4) Just as you said, Western techniques are so good, foreign governments don't have a clue.
5) The foreign governments are feeding them false information. (Soviets did it so I don't see why they former KGB aren't doing it now)
6) They accuse people of spying all the time so western nations don't run the news.
Remember those stories about the Kremlin accusing foreign NGO's of spying for the British and China arresting that one guy. Don't remember what happened to him.
Oh, there will be the few geeks who know how to set up a proxy to secure a tiny bit of anonymity until one of the Big Fish get wind of you and get interested in tracking you down, but for the most part, all connections are going to be monitored. They are going to know who's on each end of every communication channel, and they are going to know what is being communicated, and to a large extent, they will control it.
I suspect if it becomes a large problem for a large set of people, then people will start encrypting everything by default and creating intranets.
Sure it will be a lot of overhead and governments can start outlawing encryption (well how would that work for the banks?) but I think the only reason people haven't done so now is because they are scared enough or care if people look at their data.
1. Without regulation, monopolies will eventually form and once at the top they will leverage their position to increase barriers to market entry. They will also manually set arbitrary prices and wages and therefore be no better than communism.
2. Humans won't wait 10 years through an economic depression. They'll either turn to crime because they feel that society in general screwed them or they'll join or vote for radical political alignments in order to push change. You can chastise people all you want, but when you've lost your job and all your savings, you aren't going to say "Oh well. Free market and all that." You've got a family to feed and your mad.
I agree with Jefferson in the idea of limited government. However, Jefferson never foresaw Standard Oil or the rise of mega corporations of the United States so he never wrote about how he felt since they did not exist in the USA at the time.
However, they did exist in England at the time and Jefferson wrote that corporations and organized businesses were evil and an affront to our freedoms here in the states:
In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it's government and the probity of it's citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it's people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
In the end, I'm sure Jefferson would have been very pragmatic about the issue and also accepted regulation of corporations as well as government.
A true free market would not have a Reserve Bank setting interest rates, but instead have interest rates that are set by each independent bank, and these rates would move up-and-down with supply-and-demand.
Historically that has always resulted in bank failures and bank runs and the loss of the savings of many thrifty people.
Without some regulation, either through malice or incompetence, a bank is going to screw its customers out of their money because someone thought they could take a risk they could not (like giving out loans to people who could not afford it... hrm... sounds familiar)
Banks are not going to do this on their own and in order for people to have a safe place to put their money, there has to be a lender of last result in case there is a run on the bank.
Historically, during the 1890-1910 era, the lender of last result was other banks, but when they all ran out of money at once, it became a problem and was most likely only saved by JP Morgan. Considering such a nice monopolist might not always be around, the Federal Reserve was created.
Like it or not, human irrationality and greed sometimes gets the better of us. If we let the banks fail, yes it will correct itself eventually, but you just ruined the savings of a lot of people.
What are you going to tell them? Do more research before investing in banks that weren't transparent with their numbers anyways?
No. Those people tend to vote for parties who will regulate so the problem resolved itself.
Yeah, because maybe his family shouldn't get a windfall from the surge in book sales his titles are about to recieve.
No, they shouldn't because the intent of copyright was never intended for a revenue stream for surviving family members.
If they feel so inclined they can write their own works or invest in an insurance policy like the rest of us.
Oh and considering my estate will be taxed upon my death, if you really want copyrights to be treated as property that can be inherited then a tax needs to be levied upon it just like any other property.
That said, if the author has created an agreement with his publisher that entails what happens to the earnings from the books sold after his death, then he is free to create one and his family can pursue that with the publisher if they signed a contract.
Otherwise, an author should get no special privileges when it comes to death and in all reality the copyright laws were intended to release the works into public domain long before their death.
If you don't like it, they should have picked another line of work. Heck, even Bill Gates says he isn't going to give all his money to his children. They should have to work like the rest of us.
Or nuclear. It's proven, it's working today, and there's phenomenal amounts of energy.
I think the best argument against nuclear is that you still have to pay a central organization to produce the power and provide the infrastructure to get it to you.
Whereas with solar or wind, an individual, private business, or a local municipal government has the potentials to create their own power, thereby becoming independent of the rest of the system.
Unless the Federal government would be OK with me having a nuclear reactor in my back yard.
Oh, and Kurzweil suggests we'll all be in robot bodies before the century's end, so those great hard science fiction writers of half a century ago fall even further behind.
I think that most people don't realize that most machines in 100 years will be indistinguishable from organic systems.
And vice versa.
Of course you could make a machine to look like a machine, but it is highly likely machines will be designed like living organisms simply because it is more efficient that way.
Of course, the other reason that the monk analogy does not fit that seems to be oft overlooked is that the monks did not make record profits as printing became increasingly common.
Um.... Monasteries were some of the richest organizations in Europe by the 1500's.
And it wasn't just from selling indulgences or donations from the wealthy nobility. They were usually large landholders which had whole swathes of peasant tenants and manufacturing businesses.
One of these were transcribing of books which were some of the most highly prized objects during the time. A library of 100 books was something that a king could boast of.
Anyways... The printing press did end this lucrative business but in all reality most of the monks went unemployed when the protestant rulers wanted more money for their coffers and confiscated their lands and money.
The GOP just needs to embrace that aspect of the party more.
Or boot out the people who want to include religion in government.
What bothers me is that those groups within the GOP think that including religion in the state must be the best way to go without realizing that the founding fathers of the United States fought so viciously against it because they knew damn well what happenswhen you mix the two.
Basically... The reason many of the early settlers of the North America were moving from Europe was the fact the most countries in Europe included the Church and faith within the state and often forced people to change their own beliefs to conform (You know... Puritan, Quakers, Waldensian etc).
Even though they were all Christian, mixing stat policy and religious dogma usually meant forcing people to change their views on how they interpreted Christianity which usually led to war.
The idea that that state can tell you what to believe and behave based on religion is just as dangerous to religious people as it is to atheists.
And how would you feel if the state told you that you had to pay taxes to them in order to go to heaven? Sounds ridiculous but back in the day when the King of England was the head of the Church... Failure to support the king was also failure to support the church.
Again, these are the artists you pirates have, for years, claimed to be fighting for (don't ask me how pirating their work accomplishes that).
I used run a small record label, but I didn't make enough to live off it by itself. That said, I don't believe the government should pay me money simply because I run a business that wasn't making money.
What you are saying is that all artists must be required by law to have other people's money to live where everyone else just has to make do with their regular 9 to 5?
I mean it sounds great for the artist, but I don't think the law should be written specifically that they get government handouts.
If that is true what about all the pimps being deprived of a living because people have sex for free?
The problem is that government is being leveraged in order to make money where otherwise there would be none. And trust me... Its not the small time artists getting any benefit from it.
And on the grand scheme of things, our priorities should be science, engineering, and medicine rather than entertainment.
Maybe we need more of that than more art in the world.
The bigger logical problem with his statement is that it is subjective.
Well that is the deal. It maybe subjective but it doesn't mean its true for the majority of humans in how they hold an opinion about life and death of other humans.
They may feel an emotional loss, but due to the fact they have no prior memories or experiences with the child then have no long term association attachment to that being.
Whereas a child experiencing a death of parent might be extremely traumatized (even at old age) simply because they have had a lifetime memories and experiences to back that up.
I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong, but on average a human will respond more to the loss of someone they've shared experiences on a long term basis than someone they have not even if it is their own child.
Long trips are better served, at least for now, by airlines.
I don't know about you, but as a person who flies a lot, I hate it no matter where I go and how long it takes. The security checks, the price of the price of the tickets (and the fact it changes seasonally), the airline customer service, delays, and the fact they over book all the flights... Anyways...
My point is that traveling by air sucks, but the only alternative is by Greyhound which is even worse in quality.
If bullet trains could get me from NYC to Atlanta in 4 hours I would be happy even though it takes 2 1/2 (usually 3+ because of all the damn taxing they do these days) by air now. I don't need super fast, but I need something faster than greyhound.
How is installing software on someones computer with court authorization to monitor their behavior any different from using the warrant to obtain a wiretap or using it to search their home and possessions?
I think the problem is that they posted the monitoring tool to a website where anyone could come across and get infected and get monitored.
In those instances, there was no prior suspicions that is needed for a warrant. You cannot randomly search 100 people's houses hoping to find a criminal the same way you can't put software out there to find out whether or not these people are the criminal.
In fact... TFA says the FBI agent was disappointed when the person they hope to infect was not infected so I'm assuming others were who were not the target of the warrant.
Sure, the OS and apps may be protected, but that isn't really what the end user cares about (since that's all easily replaced).
1. This is why you make backups. 2. A virus that is able to root the OS is harder to detect and harder to remove.
I don't know about you, but I find it less time consuming to wipe the user directory and restore the users's data from backup, then I do having to either play "find that rouge process in the registry" or formatting the entire box and then restoring the user directory.
You have a point, but most malware doesn't need to run as root to do its job, so really getting access at all is "game over". Protecting root doesn't mean much when root isn't the target . ..
No its not game over because if you don't have access to root, then it makes the malware easier to detect and remove.
Unless you like playing "Find that random registry key" when you are trying to purge WinXP of AV360.
And AV360 is nasty because it actually prevents you from running malware removal software from running and that is because it has root access.
(Yeah you can end process av360.exe but I suspect the author is going to change it something else at random)
Take it to the extreme: if everyone in the world got hold of movies, music or software for free, why would artists and developers continue producing original works if they're receiving no reward for it?
On a side note and a purely hypothetical question...
Wouldn't it benefit society more if we reward people for science, medicine, and engineering rather than entertainment?
Why aren't we rewarding people more for curing cancer or building better ways to power our homes. I mean we do... But why should Britney Spears be paid millions when a scientists researching a cure for AIDs would not be rewarded as much?
Then again, maybe its a good thing we have shorter terms on patents for medicines. Otherwise they'd hoard the cure for centuries.
By that reasoning, you should have the right to borrow my car to drive to the store, but that darn "law" is stopping your from exercising the right. The logical flaw is that you do *not* have a right to use somebody else's property, whether it's a car or a book or money.
Ideas and information are not property per se. At least historically...
So far no one is taxed for owning "intellectual property" unlike that car (or your house).
I'm fine with the idea that information and ideas can be property, but if that is true then the government should tax those based on the value of the property just like any other property, no?
And I think the fairest way to tax the property is to ask the copyright owner how much they think it is. If they say it is worth $0 then they won't be taxed. If they say $10,000,000 then they will be taxes for that much.
If they need to sue someone for $10,000,000 then they would have needed to pay the tax on that declared value before hand.
I remember the first time I saw one of my apps made available on a pirate site. It was a horrible feeling. I wanted to find and beat the crap out of the guy who made it available.
I feel for you but realistically, the people who download software illegally weren't going to pay for it anyways.
As as business advice, in order to compete with piracy you have to offer something more than just software. Either that could be support or a software community of people who are willing to pay for your software.
This also has the nice benefit of creating a better product than your competitors. If you reach out and create a community around your product or offer something that neither the pirates or your competitors can't then you are almost guaranteed success.
It is how Paradox Interactive thrives despite the fact it has hardly any DRM in its products. The developers reach out in the forums and talk with the players of their games for feed back. They also give rewards for registering your product such as beta patches and form titles and icons that only paying customers can have.
They aren't EA but they are very well to do when it comes to software sales.
There isn't anything that says you have a right to drink either. It is just that a large portion of the population thinks its acceptable
So the choice is to either make a large part of the population criminals and put a lot of money into the pockets of organized crime or legalize it and regulate it.
I'm afraid you don't have any other choices but the two.
But that other 1% of the time, I'm using it from home, because I've gotten called up to fix some urgent client problem.
I hate to say this, but wouldn't it make much more sense to connect directly to the servers in question using SSH or a thin client solution like Terminal Server? Unless there aren't public, which I suppose they technically are if you can connect from home either way.
I say this because the servers have to up no matter what, and if you simply using your work desktop to connect to them, then why not just skip the desktop and connect directly to the server?
Unless your company has a policy against using non-work machines to connect to the servers... Which technically you are anyways by proxy...
Slashdot Mirror
4) Just as you said, Western techniques are so good, foreign governments don't have a clue.
5) The foreign governments are feeding them false information. (Soviets did it so I don't see why they former KGB aren't doing it now)
6) They accuse people of spying all the time so western nations don't run the news.
Remember those stories about the Kremlin accusing foreign NGO's of spying for the British and China arresting that one guy. Don't remember what happened to him.
If this were the case, there would be capitalists all over the world assembling massive solar arrays for electricity production.
*coughs*
No, suppose there aren't any companies like that that you can invest in that go around and build massive solar arrays for clients.
Oh, there will be the few geeks who know how to set up a proxy to secure a tiny bit of anonymity until one of the Big Fish get wind of you and get interested in tracking you down, but for the most part, all connections are going to be monitored. They are going to know who's on each end of every communication channel, and they are going to know what is being communicated, and to a large extent, they will control it.
I suspect if it becomes a large problem for a large set of people, then people will start encrypting everything by default and creating intranets.
Sure it will be a lot of overhead and governments can start outlawing encryption (well how would that work for the banks?) but I think the only reason people haven't done so now is because they are scared enough or care if people look at their data.
Lets be pragmatic about it.
1. Without regulation, monopolies will eventually form and once at the top they will leverage their position to increase barriers to market entry. They will also manually set arbitrary prices and wages and therefore be no better than communism.
2. Humans won't wait 10 years through an economic depression. They'll either turn to crime because they feel that society in general screwed them or they'll join or vote for radical political alignments in order to push change. You can chastise people all you want, but when you've lost your job and all your savings, you aren't going to say "Oh well. Free market and all that." You've got a family to feed and your mad.
I agree with Jefferson in the idea of limited government. However, Jefferson never foresaw Standard Oil or the rise of mega corporations of the United States so he never wrote about how he felt since they did not exist in the USA at the time.
However, they did exist in England at the time and Jefferson wrote that corporations and organized businesses were evil and an affront to our freedoms here in the states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson#View_on_corporations
In the end, I'm sure Jefferson would have been very pragmatic about the issue and also accepted regulation of corporations as well as government.
A true free market would not have a Reserve Bank setting interest rates, but instead have interest rates that are set by each independent bank, and these rates would move up-and-down with supply-and-demand.
Historically that has always resulted in bank failures and bank runs and the loss of the savings of many thrifty people.
Without some regulation, either through malice or incompetence, a bank is going to screw its customers out of their money because someone thought they could take a risk they could not (like giving out loans to people who could not afford it... hrm... sounds familiar)
Banks are not going to do this on their own and in order for people to have a safe place to put their money, there has to be a lender of last result in case there is a run on the bank.
Historically, during the 1890-1910 era, the lender of last result was other banks, but when they all ran out of money at once, it became a problem and was most likely only saved by JP Morgan. Considering such a nice monopolist might not always be around, the Federal Reserve was created.
Like it or not, human irrationality and greed sometimes gets the better of us. If we let the banks fail, yes it will correct itself eventually, but you just ruined the savings of a lot of people.
What are you going to tell them? Do more research before investing in banks that weren't transparent with their numbers anyways?
No. Those people tend to vote for parties who will regulate so the problem resolved itself.
the energy to form a hurricane comes from somewhere, if we're adding more to kill a hurricane, where is this new net total going to express itself?
Build more windmills.
Yeah, because maybe his family shouldn't get a windfall from the surge in book sales his titles are about to recieve.
No, they shouldn't because the intent of copyright was never intended for a revenue stream for surviving family members.
If they feel so inclined they can write their own works or invest in an insurance policy like the rest of us.
Oh and considering my estate will be taxed upon my death, if you really want copyrights to be treated as property that can be inherited then a tax needs to be levied upon it just like any other property.
That said, if the author has created an agreement with his publisher that entails what happens to the earnings from the books sold after his death, then he is free to create one and his family can pursue that with the publisher if they signed a contract.
Otherwise, an author should get no special privileges when it comes to death and in all reality the copyright laws were intended to release the works into public domain long before their death.
If you don't like it, they should have picked another line of work. Heck, even Bill Gates says he isn't going to give all his money to his children. They should have to work like the rest of us.
Or nuclear. It's proven, it's working today, and there's phenomenal amounts of energy.
I think the best argument against nuclear is that you still have to pay a central organization to produce the power and provide the infrastructure to get it to you.
Whereas with solar or wind, an individual, private business, or a local municipal government has the potentials to create their own power, thereby becoming independent of the rest of the system.
Unless the Federal government would be OK with me having a nuclear reactor in my back yard.
Oh, and Kurzweil suggests we'll all be in robot bodies before the century's end, so those great hard science fiction writers of half a century ago fall even further behind.
I think that most people don't realize that most machines in 100 years will be indistinguishable from organic systems.
And vice versa.
Of course you could make a machine to look like a machine, but it is highly likely machines will be designed like living organisms simply because it is more efficient that way.
Of course, the other reason that the monk analogy does not fit that seems to be oft overlooked is that the monks did not make record profits as printing became increasingly common.
Um.... Monasteries were some of the richest organizations in Europe by the 1500's.
And it wasn't just from selling indulgences or donations from the wealthy nobility. They were usually large landholders which had whole swathes of peasant tenants and manufacturing businesses.
One of these were transcribing of books which were some of the most highly prized objects during the time. A library of 100 books was something that a king could boast of.
Anyways... The printing press did end this lucrative business but in all reality most of the monks went unemployed when the protestant rulers wanted more money for their coffers and confiscated their lands and money.
Most notably King Henry the VIII of England.
The GOP just needs to embrace that aspect of the party more.
Or boot out the people who want to include religion in government.
What bothers me is that those groups within the GOP think that including religion in the state must be the best way to go without realizing that the founding fathers of the United States fought so viciously against it because they knew damn well what happens when you mix the two.
Basically... The reason many of the early settlers of the North America were moving from Europe was the fact the most countries in Europe included the Church and faith within the state and often forced people to change their own beliefs to conform (You know... Puritan, Quakers, Waldensian etc).
Even though they were all Christian, mixing stat policy and religious dogma usually meant forcing people to change their views on how they interpreted Christianity which usually led to war.
The idea that that state can tell you what to believe and behave based on religion is just as dangerous to religious people as it is to atheists.
And how would you feel if the state told you that you had to pay taxes to them in order to go to heaven? Sounds ridiculous but back in the day when the King of England was the head of the Church... Failure to support the king was also failure to support the church.
Again, these are the artists you pirates have, for years, claimed to be fighting for (don't ask me how pirating their work accomplishes that).
I used run a small record label, but I didn't make enough to live off it by itself. That said, I don't believe the government should pay me money simply because I run a business that wasn't making money.
What you are saying is that all artists must be required by law to have other people's money to live where everyone else just has to make do with their regular 9 to 5?
I mean it sounds great for the artist, but I don't think the law should be written specifically that they get government handouts.
If that is true what about all the pimps being deprived of a living because people have sex for free?
The problem is that government is being leveraged in order to make money where otherwise there would be none. And trust me... Its not the small time artists getting any benefit from it.
And on the grand scheme of things, our priorities should be science, engineering, and medicine rather than entertainment.
Maybe we need more of that than more art in the world.
The bigger logical problem with his statement is that it is subjective.
Well that is the deal. It maybe subjective but it doesn't mean its true for the majority of humans in how they hold an opinion about life and death of other humans.
They may feel an emotional loss, but due to the fact they have no prior memories or experiences with the child then have no long term association attachment to that being.
Whereas a child experiencing a death of parent might be extremely traumatized (even at old age) simply because they have had a lifetime memories and experiences to back that up.
I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong, but on average a human will respond more to the loss of someone they've shared experiences on a long term basis than someone they have not even if it is their own child.
Well... I think the key part is keeping the brain alive which they already do during Cardiopulmonary bypass
Lungs and heart can be replaced (not easily since that requires a donar), but if the brain dies, thats it.
I remember seeing an old Soviet film where they did this to a dog and had an oxygen machine keeping the dogs head filled with oxygenated blood.
Hell with high speed. 99.9978% of americans dont need to go from NY to LA via high speed rail.
But if they had the ability to travel cheap, don't you think they'd do it more?
Long trips are better served, at least for now, by airlines.
I don't know about you, but as a person who flies a lot, I hate it no matter where I go and how long it takes. The security checks, the price of the price of the tickets (and the fact it changes seasonally), the airline customer service, delays, and the fact they over book all the flights... Anyways...
My point is that traveling by air sucks, but the only alternative is by Greyhound which is even worse in quality.
If bullet trains could get me from NYC to Atlanta in 4 hours I would be happy even though it takes 2 1/2 (usually 3+ because of all the damn taxing they do these days) by air now. I don't need super fast, but I need something faster than greyhound.
How is installing software on someones computer with court authorization to monitor their behavior any different from using the warrant to obtain a wiretap or using it to search their home and possessions?
I think the problem is that they posted the monitoring tool to a website where anyone could come across and get infected and get monitored.
In those instances, there was no prior suspicions that is needed for a warrant. You cannot randomly search 100 people's houses hoping to find a criminal the same way you can't put software out there to find out whether or not these people are the criminal.
In fact... TFA says the FBI agent was disappointed when the person they hope to infect was not infected so I'm assuming others were who were not the target of the warrant.
Sure, the OS and apps may be protected, but that isn't really what the end user cares about (since that's all easily replaced).
1. This is why you make backups.
2. A virus that is able to root the OS is harder to detect and harder to remove.
I don't know about you, but I find it less time consuming to wipe the user directory and restore the users's data from backup, then I do having to either play "find that rouge process in the registry" or formatting the entire box and then restoring the user directory.
You have a point, but most malware doesn't need to run as root to do its job, so really getting access at all is "game over". Protecting root doesn't mean much when root isn't the target . . .
No its not game over because if you don't have access to root, then it makes the malware easier to detect and remove.
Unless you like playing "Find that random registry key" when you are trying to purge WinXP of AV360.
And AV360 is nasty because it actually prevents you from running malware removal software from running and that is because it has root access.
(Yeah you can end process av360.exe but I suspect the author is going to change it something else at random)
Yep. And then they can die in a muddy gutter like Edgar Allan Poe did.
To be fair, he was a drunk and drug addict because of his wife's death
If he kept his job as that clerk he would have been fine.
Take it to the extreme: if everyone in the world got hold of movies, music or software for free, why would artists and developers continue producing original works if they're receiving no reward for it?
On a side note and a purely hypothetical question...
Wouldn't it benefit society more if we reward people for science, medicine, and engineering rather than entertainment?
Why aren't we rewarding people more for curing cancer or building better ways to power our homes. I mean we do... But why should Britney Spears be paid millions when a scientists researching a cure for AIDs would not be rewarded as much?
Then again, maybe its a good thing we have shorter terms on patents for medicines. Otherwise they'd hoard the cure for centuries.
By that reasoning, you should have the right to borrow my car to drive to the store, but that darn "law" is stopping your from exercising the right. The logical flaw is that you do *not* have a right to use somebody else's property, whether it's a car or a book or money.
Ideas and information are not property per se. At least historically...
So far no one is taxed for owning "intellectual property" unlike that car (or your house).
I'm fine with the idea that information and ideas can be property, but if that is true then the government should tax those based on the value of the property just like any other property, no?
And I think the fairest way to tax the property is to ask the copyright owner how much they think it is. If they say it is worth $0 then they won't be taxed. If they say $10,000,000 then they will be taxes for that much.
If they need to sue someone for $10,000,000 then they would have needed to pay the tax on that declared value before hand.
Fair enough?
I remember the first time I saw one of my apps made available on a pirate site. It was a horrible feeling. I wanted to find and beat the crap out of the guy who made it available.
I feel for you but realistically, the people who download software illegally weren't going to pay for it anyways.
As as business advice, in order to compete with piracy you have to offer something more than just software. Either that could be support or a software community of people who are willing to pay for your software.
This also has the nice benefit of creating a better product than your competitors. If you reach out and create a community around your product or offer something that neither the pirates or your competitors can't then you are almost guaranteed success.
It is how Paradox Interactive thrives despite the fact it has hardly any DRM in its products. The developers reach out in the forums and talk with the players of their games for feed back. They also give rewards for registering your product such as beta patches and form titles and icons that only paying customers can have.
They aren't EA but they are very well to do when it comes to software sales.
Where do we have a right to copy others' work?
There isn't anything that says you have a right to drink either. It is just that a large portion of the population thinks its acceptable
So the choice is to either make a large part of the population criminals and put a lot of money into the pockets of organized crime or legalize it and regulate it.
I'm afraid you don't have any other choices but the two.
But that other 1% of the time, I'm using it from home, because I've gotten called up to fix some urgent client problem.
I hate to say this, but wouldn't it make much more sense to connect directly to the servers in question using SSH or a thin client solution like Terminal Server? Unless there aren't public, which I suppose they technically are if you can connect from home either way.
I say this because the servers have to up no matter what, and if you simply using your work desktop to connect to them, then why not just skip the desktop and connect directly to the server?
Unless your company has a policy against using non-work machines to connect to the servers... Which technically you are anyways by proxy...