Actually, Enron is still in business, despite being bankrupt, and still using quite a few of its computers, thank you very much. They weren't all auctioned at dovebid. In fact, Enron at its height had somewhere around 48,000 computers, despite the fact that it only had around 30,000 employees.
I would agree with your interpretation, but courts can disagree quite wildly. For example, in the United States the Sedition Act of 1798 outlawed "writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States...." This was never held to be unconstitutional.
Similarly the U.S. Sedition Act of 1918 made it against the law to "willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States...." This was the law of the land into the 1950's and was used to terrible effect by J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous director of the FBI.
We tend to think that because something is enshrined in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that it is inviolate, but history proves that a piece of paper does not ensure your rights. You have to constantly fight for them. An especially important thing to remember under current conditions.
Actually, drinking from a cow wasn't that much of a reach. It was probably something along the lines of "Hmmm, I wonder why that baby cow is so excited about sucking on those." I believe it was George Carlin who pointed out the real leap of faith: Who was the first guy who, while walking along a beach, spots a lobster and says, "I think I'm going to eat that thing."
The discoverers of Earth's second moon, 3753 Cruithne, announced the discovery of "moons" three and four - 1998 UP1 and 2000 PH5 - almost exactly a year ago, September 18, 2001. See http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.html for more details.
Or, as John Stuart from the Daily Show once quipped as the Hulk talking to Spider-man, "Remember, Hollywood is run by Jews. So when you get there it's Spiderman, Irving Spiderman."
Not only that, but VNC is that dreaded, evil, viral, open-source type software. Under the GPL no less (http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/gpl.html for the link leary).
Lest you think I'm sticking up for corporations, let me assure you that I am not. Citizens can be tried for crimes. Corporations cannot. That last point is crucial. Microsoft is not being tried for any felony.
Not true. Arthur Andersen, the company, has just been indicted for obstruction of justice, a criminal offence.
I'm not sure if it is the same for anti-trust law, but in other criminal proceedings courts usually allow much more latitude in the scope of testimony during the penalty phase of the trial than they do during the verdict phase. It goes toward showing a pattern of behavior, and the judge can and frequently does use it to determine the severity or lightness of the penalty imposed.
Of course El Al has something like 20 planes and Isreal is about the size of Rhode Island. Some things, like the airport and airline security measures used in Isreal do not scale well. There are more flights out of Chicago's O'Hare airport in an day than there are in a week out of all of Isreal's airports.
What Dr. Kundt describes, the Tunguska event being the result of an explosion of naturally outflowing natural gas accumulating in ancient volcanic craters, was reproduced on a much smaller scale, and by accident, on April 7, 1992 near Welcome, Texas (about 90 miles northwest of Houston).
An underground "salt dome" in the area was being used to store natural gas, a fairly common practice in the Gulf Coast area. The dome was reportedly overfilled beyond its approved capacity. Highly volitile liquids began to seep from the underground storage facility, causing a heavier-than-air cloud of highly combustable gas to form in the valley over the salt dome. An unknown ignition source caused the accumulated gas to explode killing three people in the area and blowing out windows in churches and houses ten miles away. The explosion registered at 4+ on the Richter scale and the concussion was felt as far away as Houston.
I drove through the area not long after the explosion and the effect was startlingly like Tunguska. The trees were all flattened in the immediate area; the tops of trees that were partly protected by hills had been shorn off; and yet there was no crater to be seen. One of the strangest sights I've ever seen.
Areas that are not covered by the US Constitution are construed to be left to the states to decide. However, the US Constitution does specifically grant to Congress the power to regulate copyrights and interstate commerce. Unless Microsoft, or whoever else, is granting the software licenses through their Virginia or Maryland subsidiaries, their licensing falls under the conduct of interstate commerce.
The way this has been proposed in the past, the government would hold in "escrow" the key parts for unlocking the "backdoor". The key itself would actually be in two or more parts and each part would be kept by a separate agency (one at the Justice Department, one at the Bureau of Land Management, one at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, one at the Centers for Disease Control, etc.). To operate the backdoor would require each of the seperate agencies to provide their key part.
As to differentiating crypto from random binary data, this is very hard with good crypto, but not necessarily impossible. The frequencies of bit patterns will, at least with weak crypto, differ significantly from statistical expectations of random data. Sometimes these deviations can even be used to determine the method of crypto employed. With some crypto, I've heard of it being detectable sometimes because it is too random.
It will of course be trivial to identify crypto in those messages that have sections like: "My PGP public key is...". Or "begin encrypted data".
Those are also the same people who's personal lives should be as transparant as glass. Nothing to point them out as anyone beyond the ordinary, but people with no way to hide a possible treason from their employers.
Problem is I'm their employer, and so are you if you are an American citizen. How does the government keep secrets when they are transparent to their employers, the citizens of the country?
I don't really need to worry about it unless I've DONE SOMETHING WRONG.
You mean like reading and posting to/. Or why are you posting as an AC? I mean sure, posting to/. is not wrong now, but when RMS is elected President, you can be sure that he will be using the powers granted to the president during the War on Terrorism to track you down as the foe of "Free Software" and the American way that you are.
How do you "opt out" of biometrics? Once they have your fingerprint/retina scan/facial landmarks/DNA/rectal topographic profile how do you keep them from continuing to use it to identify you and tracking every g*ddamn thing you do.
And for those who are about to respond, "If I'm not doing anything wrong then what do I have to worry about?" Grow Up! Does the name McCarthy mean anything to you? The Communists were not our enemies. They were people exercizing their Constitutional rights of freedom of expression, freedom of association and the ability to question the policies of the government that they, at least in theory, elected. Didn't keep 'em from being hunted and fired from their jobs, black-listed so they couldn't find any other job, and generally ostracized from their communities.
Think it couldn't happen to you? It has happened over and over again in just the short 225 year history of the United States. Ever heard of the internment camps that Americans of Japanese decent were put into during World War II? Ever heard of civil rights workers in Mississippi that were trying to get Americans of African decent the right to vote? These people were not doing anything "wrong" either.
Unless there are 85000 $100 bills attached to it, I don't think that this will impress an administration that is currently running a 87% approval rating.
I truley believe that if all of society is transparent, that no one will be able to abuse the systems.
And I believe that if we were all just nice to each other, the world would be a wonderful place to live.... It just ain't gonna happen.
The folks in the government who want to be able to freely and constantly be able to monitor you are the same ones who have "black" budgets and classify documents for "national security" reasons.
the idea that a person is not the sole owner of, and controlling authority regarding the product of their work is as socialist as can be. 'public interest' superceding individual rights when it comes to one's labor is common practice in places like Turkey and China - NOT the U.S. From the preamble to the US Constitution:
We the people, in Order to...
promote the general Welfare
... do ordain and establish this Constitution....
Note that nowhere in the Constitution does the word individual even appear.
But, you do bring up an interesting point. Let us posit for a moment that you are correct that individuals should be the sole owner and controlling authority over the product of their work. This points out exactly the problem with intellectual "property". If I buy a copy machine and make fifty copies of Stephen King's
The Green Mile
those copies are the product of my work (the work of making the copies), not his. Sure the contents of those copies are based on work that he did, but everybody's intellectual work is based on the work of others. Would Thomas Edison have been able to create a patentable lightbulb if Benjamin Franklin and others had not done the work to understand electricity? The only work product Stephen King produced was that original draft copy he made (and even that was ultimately the work of many, including editors and proofreaders).
That is why I (and others) put property in quotes when discussing "intellectual" property. It is only property in as far as it is defined as such by law; a law which was intended to "promote the general welfare."
This acticle brings up an interesting thought. What if rather than having copyright we just went straight to compulsory licensing. We set up a government, or pseudo-government agency (like Fannie Mae) to negotiate with producers of things that are currently copyrighted on fair compensation for their sharing of their creations with society. If no agreement can be reached through negotiation, then arbitration is used to reach a settlement. Once the creator of the work is compensated, the work goes immediately into the public domain.
This would still serve the purpose of copyrights as stated in the Constitution of promoting progress in the arts and sciences by compensating creative people. Of course the plan is not without problems. You would definately have some folks who would say, "Well I don't want my tax dollars going to fund satanist trash like Hootie and the Blowfish". Of course there are now people who say they don't want their tax dollars funding corporate wellfare, tobacco farmers, deploying armed forces in foreign countries that you didn't even know existed until the troops were deployed, sports stadiums, medical research, (insert your favorite cause here). All of those things currently get paid for with public dollars though.
The only real argument is does enough of the general public believe that this serves the greater good. I think a strong argument can be made for this model.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but they are requiring Passport for you to access their subscriber service. This means that they already have your name, address, credit card number, e-mail address, and probably at least a work phone number for you anyway. And since they can no doubt also get to your credit history, based on the above information, they probably know a lot more than that about you - like your marital status, your date of birth, your Social Security number, how much you owe on your credit cards, who you bank with, etc. What exactly is it that you are afraid of giving away by signing up for Passport after this?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Enron is still in business, despite being bankrupt, and still using quite a few of its computers, thank you very much. They weren't all auctioned at dovebid. In fact, Enron at its height had somewhere around 48,000 computers, despite the fact that it only had around 30,000 employees.
I would agree with your interpretation, but courts can disagree quite wildly. For example, in the United States the Sedition Act of 1798 outlawed "writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States...." This was never held to be unconstitutional.
Similarly the U.S. Sedition Act of 1918 made it against the law to "willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States...." This was the law of the land into the 1950's and was used to terrible effect by J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous director of the FBI.
We tend to think that because something is enshrined in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that it is inviolate, but history proves that a piece of paper does not ensure your rights. You have to constantly fight for them. An especially important thing to remember under current conditions.
From an August 27, 1999 report by CNN reporter Bruce Morton (http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/08/27 /president.2000/evolution.create/):
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP front-runner, believes both evolution and creationism are valid educational subjects.
"He believes it is a question for states and local school boards to decide but believes both ought to be taught," a spokeswoman said.
Actually, drinking from a cow wasn't that much of a reach. It was probably something along the lines of "Hmmm, I wonder why that baby cow is so excited about sucking on those." I believe it was George Carlin who pointed out the real leap of faith: Who was the first guy who, while walking along a beach, spots a lobster and says, "I think I'm going to eat that thing."
The discoverers of Earth's second moon, 3753 Cruithne, announced the discovery of "moons" three and four - 1998 UP1 and 2000 PH5 - almost exactly a year ago, September 18, 2001. See http: //www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.html for more details.
Or, as John Stuart from the Daily Show once quipped as the Hulk talking to Spider-man, "Remember, Hollywood is run by Jews. So when you get there it's Spiderman, Irving Spiderman."
5900 (VNC!!!: no Terminal Services eh Microsoft?)
Not only that, but VNC is that dreaded, evil, viral, open-source type software. Under the GPL no less (http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/gpl.html for the link leary).
Lest you think I'm sticking up for corporations, let me assure you that I am not. Citizens can be tried for crimes. Corporations cannot. That last point is crucial. Microsoft is not being tried for any felony.
Not true. Arthur Andersen, the company, has just been indicted for obstruction of justice, a criminal offence.
Damn those pesky business men and the concept of time equalling money. Damn them all.
This actually explains PHBs:
time = money
knowledge = power
work = power * time
work = knowledge * money
The less you know, the more money you get for the same amount of work.
I'm not sure if it is the same for anti-trust law, but in other criminal proceedings courts usually allow much more latitude in the scope of testimony during the penalty phase of the trial than they do during the verdict phase. It goes toward showing a pattern of behavior, and the judge can and frequently does use it to determine the severity or lightness of the penalty imposed.
At least two of the 9/11 hijackers had "legitimate" (i.e., not forged) Virginia drivers licenses.
Of course El Al has something like 20 planes and Isreal is about the size of Rhode Island. Some things, like the airport and airline security measures used in Isreal do not scale well. There are more flights out of Chicago's O'Hare airport in an day than there are in a week out of all of Isreal's airports.
The AES is now an approved encryption algorithm that can be used by U.S. government organizations to protect sensitive,
Emphasis mine. So what is approved for sensitive classified information? Anybody know?
What Dr. Kundt describes, the Tunguska event being the result of an explosion of naturally outflowing natural gas accumulating in ancient volcanic craters, was reproduced on a much smaller scale, and by accident, on April 7, 1992 near Welcome, Texas (about 90 miles northwest of Houston).
An underground "salt dome" in the area was being used to store natural gas, a fairly common practice in the Gulf Coast area. The dome was reportedly overfilled beyond its approved capacity. Highly volitile liquids began to seep from the underground storage facility, causing a heavier-than-air cloud of highly combustable gas to form in the valley over the salt dome. An unknown ignition source caused the accumulated gas to explode killing three people in the area and blowing out windows in churches and houses ten miles away. The explosion registered at 4+ on the Richter scale and the concussion was felt as far away as Houston.
I drove through the area not long after the explosion and the effect was startlingly like Tunguska. The trees were all flattened in the immediate area; the tops of trees that were partly protected by hills had been shorn off; and yet there was no crater to be seen. One of the strangest sights I've ever seen.
What? You don't think she should be able to listen to CD-R recordings of her own songs? I'm sure that's what she's listening to.
By the way these are paparazzi pics from Britney's trip to Australia. These are on Bondi beach, not some So-Cal beach.
Areas that are not covered by the US Constitution are construed to be left to the states to decide. However, the US Constitution does specifically grant to Congress the power to regulate copyrights and interstate commerce. Unless Microsoft, or whoever else, is granting the software licenses through their Virginia or Maryland subsidiaries, their licensing falls under the conduct of interstate commerce.
The way this has been proposed in the past, the government would hold in "escrow" the key parts for unlocking the "backdoor". The key itself would actually be in two or more parts and each part would be kept by a separate agency (one at the Justice Department, one at the Bureau of Land Management, one at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, one at the Centers for Disease Control, etc.). To operate the backdoor would require each of the seperate agencies to provide their key part.
As to differentiating crypto from random binary data, this is very hard with good crypto, but not necessarily impossible. The frequencies of bit patterns will, at least with weak crypto, differ significantly from statistical expectations of random data. Sometimes these deviations can even be used to determine the method of crypto employed. With some crypto, I've heard of it being detectable sometimes because it is too random.
It will of course be trivial to identify crypto in those messages that have sections like: "My PGP public key is...". Or "begin encrypted data".
Those are also the same people who's personal lives should be as transparant as glass. Nothing to point them out as anyone beyond the ordinary, but people with no way to hide a possible treason from their employers.
Problem is I'm their employer, and so are you if you are an American citizen. How does the government keep secrets when they are transparent to their employers, the citizens of the country?
I don't really need to worry about it unless I've DONE SOMETHING WRONG.
/. Or why are you posting as an AC? I mean sure, posting to /. is not wrong now, but when RMS is elected President, you can be sure that he will be using the powers granted to the president during the War on Terrorism to track you down as the foe of "Free Software" and the American way that you are.
You mean like reading and posting to
How do you "opt out" of biometrics? Once they have your fingerprint/retina scan/facial landmarks/DNA/rectal topographic profile how do you keep them from continuing to use it to identify you and tracking every g*ddamn thing you do.
And for those who are about to respond, "If I'm not doing anything wrong then what do I have to worry about?" Grow Up! Does the name McCarthy mean anything to you? The Communists were not our enemies. They were people exercizing their Constitutional rights of freedom of expression, freedom of association and the ability to question the policies of the government that they, at least in theory, elected. Didn't keep 'em from being hunted and fired from their jobs, black-listed so they couldn't find any other job, and generally ostracized from their communities.
Think it couldn't happen to you? It has happened over and over again in just the short 225 year history of the United States. Ever heard of the internment camps that Americans of Japanese decent were put into during World War II? Ever heard of civil rights workers in Mississippi that were trying to get Americans of African decent the right to vote? These people were not doing anything "wrong" either.
Unless there are 85000 $100 bills attached to it, I don't think that this will impress an administration that is currently running a 87% approval rating.
I truley believe that if all of society is transparent, that no one will be able to abuse the systems.
And I believe that if we were all just nice to each other, the world would be a wonderful place to live.... It just ain't gonna happen.
The folks in the government who want to be able to freely and constantly be able to monitor you are the same ones who have "black" budgets and classify documents for "national security" reasons.
From the preamble to the US Constitution:
We the people, in Order to
Note that nowhere in the Constitution does the word individual even appear.
But, you do bring up an interesting point. Let us posit for a moment that you are correct that individuals should be the sole owner and controlling authority over the product of their work. This points out exactly the problem with intellectual "property". If I buy a copy machine and make fifty copies of Stephen King's
- The Green Mile
those copies are the product of my work (the work of making the copies), not his. Sure the contents of those copies are based on work that he did, but everybody's intellectual work is based on the work of others. Would Thomas Edison have been able to create a patentable lightbulb if Benjamin Franklin and others had not done the work to understand electricity? The only work product Stephen King produced was that original draft copy he made (and even that was ultimately the work of many, including editors and proofreaders).That is why I (and others) put property in quotes when discussing "intellectual" property. It is only property in as far as it is defined as such by law; a law which was intended to "promote the general welfare."
This acticle brings up an interesting thought. What if rather than having copyright we just went straight to compulsory licensing. We set up a government, or pseudo-government agency (like Fannie Mae) to negotiate with producers of things that are currently copyrighted on fair compensation for their sharing of their creations with society. If no agreement can be reached through negotiation, then arbitration is used to reach a settlement. Once the creator of the work is compensated, the work goes immediately into the public domain.
This would still serve the purpose of copyrights as stated in the Constitution of promoting progress in the arts and sciences by compensating creative people. Of course the plan is not without problems. You would definately have some folks who would say, "Well I don't want my tax dollars going to fund satanist trash like Hootie and the Blowfish". Of course there are now people who say they don't want their tax dollars funding corporate wellfare, tobacco farmers, deploying armed forces in foreign countries that you didn't even know existed until the troops were deployed, sports stadiums, medical research, (insert your favorite cause here). All of those things currently get paid for with public dollars though.
The only real argument is does enough of the general public believe that this serves the greater good. I think a strong argument can be made for this model.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but they are requiring Passport for you to access their subscriber service. This means that they already have your name, address, credit card number, e-mail address, and probably at least a work phone number for you anyway. And since they can no doubt also get to your credit history, based on the above information, they probably know a lot more than that about you - like your marital status, your date of birth, your Social Security number, how much you owe on your credit cards, who you bank with, etc. What exactly is it that you are afraid of giving away by signing up for Passport after this?