going into the mental health racket themselves and getting those state funds. I must say though, it is amusing to see the Baptists around here trying to reconcile modern addiction treatments with hellfire and damnation, original sin, etc. Not to pick on them, but they are trying to leach off the taxpayers with their "faith-based" approach to things and that makes them fair game.
To what extent any of that affects their credibility as legal witnesses I leave as an exercise to the reader.
"The bitch gave me toxoplasmosis, Your Honor, so I HAD to smack her!"
"Much information will be kept out of the system, including data about public corruption cases, classified or sensitive topics, confidential informants, administrative cases and civil rights probes involving allegations of wrongdoing by police, officials said."
I say what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
I always felt, any court ordered redactions aside, the data in the NCIC and state equivalents at least is public record and maintained with public funds. Taxpayers shouldn't have to fund access, maybe, but the gov't could allow replication to qualified mirrors. Be a good chance to set up some QC for all those cases of mistaken identity and such, too. A little customer feedback, if you will.
As far as OneDOJ goes. You should certainly have access to all the information the govt. has collected on you, personally. All of it. Period. Whether you're in a criminal proceeding or not. (Oddly, it's probably easier if you are. For your lawyer anyway.) There should be no a priori redaction of the names of people who slandered you in interviews with the FBI, etc.
Like I said, let the chips fall where they may. There's that Patriot Act bs. to deal with, and some other things, but they need dealing with anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and after all that "tort reform", too.
Didn't want the Republicans to feel left out in all the flamage of politicians.
"Just like the market in sulphur emissions that GHW Bush helped create back in the day, that took acid rain from a big problem to a minor one."
Did it really, now? Or was it the cheap (yeah, all those corpses were cheap next to $2.00/gal gas) oil? Or did it happen at all? The reduction to a minor problem, that is. In realilty, not politically. I wouldn't mind seeing some figures.
However, for the sake of argument, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Notice however, that we are no closer to production fusion reactors or even fast-breeder fission to charge up all those "green" electric and "non-polluting" hydrogen cars with.
So how about we have a market on radionuclide emssions from coal-fired or even oil-burning power plants? Yeah, I can't see any politicians touching that one with a ten foot pole, either. But yes, logically, while you are correct in theory, at least in the limited context of reducing any given pollutant, you are overlooking 1) avarice and greed mixed with politics stacking the deck, as happened with the prototypical marketization of externalities, wetlands mitigation, and 2) the fact that this whole approach is a bandaid solution to begin with, rife with unintended and unwelcome consequences, not the least of which is further erosion of seemingly unrelated freedoms, economic repression, and stfling of true innovation. It's squeezing the little guy completely out of the picture. And you ignore him at your peril.
You really want to end pollution and environmental disaster, get Congress to stop creating and subsidizing monopolies with measures such as this. Slash spending and entitlements. There is no more money anyway. Repudiate debts, or they will be repudiated for you. Abolish the Fed, repeal the income tax and a bunch of others, and hang the bankers and insurance companies, or at least stop using the U.S. taxpayer as a neverending sink for their obligations, which they weasel out of anyway. Let *real" markets work. It's never really been tried before. The "Robber Baron" era, often cited as unbridled capitalism, was not free markets by any means, and could not have happened without corrupt legislatures waiving liabilities, lavishing grants and subsidies to privilieged elites to start with.. But I digress.
I'm not holding my breath, of course, but don't delude yourself either that cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, etc. will do a damned thing about climate change, except determine who gets air-conditioning and who gets to sweat to pay for it.
I'm sorry. I'm just not in a very optimistc mood today.
http://osu.orst.edu/dept/ncs/photos/minis/bubblessm.jpg
(from http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2004/May04/mariana.htm)
"They found carbon dioxide spewing from rocks under such enormous subsea pressure that it emerged as a bubbling liquid in one site named "champagne vent." And they had to back their equipment away from one ongoing eruption at a site named "Brimstone Pit" when the belching sulfur, acid, boiling water and rocks became too intense."
Anyone have any figures on how many millions of tons of C02 per hour are released by volcanoes? Some of the ones around Guam have apparently been erupting contnously for years. It doesn't all get dissolved, either.
I predict that cap-and-trade, if it happens, will work about like wetlands mitigation. In other words, a totally rigged dog-and-pony show further entrenching the incumbent "stakeholders" at the table of "governance". It will have to, just to pass. Them and a whole new layer of bureaucrats, snitches, and telephone sanitizers.
Just one more nail in the coffin.
This is really pretty simple.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
What part of "no law" do people not understand? Despite this, the FTC has been regulating free speech for 40 years or so, if memory serves. Yet we put up with it. Corporate speakers have long since made their deal with this devil (recent example to wit: Disney shill Miley Cyrus pimping the "cyberbullying" bill, ie. political speech about ostensible civility, but inevitably about polictical speech, in other words, precisely the thing the Founders thought necessary to forestall with a 1st amendment.)
It's complete B.S. You cannot legislate ethics, you cannot compel honesty, and you don't alter reality by passing a bill or promulgating a new regulation. Unless and until people start fighting in court and in the legislatrures this insanity will only get worse.
We now return you to your previously scheduled carping about Iranian journalists being rounded up. Don't worry, of course it can't happen here.
Or it could be that the military does not wish to give the civilian bureaucrats over at DHS/NAO (National Applications Office) any excuse to wrest further control over military satellites from the DOD. As conditioned as we are to give facile short shrift to the military establishment's motives in these kinds of secret matters, it may be that this is very definitely the lesser of two evils. The loss to science, or even to national security, is regrettable. Perhaps, esp. in light of the latter, this data is at least being archived for possible scientific analysis at some future date.
I don't guess you can get any more circumspect than that.
I wouldn't mind paying $19.95 or so a month if it included full search and retrieval from the archives. $20 is worth the convenience of kibo'ing or hypertexting back to the antebellum era. Abstracts suck. All they're good for is knowing which microfiche to request when you go to reference room at the library. That's extra work, time, and expense, but mainly, you could miss something important. $5-10 per full text retrieved is sheer larceny, though, when you can print it for 25 cents per page from a microfiche reader.. Many if not most papers that maintain comprehensive online morgues charge these kinds of outrageous fees for fair use and research. That's their privilige, but as we all know, information wants to be free. Now, one-time reprint rights for a single article might be worth $5 (Yes, or more. That's negotiable), but the information is and should be priceless. $20/mo. is reasonable fee for the service of providing easy online access, though. That's negotiable, too, of course, but I'd consider it a reasonable figure. ~$49/mo. might be reasonable for a bundle of all the major dailies in the country, or all the newspapers of record in a single state. And so on and so forth.
Remeber, Mr. Publisher, despite the name, copyright is a privilege, not a right, and there's more than one way to skin a cat. So play nice.
"Craigslist's lawsuit cites an interview McMaster gave to Fox News on Monday, in which he likened the site 'to a hotel or motel owner that knows prostitution is going on on their premises and fails to do anything about it especially after having been told."
Or like the local vice cop/Drug Task Force detective/cointelpro operative for the local gentry who lets the whores ply their trade at the motel in exchange for setting up, for politically and/or economically convenient drug busts, the clueless johns, or errant dealers who've crossed one of the local distributors (say, the one whose wife who has a nice sinecure at city hall), in exchange for leniency in their cases, if they'll narc on others, or sometimes for other considerations which shall remain unspecified here?
Nah, such things don't happen in S.C. or neighboring states, not with such stalwart defenders of justice like Hank in charge.
Whores are incredibly useful people to know, sometimes. Make you want to just tear your hair out, others, like when trying to get one anywhere a witness stand, but I digress. Thank goodness for tape recorders, though.
This is a win for Cisco as well. They get plenty of good karma, and put non-compliant competition at a disavantage. All for little or no real cost.
The Linksys routers in question command a premium, even on the used market, precisely because of the GPL and hackability.
Win-win, all around. Any more, Cisco and the FSF would have to get a room. Kudos on a job well done.
...much as some would like. Aside from giving small independent ISP's and VISP's short shrift, Doctorow is ignoring providers like Earthlink, AOL, Netzero, etc., who don't get access to the broadband wires for free (or in some cases AT ALL), not by a long shot. He might as well be a shill for Comcast or Verizon here.
Now, if you were a small ILEC, whose mere existance was basicly an indulgence from Bellsouth, and the FCC had let you off the hook on access to your DSLAMs, you might understandably not allow anyone else to offer DSL over your wires, given a cable internet franschise and wireless broadband in the same city, and the looming specter of VOIP.
Conversely if I were a small ISP in the same area I might then consider you a profiteering glutton abusing a monopoly nonetheless, especially if you used that position to muscle in on the PC repair business and city council seats in town as well. Talk about your cartels. The words sub-rosa prior restraint (cf. the fed troll the other day wanting to know if we'd "help host" material detrimental to a PD), tortuous interference, and rackeetering would come to mind as well.
Unless, of course you didn't kick if I used one of my neighbor's CPE wireless routers in a non-commercial manner, as unobtrusively as possible, until I could afford to get at least a couple of T1's installed, now that your line leases have fallen into a reasonable ballpark. Strictly hypothetically speaking, of course.
I have nothing to add to the other comments on Doctorow's main argument.
Please, please, please, no more "well-intentioned" broad, sweeping, "reforms" or rights initiatives. Not only do they actually take away the very rights they assert, by putting them directly in the hands of those who would and do abuse them, but this is a band-aid approach to start with. It only futher entrenches the underlying problems.
You can give the Emperor a shiny new suit of clothes, but we can still smell his crusty drawers.
It's a holdover from the minicomputer days, when the CPU consisted of one or more typically 4-10U sized chassis. Contrast to mainframes where the CPU might consist of whole racks full of gear.
I admit I use "CPU" interchangeably for both the microprocessor and "the big box", just because so many users consider the "computer" to be the display unit. Saves time, although you still get, "Oh, you mean the [modem/floppy disk/hard disk/CD-RM/LAN]."
You mean "Ferrous Metal Recoil Injury", aka frying pan upside the head? Now there's a mapping I could believe in.
Seriously, this study seems to be lacking in the methodology and protocols department. Unless there's something we're not being told, it seems rather unscientific, what with the investigator stroking the subject's hand to calm him and so forth.
That's a minor quibble, though. I just reject the notion that a functional MRI mapping, which is just a glorified polygraph, with all the limitations and drawbacks, can ever tell us anything about love or any other emotion, merely its chemical history and signature, barring the development of true AI.
I reject Newell and Simon's physical symbol system hypothesis, but that day may not be far off regardless. On the other hand, there are some needed quantum leaps that I haven't seen made yet, so the poets may be able to relax a while longer. Granted, I haven't been able to keep up with the field lately.
Mixing trite metaphors, a rose by any other name is known only by its thorns. :-)
The phenomenologists have some parlor tricks analogous to metonymy wrt non-verbal, non-conceptual mental processes and artifacts. There is probably some generalizable mechanism in the human nervous system at work here.
I've had an actual repair tech tell me a machine was dead. I pop the case cover off, blow out the dust completely clogging the CPU heat sink, regrease with heatsink compound, and, voila, she boots and runs no problem. Guy went on to work in the IT dept. at a large airplane mfr, last I heard. Made more than me at the time. Yeah, go figure. Names withheld to protect the guilty.
The other day a friend batted her eyes and told me her CV joint had broken. Pulled hard to the right, nearly put her in the ditch. Noise, metal bits emanating from the right front wheel. Okay... Since I wanted to see what a CV joint looked like on a 2WD Blazer, I took the bait and said, yeah, have it towed over here and I'll look at it, might cost $200 or so. and immediately started hunting a front hub assembly. Guy who towed it got the job, though. $60 labor, plus the tow. She got the hub herself, $120+tax. I would have charged $40 and made a few bucks on the hub, but so it goes. Maybe I'll get to do the front brakes, which are also worn out.
Unless you have a magic decoder ring, just get the user to tell you what happened. Or is that the magic decoder ring? At any rate, customer diagnoses may or may not be based on any kind of a clue, (hard to tell which is worse sometimes), but definitely don't assume that they are.
See my reply to anzwebfoot for my personal view of this scenario, but to answer your questions directly:
Question 1, Would I host?
You bet. Pay the fee, read the TOS, and remember you are solely responsible for the content you publish.
Question 2, What steps would I take to protect your content?
At present we don't have a formal SLA or uptime guaurantees, but backups are your responsibility in any case. We take appropriate and reasonable steps to ensure the security and integrity of your site, but ultimately you are responsible.
Question 3, What steps would I take to protect myself?
Against what? Exactly what would I have to be concerned about here? Oh, by the way, those rumors about the RPG, the .50 cal., and the thermate are completely unfounded.
jbdigriz
Depends. I won't say the Wikileaks editors are overtly biased. Let someone else say that. Don't get me wrong, Mend...er Julian et al. really are ace, crack investigators, and I respect the principles they aspire to, but I sometimes wonder if there aren't some hidden agendas or ideological blind spots there.
There are some items Wikileaks won't touch, and I also wonder if the Kenyan populace wouldn't rather have had them not publish those corruption exposes in such a seemingly politically timed manner. I hope nobody really wanted all those people to get killed in the resulting unrest, at least.
The same of course can be said for the FBI, DOJ, state investigators, etc. Prosecuting attorneys as well. Sometimes, if not often, they're "part of the problem", in fact. If it's a "Brubaker" level and scope of endemic corruption, odds are good anyone of the grand juror class could have vested interests, or were chosen, consciously or otherwise, for their sympatico with the DA.
It's possible this information may be some innocent, entrapped, or otherwise victimized party's get out of jail card, too. We really don't know the circumstances here, but their defense attorney may be the best judge of how to publicize this kind of information.
Finding a really good attorney who isn't in on the racket can be a problem, but that's outside the scope of this reply. Sometimes you have to work with what you've got, too. Sometimes it's best not to need a lawyer, too. Wups, I didn't say that.
However, if it's just protection from searches, subpoenas, etc. that's needed, a Tor hidden server might be a solution.
Bear in mind it's entirely possible that it could be difficult to divulge the information without revealing identity. Could be a death sentence, or expose parties to all kinds of dirty tricks, hardball tactics, character assassinatin, ruination, Kafkaesque treatment, harrassment, intimdation, threats, blackmail, entrapment attempts, psyops, mindfucks, etc. Yeah, yeah, life ain't fair. On the bright side, though, payback's a bitch.
If, though, this information really must be published despite all that, put backup copies in safe places, buy your own separate hosting so prosecutorial grandstanding doesn't impinge on someone else's production site, and just publish it. Rinse and repeat as required. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, especially if you've got nothing to hide.
Finally, call it profiteering or just compensation, but don't overlook the money-making opportunities here. What's sauce for the goose, etc. Sorry if that seems cynical, or even corrupt in itself, but why should one have to bleed on a cross for justice while the villains prosper? No good reason I can see, and I thought we supposed to be past human sacrifice, so OC's correspondent should just publish their own damned expose site.
If you ask me.
Well, money talks, as a little snot from Philly in leather breeches and a carload of hotties once told me when he tried to cut in line at the car wash I was running, long, long ago. Apparently it works in San Fran, though.
Seriously, I'm sympathetic, but I can't get too worked up about this as long as prostitution remains illegal, as wrong this or any other money-talking prohibition may be. Yes, you either believe in the 1st amendment or you don't, and I do, but it seems some people are wanting to have their cake and eat it here, at the expense of more deserving causes.
You could of course say the same thing about the personals and "escort services" in the back of your local newsrag. If Craigslist isn't going to fight it, though, for sure don't ask me to go out on a limb.
Slashdotters might really want to be concerned instead about HR 1966, the Online Passive-Aggressive Enablement bill. Take a look at that one for some real 1st amendment shudders.
--jbdigriz
We don't speak of "states' rights" too much here in the South, anymore. That became a code word for segregationism, so it's too easy to be marginalized as a racist crank or an Uncle Tom if you invoke it.
The system of federal bribery and funding extortion is typically (though not exclusively) applied to evade responsibility and bypasses rights reserved to the *people* under the Constitution, explicitly or otherwise, in any case. As in the present example. This is the first time I've seen access to Federal jurisdictions threatened. Presumably some kind of exception will be made for Federal detainees. One hopes the same consideration will be extended to plaintiffs from non-complying states suing the govt in Federal court, because there will be some.
However, RealID amounts to a major jurisdictional as well as bureaucratic (and contractor) turf war, so we may yet see states's rights legitimized once again. The states haven't lost them, they just haven't mustered the backbone to exercise them enough in the past. Even the most pliant state legislatures can see the menace in RealID, though. It really amounts to turning ths States into mere provinces. They've allowed themselves to be treated that way for some time; now Congress is just deciding to go ahead and make it official, albeit using it's patented, behind-its-ass-to-get-to-its-elbow, indirect approach in order to duck accountablity, as usual.
Definitely one for the Supremes. And the voters.
No, but not for the reason you appear to be suggesting. I laugh at court orders and injunctions, and scoff at federal marshalls, etc. but if I posted something that originated from somebody that signed a gag order to get a big settlement rather than argue their case in open court in front of a jury, I'd probably feel like a kind of a tool.
How is this different from what Wikileaks is proposing? From what I gather, we're talking about people getting the shit beat of them, tortured, raped, killed, etc., not just losing a tort, or maybe a job.
I can smell the contracts for high-quality AI now. It would certainly elevate the art of rhetoric (spin-doctoring) to new heights, too.
jbdigriz
Well, you're right, talk is cheap, and they are promsing an awful lot. It's certainly technically concievable what they propose. but whether they have an actual working system yet that is ready for prime time, I dunno, I haven't seen it. They are going to have to produce something demostrable RSN as a result of the premature publicity, but it's not a scam. They've been soliciting server operators for at least 3-4 years now, and at that time openly under some of their own names, though the exact nature of the project was not disclosed at that time.
Whether it's a good idea or not, nobody can really say. Nothing even close to this has ever been done before. A historical experiment of incalculable proportions. I'm thinking we ought to at least have the opportunity to find out, and there's only one way to do that. Just do it. I'm ready to offer up a server or two if it'll help, and I can afford it. Would be nice, though, if Soros, the CIA, a bunch of dissaffected Republicans who lost their seats last year, the Russian mafia, Sprint, Verizon, or whoever, would put up some funds to pay for hosting bills, backbone access, routers, switches, modem banks, WiFi, EVDO, and Wimax gateways, antennas, server spares, disk, RAM, and processor upgrades, admin and programmer salaries, backup generators, security, plant, etc. I might do even more, then. And just let the chips fall where they may. We're all on the side of the angels here, right?
So far no answer, though. I do hope they can get the show on the road. Their previous work has been top-notch.
jbdigriz
---
"The time has come...to say "fair's fair"...to pay the rent...to pay our share"
-Mignight Oyl, "Beds are Burning"
"You can fly without ID...The exact wording:"
" The identification policy requires airline passengers to present identification to airline personnel before boarding or be subjected to a search that is more exacting than the routine search that passengers who present identification encounter."
In other words you get to choose which right to forfeit for no good reason.
"The very page describing the case says that he would have been allowed to travel at SFO without ID if he submitted to a search. That alone devastates the "secret ID law" claim, as allowing him to fly without ID, search or not, would have been in violation of that law."
What law? That's what Gilmore was trying to find out! And he did submit to a search; it was after that, upon boarding the plane after having been passed, that he was stopped. Weird, almost like somebody was throwing him a slow pitch.
"First of all, his primary question is: Do citizens currently need to show ID in order to travel in their own country?"
"The answer is a resounding "no". He is free to travel by foot, bike, motorcycle, car, boat, or other device himself while not violating applicable pedestrian or traffic laws, or by bus or train, entirely anonymously."
Not on public domain, or by bus or train, which are common carriers, just like airlines, not necessarily. You don't believe me? Go drive without a license on a routine basis. I did that for a while after my state passed a DL fingerprint law and was doing things like passing prints along to the M.A.T.R.I.X. project, until the state A.G. stepped in and put a stop to it. Please note I only drove insured vehicles, and in the course of employment or emergencies, just to not complicate things, though it really doesn't matter.
Anyway, I got a couple of tickets for driving on an expired license and ended up almost going to a jury trial in State court, until the legislature revoked the fingerprint requirement. The county solicitor and I reached a gentleman's agreement reducing the charges to a warning once the law went into effect and I got a license. He refered to me to the judge as "our civil libertarian" which was kind of gratifying, though it may be a moot point now that the federal RealID law is going into effect next year. We'll have to see what the legislature does about that. Read up on that one if you think anonymous travel is going to be possible unless you grow wings or take the Underground Railroad.
Upon reflection, I don't think that. That's just the vicious cycle repeating. There's no good-guy badges to be had here either. The system is hosed. Don't mean to apologize for the assholes and crooks of the world. I wouldn't blame anyone for going Nomen Nescio on them, either, 'cuz I've been there, and some people should probably get medals, as long as they only go after the ones the KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, have screwed them and others over, but in the long run that doesn't make the world a better place.
What does make the world a better place is, like I a said elsewhere, grist for another mill, but it's clear the DOJ's plan as outlined is an attack on civil liberties and more than an invitation, no, a recipe, for abuse. And it will be abused, mightily, because the info systems in place today are routinely abused for political ends and material gain.
So, excuse me for goofing in the previous post. Apologies to Arlo, btw. Also, I have found that father-rapers are an overrated menace. Leastwise all the ones I know have more sense than to fuck with me.
Heh.
1 person, they may think he's really sick, and they won't take him.
2 peeople do it, they may think they're both faggots, and not take either one.
But can you imagine 3 people a day coming in and singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant? They may think it's an organization. 50 a day, and they may think it's a Movement. And that's what it would be. The Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement. Comforting thought for the blood-thirsty among us, but they'll Columbine you with that one.
Myself, I think corrupt judges, dishonest cops, crooked politicians, etc. should get a chance to go sit on the Group W bench with the father-rapers just like everyone else.
Preemptively.
Psychologists and their other secular brethren in the "social sciences" have pretty much taken the place of clergymen in the U.S. legal system. That's why clergymen are so jealous of the profession. Doesn't stop them from going into the mental health racket themselves and getting those state funds. I must say though, it is amusing to see the Baptists around here trying to reconcile modern addiction treatments with hellfire and damnation, original sin, etc. Not to pick on them, but they are trying to leach off the taxpayers with their "faith-based" approach to things and that makes them fair game.
To what extent any of that affects their credibility as legal witnesses I leave as an exercise to the reader.
"The bitch gave me toxoplasmosis, Your Honor, so I HAD to smack her!"
No doubt. From the Post story...
"Much information will be kept out of the system, including data about public corruption cases, classified or sensitive topics, confidential informants, administrative cases and civil rights probes involving allegations of wrongdoing by police, officials said."
I say what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
I always felt, any court ordered redactions aside, the data in the NCIC and state equivalents at least is public record and maintained with public funds. Taxpayers shouldn't have to fund access, maybe, but the gov't could allow replication to qualified mirrors. Be a good chance to set up some QC for all those cases of mistaken identity and such, too. A little customer feedback, if you will.
As far as OneDOJ goes. You should certainly have access to all the information the govt. has collected on you, personally. All of it. Period. Whether you're in a criminal proceeding or not. (Oddly, it's probably easier if you are. For your lawyer anyway.) There should be no a priori redaction of the names of people who slandered you in interviews with the FBI, etc.
Like I said, let the chips fall where they may. There's that Patriot Act bs. to deal with, and some other things, but they need dealing with anyway.