People have to separate the channel as a whole from the actual news shows. Their actual news is fairly decent and objective. The rest of the shows on that channel are pure columnist style speculation and opinion however.
There have been numerous instances that make me disagree with this. The Newscorp organization pushes disinformation for profit. For example, the news program regularly reports that there are "reports of..." reports which are simply quoting what the lunatics in Fox News talk shows say. They don't bother to look into it or debunk, it, they just report it like it is credible news. And then there is corporate ethics. As far as I know, Fox is the only news corporation that went to court and argued that it was their first amendment right to fire reporters for refusing to knowingly lie about the dangers of drugs produced by one of their advertisers. And they're right, they do have the right to fire those reporters and lie to the public or bury the story... but that completely destroys their credibility as a news channel and that of any program they carry.
Basically, while there is a lot of bias and poor research going on in US media today, Fox is actually worse than all the others and this study reflects some of that. Frankly I think the only reason to anyone would trust anything seen on the Fox news channel is ignorance about what kind of an organization is running the show.
So this might mean Mac OS X is not affected? I'm not knowledgeable enough on *BSD to know.
While there is significant shared code between the BSD's and OS X and even Linux distributions; OpenBSD ships with an IPv4 IPSec stack that is pretty much only used by OpenBSD. OS X and most other BSDs use the KAME stack.
When the law is used to justify unethical behavior by the people making it, and the law is used to penalize what should be ethical behavior by everyone else, the law is no longer a valid basis for determining who is a criminal and who isn’t. That is why we have civil disobedience.
Note that your comment is based upon your subjective criteria. Who decides what is unethical and what should be? Oh yeah, We The People do, through the electoral process. You may not like the results, but that doesn't make them illegal because you aren't dictator here. And as for civil disobedience, it's about changing the laws by breaking them en mass. It's a tradition and I certainly respect that tradition, but it isn't legal.
Just like the criminals who extort money from us via unconstitutional laws?
They aren't criminals because they're acting within the laws and the judicial system of officials appointed by elected officials determines constitutionality. Just because you don't like a law, doesn't make the people who wrote it criminals. It's called "the law". Maybe you heard of it in your civics class.
NBC's content is a piss in the bucket of the better stuff out there. the BBC produces a lot, as well as a lot of other smaller players. Honestly, content without a big conglomo is right around the corner... NBC will die just like a bad SNL sketch.
Unless, of course, a big conglomerate is allowed to produce content (owns NBC) and also owns the only way to get content (data pipes). It's about leveraging a monopoly (often a localized one) to prevent the free market from acting in the content market.
...trying to actually protect your wages from garnishment or your assets from seizure.
Legally doing so, no. Illegally doing so, by lying on your taxes or shooting at the tax collector, yeah you'll go to jail just like other criminals. Likewise, if you try to avoid paying your taxes by detonating a nuclear bomb in DC the same thing will happen. That's why we have laws genius.
Seems to me we've jailed plenty of men for being "deabeat dads" (men who can't afford kids/ridiculous "child support" awards and penalties and who have no legal say in the matter).
Yes, men and women have gone to jail for trying to hide their money from the courts and not pay court awarded child support, but that's under laws designed specifically to do that. There are no such laws with regard to healthcare and that is by design.
You see, you don't go to jail for not paying off your debts, you go to jail for committing the crime of not paying a bill, failing to properly respond to a court order, etc.
You go to jail for failing to pay or respond to child support, not for failing to pay a debt. We don't have debtors prison for a reason. In general, not paying a debt is not illegal, although it does open one up to having one's assets seized.
If you try to dodge this shit they'll clamp down. If they need more money they'll threaten you with jail. If they need to make people take them seriously, they'll jail people.
Despite that they specifically changed the law so that doesn't happen? All you have is empty assertions contradicted by the facts and a lame slippery slope fallacy.
Have you not heard of this government thing before?
Hey, I've got an idea. How about we stop acting like ready access to TV shows and movies is an inalienable right?
Comcast is trying to mislead people by citing NBC's market share and it seems to have worked in your case. We're not talking about a right to particular TV shows, but rather the free market when there is no realistic alternatives in many locations for both TV and internet access. What we're talking about are now vital utilities. The ability to access news and wether as well as e-mail, voice and video communications, research topics. I'd assert that data pipes, whether delivering TV programs, music, or random Web pages; are now a basic utility and a lot of us need them to do our jobs. Further, they are a strategic resource for the advancement of our society in technology and education. We should, therefore, regulate them as a utility, like we did with phones and electricity and water and sewage. As taxpayers we've already funded the internet infrastructure more than most nations, we just have received less in return than most other nations. We should require a return on our investment, continued investment, but protections for the citizenry funding this. Separate content producers from those running the delivery infrastructure and heavily regulate the latter. If NBC doesn't want to sell some show on the internet, fine, but they shouldn't be leveraging a geographic monopoly on providing data pipes (a monopoly that is the result of their lobbying corrupt politicians for laws designed to make the people pay through the nose) in order to undermine the free market that would normally make them lose money when they displease customers.
Oh ok, they can't put you in jail, but they can extort money from you and take your stuff. That sounds totally legitimate coming from your Lords... I mean government.
And this differs from every other tax how? Oh yeah, you don't mind some of the other taxes as much or are used to paying them or something? Seriously, we've had federally funded healthcare programs for ages, this just expands it to more poor people. Personally I think it's a bloody inefficient mess and might be the worst healthcare system invented in ages, right ahead of what we have now and right behind what the British managed. That doesn't make it in any way inconsistent with the constitutional interpretation that has been applied by the courts with regard to the commerce clause and the rest of our legislation.
But I don't expect the average American idiot to grasp constitutional law. Mostly what I object to here is people who care enough to comment on this topic but not enough to read even a basic summary of what legislation has been passed but instead insist on spreading their ignorant rumors.
Notice how the bolded part from the first post is different from the bolded part of your quote...
I was ignoring that inaccuracy because you don't have to buy it from a private company or at all. You just get a tax break if you buy it (either from the feds in VA program or medicare) or from a private company. If you don't buy it, you pay a tax penalty. Not really novel.
You don't think it's reasonable to say every citizen must buy a particular product from a small set of private companies
You mean like buying the product (service really) of federal law enforcement? Or do you mean like a whole class of citizens being required to pay into a federally run healthcare system (like medicare)? Sure, healthcare reform is constitutional under a very broad interpretation of the commerce clause, but anything that would strike it down would apply equally to medicare.
...or face onerous tax penalties (and jail time, if unpaid?)
This is a myth. There is no way at all to face jail time for not getting health insurance. You can be fined and you can have your wages garnished or assets seized to cover the cost, but there is no route from not buying healthcare to jail time unless you commit some other crime, like shooting at the tax collector. There was originally such a provision in the bill, but it was removed long before the bill passed as anyone who gets there news from anywhere other than Fox should know if they care even a little about this important topic.
the Women's Political Council announced a boycott of the buses. That means they weren't using them-- not blocking people from using them.
You should do more thorough research. In addition to the boycott there were illegal sit ins that blocked others from using them and cabbies illegally undercharging for rides. Both were against the law at the time and prevented other people from getting where they needed to go.
It's sort of a stretch to put a bunch of immature, anonymous online vandals in the same class as Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus.
Yes it is. Why then are you mangling my analogy with this strawman argument? I compared the people arrested in the sit-in boycotts to the people executing the DDoS attacks. So really you're talking Rosa Parks would be Assange and the Anonymous group would be Martin Luther King Jr. and company. He was sentenced to a year in prison (he served 2 weeks) for "hindering a bus" and he was. He was blocking access and intentionally disrupting service inconveniencing those people who still wanted to do business with the bus system.
But these attacks are a deliberate attempt to cause harm, and the attackers aren't willing to stand up and be accountable for their actions.
But many of the protestors in the Rosa Parks incident refused to identified and refused to identify others present because they feared the repercussions from an oppressive government and rightly so since several were attacked and killed. Since some of the Wikileaks documents talk about the US attacking and torturing or having tortured people to further their cause, I'd say anonymity is understandable. Heck, the original tea party was composed of people in native american disguises.
If people want to stand up for Wikileaks, fine, that's their right, but committing anonymous vandalism makes you like a teenager spraypainting an anarchy sign on the side of a building in the middle of the night, not the moral equivalent of a civil rights crusader.
While you may not appreciate their efforts (and I'm not particularly keen on them either), it is a clear parallel to other civil rights movements and civil disobedience campaigns. And plenty of people thought "those uppity niggers should shut up and stop hurting america and get out of the way when white people want to sit down" or some such. Just because you or even the majority doesn't appreciate the method or cause does not make it any less valid. I'm not arguing Anonymous or Wikileaks side here, just trying to point out the fallacy of dismissing the issue as "mob rule" or invalid because the actions are illegal.
So you have no problem... with the collateral damage when EasyDNS is mistakenly identified as having cut off wikileaks?
There are often negative side effects to civil disobedience and that is certainly regrettable (although I'm unaware of any DNS attack against EasyDNS). One might argue, however, that the fact that several major newspapers ran with articles misidentifying the company argues that we need real change in the way information is disseminated and maybe a many eyes approach such as wikileaks has merit.
Boycotts are legal [wikipedia.org]. As are some sit in's and most protests.
You'd think my mention of "blacks being arrested" would clue you in to the fact that no, the Rosa Parks sit ins were not considered legal by the powers that be. Heck, at the time they made it illegal for cab drivers to charge low fares and devoted significant police action to fining and detaining those cab drivers. Are you seriously trying to imply that illegal civili disobedience has not brought about significant positive change in the US?
the only change that can come from these DDOS attacks is more investment in network security (more costs which could end up driving consumer prices up) and more severe cybercrime laws. I don't see how anyone can benefit from this.
Well, I can benefit from that since I own stock in a company that makes DDoS mitigation appliances. But aside from that, this brings press and attention to the issue, and usually that's what is important in situations like this. If people don't know Visa is cutting of Wikileaks donations, but are continuing payments to the KKK, well maybe more press will help illuminate why they're doing this and cause customers to demand change either from the companies, or from government regulation regarding common carriers (which these companies usually aren't but legally should be).
And shutting down sites because you dont agree with what the owner says or does goes against free speech as people will keep quiet just to avoid being attacked.
Either way free speech is affected. The real question is if we want protesters temporarily silencing companies or if we want companies permanently silencing individuals and civil rights groups.
So many people, especially the slashdot crowd, are cheering on Anonymous and other parties who are DDOSing parties involved in the whole Wikileaks thing as some sort of testament to free speech. But this isn't free speech anymore, it's just mob justice and there's no due process in mob justice.
There's actually quite a history of civil disobedience in the US. Boycotts, sit in's, protests all of which were illegal under the law and involved large numbers of citizens intentionally disobeying the law in order to get a point across and show public support. DDoSing Visa's Web site doesn't do any real damage to anything, with minimal financial damage and no one lynched. It does, however, bring attention to the issue and pressure corporations, lawmakers, and elected executives around the world to make a change.
When blacks were arrested by the hundreds for "hindering a bus" during the Rosa King chapter of the civil rights movement, those people were not using "due process" to change the segregation laws and they could just as easily be described as "mob justice" shutting down the bus system in a major US city. If the civil rights movement were happening now would they be arrested for terrorist acts sabotaging public transit?
While I'm not wholly for nor against the level of disclosure wikileaks seems to be presenting I do recognize this as a free speech/civil rights issue and if people feel strongly enough to risk their freedom via civil disobedience movements like this, I can respect that. To dismiss it as "undemocratic" or "mob justice" is to ignore very important lessons from our not so distant history.
Also, by "power half the world" I assume they mean "power the whole world for half the day", since even in the sahara the sun does occasionally set. IMO, a means of efficiently storing enough power to run half the world would be an even bigger feat than tiling the sahara with PV.
There are already fairly efficient large scale solar systems that work slowly enough that they generate power continuously, even at night. In fact, building on a large scale makes concentrators and sodium piles and the like much more cost effective than in traditional solar power generation.
Again, as someone directly involved it is pretty obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. I can assure you that every time *I* have been involved in such a situation comcast continued until ordered to stop. They would have continue if not so ordered (or as part of the settlement).
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote.
Your point is that they have done something bad for some time so there is no point in EVER doing anything about it.
This is a strawman argument. I never argued that there was no point in doing anything. That was all you. My point is that we need more effective application of the law, stricter regulation, and fewer laws and appointments that are the end result of lobbying dollars.
Lastly neither set of lawsuits lasted even close to a year from inception.
Great, tell that to the people involved in the current FCC lawsuit at 3.5 years and counting, or the CableCard class action at 2 years and counting.
It is nice that you have opinions on these subjects, but when you are talking to a person who was actually involved please realize that making claims of fact *after* the person already stated what actually happened is pretty dumb.
I don't think you understand that the few class actions you were a part of (and I was too actually) are not particularly representative of the ability of the courts to effectively stop illegal action.
As for the issue of our current Congress. Well, we will just have to disagree.
What is there to disagree with? That most of the vocal supporters of net neutrality and the FCC stepping in were ousted? That the FCC already stepped in of Comcast's behalf? That campaign ads and funds were supplied by unnamed parties to those who were elected? Those are all clear facts as you can easily discover by picking up a newspaper.
Forcibly locking the system down with no opt-out doesn't help security at all.
Certainly it does, it's just that it does so while also imposing restrictions many of us feel are too strict.
Like Apple, this is all about total control over the end user and using that control to route them through profit centers (and I don't believe for a moment that these stores will not be profitable, otherwise what's the point.)
This is a circular argument. You claim this is about profiting from the stores then assert the stores are about profit because otherwise why are they making user use them. In truth, I doubt Apple has any real plan to make money from the app store. They never really made significant profit from the iTunes store, but instead have consistently used it as a near-break-even way to sell more hardware. To date, that's the same situation as the app store. Apple wants their devices to be stable and perform well and have good battery life and have an app community that rapidly takes advantages of new technologies they implement and without malware issues. That's why they have an app store. While it may be too restrictive for geeks (I don't have an iPhone) it does represent a benefit to many categories of users and does bring them real benefits.
That is the point of the lawsuit. I am a little confused here on what you are trying to say. The reason *we* sued comcast was to force them to stop XYZ practice.
You can stop them from a single action if you fight for years, but by then the damage is pretty well done. You'll notice all the previous lawsuits have done nothing to stop this latest abuse.
The likelihood of *THIS* congress doing anything is about slim to nil.
How do you figure? It's been what six months since they last intervened stopping the FCC from imposing more strict rules on cable companies and since then more shills have been voted in and many of the strongest proponents of a strong FCC have been voted out.
Locking it down to vetted apps from people who register weeds out a lot of malware
So does proper sandboxing of applications. See OLPC Bitfrost [laptop.org] for an example of how to do it right.
While I'm a big fan of Bitfrost style sandboxing, you're missing part of the picture here. Android, iOS, and Windows 7 Phone Edition, all use sandboxing already. But who configures the sandbox? Users clearly don't have the expertise, so like with the OLPC you end up with a vendor doing it for the user. That's what the App stores are.You go there and download apps and ACLs.
as well as a lot of apps that will make the performance of the battery and other apps terrible
Then the battery management application should list what applications have used the most energy, where energy is estimated from cumulative CPU time, camera time, GPS time, etc.
Assuming doing that level of monitoring doesn't hurt performance itself, why do you think users will look at the "battery management" application? That's really more for geeks trying to get them most out of their batteries. Normal people just use their phones until they run low, then complain about it. Your solution helps geeks, but provides no motivation for MS to implement it.
The real benefit is that this backasswards company stops doing whatever stupidity it is doing at the time, not the discount.
Ahh, but that assumes they do stop. Instead they just keep on keeping on until they are actually forced by the courts to stop. Comcast is a repeat offender. They'll keep breaking the law until it is unprofitable or they are forced to obey.
My prediction: 1) FCC is going to intervene.
They probably will, but it's also likely congress will intervene as well. The FCC may or may not have the authority, but if the courts rule with them (after a long period of legal battle) congress will likely step in and pass legislation to stop the FCC and aid Comcast. If you had not noticed, most of the congress critters who were championing net neutrality have been replaced by hardcore pro- big business republicans. Guess where they got the money to get elected. No really, guess, because that's all we can do because of our insane campaign finance laws.
It's only logical to me that MS would market their phones to businesses first: it's also from MS so relative easy to market, and presumably relative straightforward integration in existing networks.
MS has been trying to market phones to business for many years and getting beaten to death by RIM. They've poisoned their brand in the business smartphone market. Additionally, MS's modus operandi is to dominate a market first, then worry about making money. Business clients are not a big enough segment to pull that off overall, so they have to go after the iPhone and they need to concentrate somewhere first. If they gain any real market share, they'll go after business soon enough.
I'm sure, like copy/paste, MS will be getting around to providing a way to distribute an app outside their market both for development purposes and for internal apps. It's just not the top of the priority list yet.
Slashdot Mirror
People have to separate the channel as a whole from the actual news shows. Their actual news is fairly decent and objective. The rest of the shows on that channel are pure columnist style speculation and opinion however.
There have been numerous instances that make me disagree with this. The Newscorp organization pushes disinformation for profit. For example, the news program regularly reports that there are "reports of..." reports which are simply quoting what the lunatics in Fox News talk shows say. They don't bother to look into it or debunk, it, they just report it like it is credible news. And then there is corporate ethics. As far as I know, Fox is the only news corporation that went to court and argued that it was their first amendment right to fire reporters for refusing to knowingly lie about the dangers of drugs produced by one of their advertisers. And they're right, they do have the right to fire those reporters and lie to the public or bury the story... but that completely destroys their credibility as a news channel and that of any program they carry.
Basically, while there is a lot of bias and poor research going on in US media today, Fox is actually worse than all the others and this study reflects some of that. Frankly I think the only reason to anyone would trust anything seen on the Fox news channel is ignorance about what kind of an organization is running the show.
So this might mean Mac OS X is not affected? I'm not knowledgeable enough on *BSD to know.
While there is significant shared code between the BSD's and OS X and even Linux distributions; OpenBSD ships with an IPv4 IPSec stack that is pretty much only used by OpenBSD. OS X and most other BSDs use the KAME stack.
When the law is used to justify unethical behavior by the people making it, and the law is used to penalize what should be ethical behavior by everyone else, the law is no longer a valid basis for determining who is a criminal and who isn’t. That is why we have civil disobedience.
Note that your comment is based upon your subjective criteria. Who decides what is unethical and what should be? Oh yeah, We The People do, through the electoral process. You may not like the results, but that doesn't make them illegal because you aren't dictator here. And as for civil disobedience, it's about changing the laws by breaking them en mass. It's a tradition and I certainly respect that tradition, but it isn't legal.
Just like the criminals who extort money from us via unconstitutional laws?
They aren't criminals because they're acting within the laws and the judicial system of officials appointed by elected officials determines constitutionality. Just because you don't like a law, doesn't make the people who wrote it criminals. It's called "the law". Maybe you heard of it in your civics class.
NBC's content is a piss in the bucket of the better stuff out there. the BBC produces a lot, as well as a lot of other smaller players. Honestly, content without a big conglomo is right around the corner... NBC will die just like a bad SNL sketch.
Unless, of course, a big conglomerate is allowed to produce content (owns NBC) and also owns the only way to get content (data pipes). It's about leveraging a monopoly (often a localized one) to prevent the free market from acting in the content market.
...trying to actually protect your wages from garnishment or your assets from seizure.
Legally doing so, no. Illegally doing so, by lying on your taxes or shooting at the tax collector, yeah you'll go to jail just like other criminals. Likewise, if you try to avoid paying your taxes by detonating a nuclear bomb in DC the same thing will happen. That's why we have laws genius.
Seems to me we've jailed plenty of men for being "deabeat dads" (men who can't afford kids/ridiculous "child support" awards and penalties and who have no legal say in the matter).
Yes, men and women have gone to jail for trying to hide their money from the courts and not pay court awarded child support, but that's under laws designed specifically to do that. There are no such laws with regard to healthcare and that is by design.
You see, you don't go to jail for not paying off your debts, you go to jail for committing the crime of not paying a bill, failing to properly respond to a court order, etc.
You go to jail for failing to pay or respond to child support, not for failing to pay a debt. We don't have debtors prison for a reason. In general, not paying a debt is not illegal, although it does open one up to having one's assets seized.
If you try to dodge this shit they'll clamp down. If they need more money they'll threaten you with jail. If they need to make people take them seriously, they'll jail people.
Despite that they specifically changed the law so that doesn't happen? All you have is empty assertions contradicted by the facts and a lame slippery slope fallacy.
Have you not heard of this government thing before?
Yup, you elected em. Good job.
Hey, I've got an idea. How about we stop acting like ready access to TV shows and movies is an inalienable right?
Comcast is trying to mislead people by citing NBC's market share and it seems to have worked in your case. We're not talking about a right to particular TV shows, but rather the free market when there is no realistic alternatives in many locations for both TV and internet access. What we're talking about are now vital utilities. The ability to access news and wether as well as e-mail, voice and video communications, research topics. I'd assert that data pipes, whether delivering TV programs, music, or random Web pages; are now a basic utility and a lot of us need them to do our jobs. Further, they are a strategic resource for the advancement of our society in technology and education. We should, therefore, regulate them as a utility, like we did with phones and electricity and water and sewage. As taxpayers we've already funded the internet infrastructure more than most nations, we just have received less in return than most other nations. We should require a return on our investment, continued investment, but protections for the citizenry funding this. Separate content producers from those running the delivery infrastructure and heavily regulate the latter. If NBC doesn't want to sell some show on the internet, fine, but they shouldn't be leveraging a geographic monopoly on providing data pipes (a monopoly that is the result of their lobbying corrupt politicians for laws designed to make the people pay through the nose) in order to undermine the free market that would normally make them lose money when they displease customers.
Oh ok, they can't put you in jail, but they can extort money from you and take your stuff. That sounds totally legitimate coming from your Lords... I mean government.
And this differs from every other tax how? Oh yeah, you don't mind some of the other taxes as much or are used to paying them or something? Seriously, we've had federally funded healthcare programs for ages, this just expands it to more poor people. Personally I think it's a bloody inefficient mess and might be the worst healthcare system invented in ages, right ahead of what we have now and right behind what the British managed. That doesn't make it in any way inconsistent with the constitutional interpretation that has been applied by the courts with regard to the commerce clause and the rest of our legislation.
But I don't expect the average American idiot to grasp constitutional law. Mostly what I object to here is people who care enough to comment on this topic but not enough to read even a basic summary of what legislation has been passed but instead insist on spreading their ignorant rumors.
Federal law enforcement is not run by private, for-profit companies. Try again.
Actually, significant parts of it ARE subcontracted out to private companies. Heck, I used to work for one of them.
Notice how the bolded part from the first post is different from the bolded part of your quote...
I was ignoring that inaccuracy because you don't have to buy it from a private company or at all. You just get a tax break if you buy it (either from the feds in VA program or medicare) or from a private company. If you don't buy it, you pay a tax penalty. Not really novel.
You don't think it's reasonable to say every citizen must buy a particular product from a small set of private companies
You mean like buying the product (service really) of federal law enforcement? Or do you mean like a whole class of citizens being required to pay into a federally run healthcare system (like medicare)? Sure, healthcare reform is constitutional under a very broad interpretation of the commerce clause, but anything that would strike it down would apply equally to medicare.
...or face onerous tax penalties (and jail time, if unpaid?)
This is a myth. There is no way at all to face jail time for not getting health insurance. You can be fined and you can have your wages garnished or assets seized to cover the cost, but there is no route from not buying healthcare to jail time unless you commit some other crime, like shooting at the tax collector. There was originally such a provision in the bill, but it was removed long before the bill passed as anyone who gets there news from anywhere other than Fox should know if they care even a little about this important topic.
the Women's Political Council announced a boycott of the buses. That means they weren't using them-- not blocking people from using them.
You should do more thorough research. In addition to the boycott there were illegal sit ins that blocked others from using them and cabbies illegally undercharging for rides. Both were against the law at the time and prevented other people from getting where they needed to go.
It's sort of a stretch to put a bunch of immature, anonymous online vandals in the same class as Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus.
Yes it is. Why then are you mangling my analogy with this strawman argument? I compared the people arrested in the sit-in boycotts to the people executing the DDoS attacks. So really you're talking Rosa Parks would be Assange and the Anonymous group would be Martin Luther King Jr. and company. He was sentenced to a year in prison (he served 2 weeks) for "hindering a bus" and he was. He was blocking access and intentionally disrupting service inconveniencing those people who still wanted to do business with the bus system.
But these attacks are a deliberate attempt to cause harm, and the attackers aren't willing to stand up and be accountable for their actions.
But many of the protestors in the Rosa Parks incident refused to identified and refused to identify others present because they feared the repercussions from an oppressive government and rightly so since several were attacked and killed. Since some of the Wikileaks documents talk about the US attacking and torturing or having tortured people to further their cause, I'd say anonymity is understandable. Heck, the original tea party was composed of people in native american disguises.
If people want to stand up for Wikileaks, fine, that's their right, but committing anonymous vandalism makes you like a teenager spraypainting an anarchy sign on the side of a building in the middle of the night, not the moral equivalent of a civil rights crusader.
While you may not appreciate their efforts (and I'm not particularly keen on them either), it is a clear parallel to other civil rights movements and civil disobedience campaigns. And plenty of people thought "those uppity niggers should shut up and stop hurting america and get out of the way when white people want to sit down" or some such. Just because you or even the majority doesn't appreciate the method or cause does not make it any less valid. I'm not arguing Anonymous or Wikileaks side here, just trying to point out the fallacy of dismissing the issue as "mob rule" or invalid because the actions are illegal.
So you have no problem... with the collateral damage when EasyDNS is mistakenly identified as having cut off wikileaks?
There are often negative side effects to civil disobedience and that is certainly regrettable (although I'm unaware of any DNS attack against EasyDNS). One might argue, however, that the fact that several major newspapers ran with articles misidentifying the company argues that we need real change in the way information is disseminated and maybe a many eyes approach such as wikileaks has merit.
Boycotts are legal [wikipedia.org]. As are some sit in's and most protests.
You'd think my mention of "blacks being arrested" would clue you in to the fact that no, the Rosa Parks sit ins were not considered legal by the powers that be. Heck, at the time they made it illegal for cab drivers to charge low fares and devoted significant police action to fining and detaining those cab drivers. Are you seriously trying to imply that illegal civili disobedience has not brought about significant positive change in the US?
the only change that can come from these DDOS attacks is more investment in network security (more costs which could end up driving consumer prices up) and more severe cybercrime laws. I don't see how anyone can benefit from this.
Well, I can benefit from that since I own stock in a company that makes DDoS mitigation appliances. But aside from that, this brings press and attention to the issue, and usually that's what is important in situations like this. If people don't know Visa is cutting of Wikileaks donations, but are continuing payments to the KKK, well maybe more press will help illuminate why they're doing this and cause customers to demand change either from the companies, or from government regulation regarding common carriers (which these companies usually aren't but legally should be).
And shutting down sites because you dont agree with what the owner says or does goes against free speech as people will keep quiet just to avoid being attacked.
Either way free speech is affected. The real question is if we want protesters temporarily silencing companies or if we want companies permanently silencing individuals and civil rights groups.
So many people, especially the slashdot crowd, are cheering on Anonymous and other parties who are DDOSing parties involved in the whole Wikileaks thing as some sort of testament to free speech. But this isn't free speech anymore, it's just mob justice and there's no due process in mob justice.
There's actually quite a history of civil disobedience in the US. Boycotts, sit in's, protests all of which were illegal under the law and involved large numbers of citizens intentionally disobeying the law in order to get a point across and show public support. DDoSing Visa's Web site doesn't do any real damage to anything, with minimal financial damage and no one lynched. It does, however, bring attention to the issue and pressure corporations, lawmakers, and elected executives around the world to make a change.
When blacks were arrested by the hundreds for "hindering a bus" during the Rosa King chapter of the civil rights movement, those people were not using "due process" to change the segregation laws and they could just as easily be described as "mob justice" shutting down the bus system in a major US city. If the civil rights movement were happening now would they be arrested for terrorist acts sabotaging public transit?
While I'm not wholly for nor against the level of disclosure wikileaks seems to be presenting I do recognize this as a free speech/civil rights issue and if people feel strongly enough to risk their freedom via civil disobedience movements like this, I can respect that. To dismiss it as "undemocratic" or "mob justice" is to ignore very important lessons from our not so distant history.
Also, by "power half the world" I assume they mean "power the whole world for half the day", since even in the sahara the sun does occasionally set. IMO, a means of efficiently storing enough power to run half the world would be an even bigger feat than tiling the sahara with PV.
There are already fairly efficient large scale solar systems that work slowly enough that they generate power continuously, even at night. In fact, building on a large scale makes concentrators and sodium piles and the like much more cost effective than in traditional solar power generation.
Again, as someone directly involved it is pretty obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. I can assure you that every time *I* have been involved in such a situation comcast continued until ordered to stop. They would have continue if not so ordered (or as part of the settlement).
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote.
Your point is that they have done something bad for some time so there is no point in EVER doing anything about it.
This is a strawman argument. I never argued that there was no point in doing anything. That was all you. My point is that we need more effective application of the law, stricter regulation, and fewer laws and appointments that are the end result of lobbying dollars.
Lastly neither set of lawsuits lasted even close to a year from inception.
Great, tell that to the people involved in the current FCC lawsuit at 3.5 years and counting, or the CableCard class action at 2 years and counting.
It is nice that you have opinions on these subjects, but when you are talking to a person who was actually involved please realize that making claims of fact *after* the person already stated what actually happened is pretty dumb.
I don't think you understand that the few class actions you were a part of (and I was too actually) are not particularly representative of the ability of the courts to effectively stop illegal action.
As for the issue of our current Congress. Well, we will just have to disagree.
What is there to disagree with? That most of the vocal supporters of net neutrality and the FCC stepping in were ousted? That the FCC already stepped in of Comcast's behalf? That campaign ads and funds were supplied by unnamed parties to those who were elected? Those are all clear facts as you can easily discover by picking up a newspaper.
Forcibly locking the system down with no opt-out doesn't help security at all.
Certainly it does, it's just that it does so while also imposing restrictions many of us feel are too strict.
Like Apple, this is all about total control over the end user and using that control to route them through profit centers (and I don't believe for a moment that these stores will not be profitable, otherwise what's the point.)
This is a circular argument. You claim this is about profiting from the stores then assert the stores are about profit because otherwise why are they making user use them. In truth, I doubt Apple has any real plan to make money from the app store. They never really made significant profit from the iTunes store, but instead have consistently used it as a near-break-even way to sell more hardware. To date, that's the same situation as the app store. Apple wants their devices to be stable and perform well and have good battery life and have an app community that rapidly takes advantages of new technologies they implement and without malware issues. That's why they have an app store. While it may be too restrictive for geeks (I don't have an iPhone) it does represent a benefit to many categories of users and does bring them real benefits.
That is the point of the lawsuit. I am a little confused here on what you are trying to say. The reason *we* sued comcast was to force them to stop XYZ practice.
You can stop them from a single action if you fight for years, but by then the damage is pretty well done. You'll notice all the previous lawsuits have done nothing to stop this latest abuse.
The likelihood of *THIS* congress doing anything is about slim to nil.
How do you figure? It's been what six months since they last intervened stopping the FCC from imposing more strict rules on cable companies and since then more shills have been voted in and many of the strongest proponents of a strong FCC have been voted out.
Locking it down to vetted apps from people who register weeds out a lot of malware
So does proper sandboxing of applications. See OLPC Bitfrost [laptop.org] for an example of how to do it right.
While I'm a big fan of Bitfrost style sandboxing, you're missing part of the picture here. Android, iOS, and Windows 7 Phone Edition, all use sandboxing already. But who configures the sandbox? Users clearly don't have the expertise, so like with the OLPC you end up with a vendor doing it for the user. That's what the App stores are.You go there and download apps and ACLs.
as well as a lot of apps that will make the performance of the battery and other apps terrible
Then the battery management application should list what applications have used the most energy, where energy is estimated from cumulative CPU time, camera time, GPS time, etc.
Assuming doing that level of monitoring doesn't hurt performance itself, why do you think users will look at the "battery management" application? That's really more for geeks trying to get them most out of their batteries. Normal people just use their phones until they run low, then complain about it. Your solution helps geeks, but provides no motivation for MS to implement it.
The real benefit is that this backasswards company stops doing whatever stupidity it is doing at the time, not the discount.
Ahh, but that assumes they do stop. Instead they just keep on keeping on until they are actually forced by the courts to stop. Comcast is a repeat offender. They'll keep breaking the law until it is unprofitable or they are forced to obey.
My prediction: 1) FCC is going to intervene.
They probably will, but it's also likely congress will intervene as well. The FCC may or may not have the authority, but if the courts rule with them (after a long period of legal battle) congress will likely step in and pass legislation to stop the FCC and aid Comcast. If you had not noticed, most of the congress critters who were championing net neutrality have been replaced by hardcore pro- big business republicans. Guess where they got the money to get elected. No really, guess, because that's all we can do because of our insane campaign finance laws.
It's only logical to me that MS would market their phones to businesses first: it's also from MS so relative easy to market, and presumably relative straightforward integration in existing networks.
MS has been trying to market phones to business for many years and getting beaten to death by RIM. They've poisoned their brand in the business smartphone market. Additionally, MS's modus operandi is to dominate a market first, then worry about making money. Business clients are not a big enough segment to pull that off overall, so they have to go after the iPhone and they need to concentrate somewhere first. If they gain any real market share, they'll go after business soon enough.
I'm sure, like copy/paste, MS will be getting around to providing a way to distribute an app outside their market both for development purposes and for internal apps. It's just not the top of the priority list yet.