Two problems with that idea. The first is the people that could infiltrate are generally well indoctinated against "the Great Satan" already so the pool of potential infiltrators is rather small.
Secondly, in a country that dispises their intelligence services, why would the government (or the people) put up with potentially innocent groups being infiltrated? After all, until they actually do something they are completely innocent. So what "right" do the intelligence services have to interfere with them?
That is the argument that we are going to be hearing moer and more I think. We are going to have a manager-type in charge of the CIA without any real policy or position - so he will do what he is told. And the President seemed to think a while ago that negotiation was the way to deal with fanatics. No, I don't see any interest in infiltration anytime soon.
We probably need to think very clearly about what there is that can be done and what cannot be done. Right now, I'd say the balance comes down squarely on the side of what cannot be done with very little that we can do or will be allowed to do.
Absolutely the only "fair" copyright is one that gives me the right to copy any damn thing I please and do whatever I want with it. Including sharing it with the rest of the planet.
Of course, the side effect to this is Sony and WalMart will be the only entites that make any money from recorded music. All off the wages of people without high-speed Internet access or those too ignorant or guilt-ridden to download their music for free.
Why will those companies specifically get money while nobody else does? Simple. Without copyright they can publish collections and albums from the past without paying anyone for that privilege. Plenty of people (see above) will pay for CDs with such material on them, at least for a while.
Yes, this revenue source has to dry up - when the last person on Earth gets broadband or the last guilt-ridden over-30 person finally dies then there will be no more revenue from old recorded music.
A lot of this is B-school and management training simply observing general employment trends. It is very difficult to differentiate between groups of employees, especially nominally professional jobs (like IT people) and folks on the loading dock.
In the last 40-50 years the folks on the loading dock have seen a loss of unions, guaranteed pensions, guaranteed employment for life, and virtually nothing in return. Trying to explain to people that companies are no longer in a position to offer "employment for life" or pensions falls on deaf ears. People want assurances. They will do anything to get them, including voting in whomever promises to get this stuff back for them.
Obviously, the folks on the loading dock are very disgruntled. It is difficult from a management perspective not to think the more "professional" people aren't going to be sharing in being disgruntled also, and for the same exact reasons.
Hence, it is difficult to trust anyone - because at least large numbers of them are actively against management and the company. And they are going to do anything they think will get them some piece of what they think they have lost.
Will unions fix the problem? Sure. It will make sure that no company ever gets formed unless it can guarantee lifetime employment to everyone it hires. That is how it is in Europe for the most part and it is where we are headed in the US.
Seriously, we need to choose. Treat Earth as a closed system which must be operated in a sustainable manner or as an open system where population can move off-planet and resources can be brought in from off-planet. Failure to choose dooms us to the first option.
If Earth is to be a closed system, then the maximum population is somewhere around 200 million people. Period. Get used to it. The last time we had a sustainable use of the environment was maybe 1850 - everything after that had wastes piling up faster than nature could recycle them. What was the population in 1850? Maybe you can at 25% more for increased use of technology but that is about it.
Decreasing the population from 6 billion to 200 million is a mighty big task, one that just gets more and more formidable every day. If we want to choose the closed system approach, someone is going to have to step forward and start making it clear that it is the duty of 90% of the population to die and die quietly. This makes Stalin and Hitler look like pikers by comparison.
Are you ready to implement a plan like this? It can be done at a grass-roots level, you see. Get a rifle and start decreasing the population in your local area today. You know, think global, act local.
The alternative is the stars, but I am deeply concerned that our vision has faded.
If anything both TMI and Chernobyl are advertisements for the incredible safety record of nuclear power.
Easily more people have been killed mining coal (or even shipping coal) than the total number ever affected by any of the nuclear generating facilities. 46 people died directly because of Chernobyl - and they were all on the roof of the building putting out the fire. Yes, a bunch of people have come down with a incredibly easily treated form of cancer which is linked to Chernobyl's accident. But you have to consider that Chernobyl was a very old design operated by idiots who intentionally started the process that led to the fire.
There was an accident in Japan as well that as far as I know had no direct deaths and no illinesses that could be traced to it.
Based on the potential for disaster that we have been hearing about from scare-mongers since Einstein, I would say that the precautions have been incredibly effective. It was assumed by many in the 1970s that nuclear power would kill millions. Not only has that not happened, but it shows no sign of ever happening. Especially considering Chernobyl.
I'll bet you do not have the right to photograph an arrest.
If you do, then this is a huge problem for the person getting arrested. Once such pictures are published it is almost impossible to find an impartial jury. Everyone knows the person must be guilty of something, or else their picture wouldn't have been published.
I certainly wouldn't want such photos to be taken, published, distributed, etc.
The problem with photographing police or other such officals in the course of their duty is quite simple. It leads to the "guilty until proven innocent" problem. You photograph someone being arrested and it appears in the newspaper or TV news. OK, now everyone knows this guy must be guilty of something. Today it is even worse, because it will show up on the Internet and is therefore permanent.
Now I suppose photographing a police officer without any possibility of including a suspect in the photo shouldn't be a problem. But nobody ever wants that. Those photos are interesting or valuable.
As someone that grew up with computers, I can understand Stallman's vision. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it. He would like to think there are 1.5 kinds of people in the world: those that write code and those that haven't gotten around to writing code. His sense of "freedom" is important to both parts of that, assuming that is all there is to humanity.
I think it is much closer to say there are three groups: those that write code, those that should not be writing code but are trying and those that will never, ever write code. Call the last group "users". What RMS misses completely is the last group is probably the most important. They are utterly at the mercy of the first two groups, and they are continually being disappointed by the second.
The ability to design computer software is an art and it is not one that is easily taught to people that just don't get it. Writing clear, functional, concise code that implements a design is much easier to teach but in the world of open source and free software these two roles are usually combined. And, from looking at a lot of code in the open source world, much of it is from the folks that aren't doing a good job of design and probably shouldn't be writing code either.
The future is not one where everyone is a programmer. The world is bigger than that. There are a lot of people that have no desire to ever be anything more than a user and for them being handed a piece of software that is intuitively easy to use, relatively bug-free and gets the job done for them is what they want. From both proprietary and open source software development users are continually handed non-intuitive, buggy software that accomplishes something less than 100% of the job. And, collectively speaking, our users deserve better than that.
Probably the biggest problem I see with open source is the lack of critical review. Without this someone that turns out garbage code will continue to do so forever. Unless they stumble upon their own code and have to maintain it for years. Even then, it takes a stern taskmaster to reinforce the idea that if it isn't maintainable, it wasn't worth writing in the first place. And that if all the users can't use it how they want to, it isn't doing the job either. Yes, I do mean all the users and all of what they want it to do.
Where is the professional society that builds up talented but rudderless newcomers? Where does someone that wants to be turning out a "professional" quality product go for help? Universities? No, I don't think so. Most commercial establishments are just as driven to produce something "good enough" that they just have a hope of maintainability and usability. Sometimes they get lucky, but most of the time they do not. And we wonder why software development gets a bad reputation?
RMS would like us to each be able to fix the bugs we find and extend usability to take something that does 50% of the job we need done and fix it so it does 100% for us. Nice idea, but it comes from a flawed premise - a sort of universality of programming ability. The reality is major talent will be always rare and it is up to these folks to help out and guide those with ability but undeveloped talent. And then there are the users. These will always be in the majority and they cannot help but rely on the people with ability and talent to do what they cannot do. I do not think the mantle of this responsibility can so easily be passed off on the users.
A brute force attack upon a server which gives you the ability to receive email through it or place files on it does not mean you have legal "control" over the domain.
OK, it tends to indicate it but it is not any real assurance.
Sorry, but any understanding of Islam will clue you in. These folks are Muslim first and formost and AMERICAN dead last in priority.
I don't much like the label "African American" because most Americans with dark skin have about as much to do with Africa as I do with Ireland. Some distant relative came to the US from there a long, long time ago.
This is not the case with people of the Islamic faith. We can either understand it or try to ignore it. Ignoring it is at our peril.
Muslim is not a "race". It is not something you are born with. It is a religion. It is a religion that is incredibly hostile to people not of that faith.
Sure, there are probably lots of fine people that are Muslim. However, there are a large number that either refuse to acknowledge the radicals go too far or silently agree with the radicals. We have no idea which, but there is way too little condemnation of the radicals.
Accepting the acts of the Islamic radicals generates lots of hostility towards Muslims in general. I don't care if they don't agree - standing around and looking like they agree makes all Muslims look bad.
Absolutely. Nearly every movie released in the last few years has been so good that I run out and buy a DVD after downloading and watching it. I worry about the lifespan of burned media and so I want to make sure I have a really permanent copy to preserve for all time. You know, these movies are so important and meaningful that I know my great-grandchildren will be watching them over and over.
Requiring some sort of private investigator's license to perform any sort of "investigation" of computers is a really, really bad idea. This has been implemented in a few states and I don't think it is having the desired outcome.
Read Bando v. Gates - it is all over the Internet. It is a very interesting read about someone completely unqualified performing an digital forensic investigation. This is what the "licensing" is supposed to prevent. It also virtually eliminates the possibility of someone being able to perform investigations in multiple states because of the absurd licensing requirements. You see, this is done on a state-by-state basis. Texas may require firearms traning for all licensed investigators while some other state does not. This doesn't help the quality of digital investigations. It only hurts.
I would consider the possibility of someone actually being prosecuted for an unlicensed investigation when they never set foot in the state to be very low. Having their expert witness status rejected is another matter but not one to be taken lightly. If expert witnesses must be licensed, then do not expect to be allowed to testify about your own computer in a licensing-required state.
What this sort of licensing is supposed to do is increase accountability of computer forensic examiners. What it in fact does is restrict the pool of such examiners to a very small group and says nothing about the quality or abilities of those people. Other than their ability to put up with completely unrelated requirements, such as firearms training for a computer investigator. The result of this is certainly going to be that you are not qualified to provide any information about your own computer in any sort of legal matter without such a license. Sure, the license may only be required to perform an investigation when it is a paid service, but that says nothing about expert witness qualification.
What you aren't seeing is that the issue is a very sensitive contextual one.
First off, do you want the site to be swarmed by 12-year-old boys that find the pictures titilating? OK, throw that out - who cares, right?
Now you have someone that claims their picture just shows breastfeeding when clearly that is not the intent of the picture. How sensitive contextually should the policy be? And who is the final judge in this?
The problem for a large public site is not that they have to be overly repressive. It is that they must have a clearly defined and easily implemented policy. Failure to do so means everybody loses because it is impossible to say what is allowed and what is not. At that point censorship is either non-existant or is arbitrary. I assure you that without some control Facebook would become a cesspool. So the control has to be something that everyone understands and can be implemented without a great deal of context.
So how does the two adults showing "breastfeeding" get handled? How about the completely nude woman with a baby on one breast? There are a million examples like this of "pushing the envelope" that someone somewhere has to deal with. Quickly and without a lot of contextual judgement.
1. it is the same part of the body involved in both feeding a child and in spring break flashing. Lots of people have difficulty in separating two things when the only differece is context.
2. Would you consider breastfeeding a 25-year-old man the same as an infant? Context again, huh?
Let's say there is an exception made for breastfeeding. How context-sensitive do people need to be about this and how exactly does one deal with claims that a given picture should be permissible based on the contextual view of the poster which may or may not be shared by anyone else?
This is theft of material, pretty much plain and simple. Treating stuff on the web as a free-for-all and just republishing/redistributing it freely is fine as long as it benefits the person doing it. Nobody likes getting their stuff stolen and redistributed but most people on Slashdot can't see that far in front of their nose.
And as for a new way to deal with injustice, I think dueling needs a comeback. If you knew that offending someone, stealing from them or usurping their rights could lead to staring down a gun barrel people might think just a little bit. Maybe. Heinlein said it: an armed society is a polite society.
Obviously, market share has nothing to do with it. Any business that is serious is going to just use Linux and develop all its software for Linux, right?
Dream on. Windows has what, 90% market share? Followed by OS X with maybe 7%. Linux is last with perhaps 3%. And if you just count end-user machines and not servers it is probably more like 92%, 7% and 1% for Linux.
Sure, maybe it will change in the future. But for now the reality is that Linux commands such an incredibly small number of end-user machines that it isn't worth paying attention to for packaged software development.
If software can be installed, then your average user is going to do something bad.
Best answer is a web appliance that does email and web browsing and NOTHING ELSE and CANNOT have anything installed on it, no matter how attractive is sounds.
This is all 99% of the "home computer using population" needs. The other 1% can have computers they can screw up to their hearts content. The problem is today this move would put all of the PC manufacturers out of business. It would also put anyone who gets paid for cleaning up screwed up computers out of business. Geek Squad, anyone?
(a) There are relatively few CO locations as compared to the number of cell towers.
(b) Your average 24-hour runtime generator is a little bigger than the average cell tower "house". Therefore, it would be at least double the space to add the generator. And that is for the ground-level towers - what about those on the top of buildings?
In the US, ISPs are fighting for market share. Most home connections are operating at zero or negative profit so they can acquire greater market share. This is offset by other business operations, such as telephone service, cable TV, etc.
If things are in the same state in the UK, then the ISPs (a) can't charge their customers more and (b) aren't charging what the connection costs.
One big clue to this is to look at pricing where market share isn't being fought over. Business connections in the US are anywhere 2-4x the prices being charged for home connections. This is not a matter of higher utilization because these business connections are sold on the same terms as home connections with "burstable" bandwidth and maximum transfer caps.
In the US one "solution" to this is to charge the folks supplying content. Some of them, notably Google, aren't making anything and aren't selling anything directly. But their operation is extremely cash-rich and they aren't subject to market share issues. Face it, the ISPs are going to have to start charging what the connections cost when they stop fighting over market share. And either consumer prices are going to match the business prices or they are going to get paid by someone else.
You miss the point - delivering the Internet to conumers is only profitable for a company if they are a near-monopoly. Having a couple of customers here, a couple there doesn't work - there are labor-intensive resources that are tied to geography. Like fixing wires when they break.
So what we have been seeing for the last 10 years or so is just a pure market penetration play. If AT&T gets to take people away from Comcast they "win" and Comcast will pretty much cease operations in that area. And so the battle goes on and on. Each side offering better numbers (speeds, etc.) and lower prices - utterly unsustainable prices that make no sense but designed to capture market share. Once the competition is eliminated prices can return to that which actually pays for the service, but not until.
Trying to fight that mindset is impossible and it is the way anyone with substantial physical resource requirements operate from WalMart to Verizon.
Another side effect of this is the consumer isn't paying for access - they are paying some token amount that is less than their competition. Price fixing? I suppose you could call it that because if someone drops their price to gain more market share it is immediately matched by everyone else. Pricing has nothing to do with reality - especially when you can get a DSL connection for $14.95 a month. This sort of silliness leaves the providers in a quandry - can they afford to take such big losses or do they look for revenue elsewhere?
Obviously they can't raise prices to the consumer - they would lose market share and therefore in the end just lose completely. Hence the ISP approach to Google which does nothing, makes nothing and has nothing but is utterly dependent on the ISP to deliver the customer to them. And Google is raking in billions because of it. Neutrality? Ha. The only way you get "neutrality" out of this is for the customers to be paying for access. That means parity with "business rates" where they aren't fighting for market share. Your $14.95 DSL line goes to $149.95 in that case.
And for the most part, people aren't interested in the ISP as a "service". It is a vehicle to access services. Sort of a necessary evil for which there is no justification other than it seems to be necessary. I don't see any marketing campaign for the ISP which will gain them anything. All then can hope for is possibility of 70-80% market share and driving out all others because of it. Until then, they offer a service at a loss because they have to - the alternative is to just give up.
Think people are comfortable with the idea that the current ISPs are running at a loss and just hanging on with the hope of driving everyone else out? This isn't a long-term business strategy and only works if you have some other business to make payroll with. This is why there are no "independent" ISPs left and why all the ones that tried either got bought or failed. Answering the question of what comes next is why people talk about regulation because it alone holds the possibility of not having the country carved up into ISP fifedoms.
The fundamental flaw with communism is that it fails to meet the test of reality. If people were wired to be altruistic and benevelent, communism might work. But people are wired to be selfish and not all that altristic.
Capitalism is built on the idea that if you are looking out for yourself, everyone around you benefits. Maybe not directly and maybe not without some work, but it generally works out that way. Communism tries (and fails) to achive a state where everyone is looking out for each other more so than themselves. Nope. Sorry, fails basic motivation test.
What we've spent the last 160 years or so proving is that if you give people an opportunity to better their lives, they will do it - even if they have to bring some others along. Communism doesn't allow people to better themselves, only to contribute to the good of all. And people just aren't motivated that way.
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Two problems with that idea. The first is the people that could infiltrate are generally well indoctinated against "the Great Satan" already so the pool of potential infiltrators is rather small.
Secondly, in a country that dispises their intelligence services, why would the government (or the people) put up with potentially innocent groups being infiltrated? After all, until they actually do something they are completely innocent. So what "right" do the intelligence services have to interfere with them?
That is the argument that we are going to be hearing moer and more I think. We are going to have a manager-type in charge of the CIA without any real policy or position - so he will do what he is told. And the President seemed to think a while ago that negotiation was the way to deal with fanatics. No, I don't see any interest in infiltration anytime soon.
We probably need to think very clearly about what there is that can be done and what cannot be done. Right now, I'd say the balance comes down squarely on the side of what cannot be done with very little that we can do or will be allowed to do.
Absolutely the only "fair" copyright is one that gives me the right to copy any damn thing I please and do whatever I want with it. Including sharing it with the rest of the planet.
Of course, the side effect to this is Sony and WalMart will be the only entites that make any money from recorded music. All off the wages of people without high-speed Internet access or those too ignorant or guilt-ridden to download their music for free.
Why will those companies specifically get money while nobody else does? Simple. Without copyright they can publish collections and albums from the past without paying anyone for that privilege. Plenty of people (see above) will pay for CDs with such material on them, at least for a while.
Yes, this revenue source has to dry up - when the last person on Earth gets broadband or the last guilt-ridden over-30 person finally dies then there will be no more revenue from old recorded music.
A lot of this is B-school and management training simply observing general employment trends. It is very difficult to differentiate between groups of employees, especially nominally professional jobs (like IT people) and folks on the loading dock.
In the last 40-50 years the folks on the loading dock have seen a loss of unions, guaranteed pensions, guaranteed employment for life, and virtually nothing in return. Trying to explain to people that companies are no longer in a position to offer "employment for life" or pensions falls on deaf ears. People want assurances. They will do anything to get them, including voting in whomever promises to get this stuff back for them.
Obviously, the folks on the loading dock are very disgruntled. It is difficult from a management perspective not to think the more "professional" people aren't going to be sharing in being disgruntled also, and for the same exact reasons.
Hence, it is difficult to trust anyone - because at least large numbers of them are actively against management and the company. And they are going to do anything they think will get them some piece of what they think they have lost.
Will unions fix the problem? Sure. It will make sure that no company ever gets formed unless it can guarantee lifetime employment to everyone it hires. That is how it is in Europe for the most part and it is where we are headed in the US.
Seriously, we need to choose. Treat Earth as a closed system which must be operated in a sustainable manner or as an open system where population can move off-planet and resources can be brought in from off-planet. Failure to choose dooms us to the first option.
If Earth is to be a closed system, then the maximum population is somewhere around 200 million people. Period. Get used to it. The last time we had a sustainable use of the environment was maybe 1850 - everything after that had wastes piling up faster than nature could recycle them. What was the population in 1850? Maybe you can at 25% more for increased use of technology but that is about it.
Decreasing the population from 6 billion to 200 million is a mighty big task, one that just gets more and more formidable every day. If we want to choose the closed system approach, someone is going to have to step forward and start making it clear that it is the duty of 90% of the population to die and die quietly. This makes Stalin and Hitler look like pikers by comparison.
Are you ready to implement a plan like this? It can be done at a grass-roots level, you see. Get a rifle and start decreasing the population in your local area today. You know, think global, act local.
The alternative is the stars, but I am deeply concerned that our vision has faded.
If anything both TMI and Chernobyl are advertisements for the incredible safety record of nuclear power.
Easily more people have been killed mining coal (or even shipping coal) than the total number ever affected by any of the nuclear generating facilities. 46 people died directly because of Chernobyl - and they were all on the roof of the building putting out the fire. Yes, a bunch of people have come down with a incredibly easily treated form of cancer which is linked to Chernobyl's accident. But you have to consider that Chernobyl was a very old design operated by idiots who intentionally started the process that led to the fire.
There was an accident in Japan as well that as far as I know had no direct deaths and no illinesses that could be traced to it.
Based on the potential for disaster that we have been hearing about from scare-mongers since Einstein, I would say that the precautions have been incredibly effective. It was assumed by many in the 1970s that nuclear power would kill millions. Not only has that not happened, but it shows no sign of ever happening. Especially considering Chernobyl.
Anyone that doesn't want to get fired does the following:
- Remove the hard drive
- Image the hard drive with a read-only adapter
- Put the computer in the evidence locker
- Work from the image
Failure to do this will result in your being branded an incompetent fool and fired. On the spot.
Yes, my company works with state, local and federal law enforcement on this kind of stuff.
I'll bet you do not have the right to photograph an arrest.
If you do, then this is a huge problem for the person getting arrested. Once such pictures are published it is almost impossible to find an impartial jury. Everyone knows the person must be guilty of something, or else their picture wouldn't have been published.
I certainly wouldn't want such photos to be taken, published, distributed, etc.
The problem with photographing police or other such officals in the course of their duty is quite simple. It leads to the "guilty until proven innocent" problem. You photograph someone being arrested and it appears in the newspaper or TV news. OK, now everyone knows this guy must be guilty of something. Today it is even worse, because it will show up on the Internet and is therefore permanent.
Now I suppose photographing a police officer without any possibility of including a suspect in the photo shouldn't be a problem. But nobody ever wants that. Those photos are interesting or valuable.
As someone that grew up with computers, I can understand Stallman's vision. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it. He would like to think there are 1.5 kinds of people in the world: those that write code and those that haven't gotten around to writing code. His sense of "freedom" is important to both parts of that, assuming that is all there is to humanity.
I think it is much closer to say there are three groups: those that write code, those that should not be writing code but are trying and those that will never, ever write code. Call the last group "users". What RMS misses completely is the last group is probably the most important. They are utterly at the mercy of the first two groups, and they are continually being disappointed by the second.
The ability to design computer software is an art and it is not one that is easily taught to people that just don't get it. Writing clear, functional, concise code that implements a design is much easier to teach but in the world of open source and free software these two roles are usually combined. And, from looking at a lot of code in the open source world, much of it is from the folks that aren't doing a good job of design and probably shouldn't be writing code either.
The future is not one where everyone is a programmer. The world is bigger than that. There are a lot of people that have no desire to ever be anything more than a user and for them being handed a piece of software that is intuitively easy to use, relatively bug-free and gets the job done for them is what they want. From both proprietary and open source software development users are continually handed non-intuitive, buggy software that accomplishes something less than 100% of the job. And, collectively speaking, our users deserve better than that.
Probably the biggest problem I see with open source is the lack of critical review. Without this someone that turns out garbage code will continue to do so forever. Unless they stumble upon their own code and have to maintain it for years. Even then, it takes a stern taskmaster to reinforce the idea that if it isn't maintainable, it wasn't worth writing in the first place. And that if all the users can't use it how they want to, it isn't doing the job either. Yes, I do mean all the users and all of what they want it to do.
Where is the professional society that builds up talented but rudderless newcomers? Where does someone that wants to be turning out a "professional" quality product go for help? Universities? No, I don't think so. Most commercial establishments are just as driven to produce something "good enough" that they just have a hope of maintainability and usability. Sometimes they get lucky, but most of the time they do not. And we wonder why software development gets a bad reputation?
RMS would like us to each be able to fix the bugs we find and extend usability to take something that does 50% of the job we need done and fix it so it does 100% for us. Nice idea, but it comes from a flawed premise - a sort of universality of programming ability. The reality is major talent will be always rare and it is up to these folks to help out and guide those with ability but undeveloped talent. And then there are the users. These will always be in the majority and they cannot help but rely on the people with ability and talent to do what they cannot do. I do not think the mantle of this responsibility can so easily be passed off on the users.
A brute force attack upon a server which gives you the ability to receive email through it or place files on it does not mean you have legal "control" over the domain.
OK, it tends to indicate it but it is not any real assurance.
Sorry, but any understanding of Islam will clue you in. These folks are Muslim first and formost and AMERICAN dead last in priority.
I don't much like the label "African American" because most Americans with dark skin have about as much to do with Africa as I do with Ireland. Some distant relative came to the US from there a long, long time ago.
This is not the case with people of the Islamic faith. We can either understand it or try to ignore it. Ignoring it is at our peril.
Muslim is not a "race". It is not something you are born with. It is a religion. It is a religion that is incredibly hostile to people not of that faith.
Sure, there are probably lots of fine people that are Muslim. However, there are a large number that either refuse to acknowledge the radicals go too far or silently agree with the radicals. We have no idea which, but there is way too little condemnation of the radicals.
Accepting the acts of the Islamic radicals generates lots of hostility towards Muslims in general. I don't care if they don't agree - standing around and looking like they agree makes all Muslims look bad.
Absolutely. Nearly every movie released in the last few years has been so good that I run out and buy a DVD after downloading and watching it. I worry about the lifespan of burned media and so I want to make sure I have a really permanent copy to preserve for all time. You know, these movies are so important and meaningful that I know my great-grandchildren will be watching them over and over.
Sure.
Requiring some sort of private investigator's license to perform any sort of "investigation" of computers is a really, really bad idea. This has been implemented in a few states and I don't think it is having the desired outcome.
Read Bando v. Gates - it is all over the Internet. It is a very interesting read about someone completely unqualified performing an digital forensic investigation. This is what the "licensing" is supposed to prevent. It also virtually eliminates the possibility of someone being able to perform investigations in multiple states because of the absurd licensing requirements. You see, this is done on a state-by-state basis. Texas may require firearms traning for all licensed investigators while some other state does not. This doesn't help the quality of digital investigations. It only hurts.
I would consider the possibility of someone actually being prosecuted for an unlicensed investigation when they never set foot in the state to be very low. Having their expert witness status rejected is another matter but not one to be taken lightly. If expert witnesses must be licensed, then do not expect to be allowed to testify about your own computer in a licensing-required state.
What this sort of licensing is supposed to do is increase accountability of computer forensic examiners. What it in fact does is restrict the pool of such examiners to a very small group and says nothing about the quality or abilities of those people. Other than their ability to put up with completely unrelated requirements, such as firearms training for a computer investigator. The result of this is certainly going to be that you are not qualified to provide any information about your own computer in any sort of legal matter without such a license. Sure, the license may only be required to perform an investigation when it is a paid service, but that says nothing about expert witness qualification.
And how, exactly would Facebook tell the difference? Quickly and in a non-ambigous way.
What you aren't seeing is that the issue is a very sensitive contextual one.
First off, do you want the site to be swarmed by 12-year-old boys that find the pictures titilating? OK, throw that out - who cares, right?
Now you have someone that claims their picture just shows breastfeeding when clearly that is not the intent of the picture. How sensitive contextually should the policy be? And who is the final judge in this?
The problem for a large public site is not that they have to be overly repressive. It is that they must have a clearly defined and easily implemented policy. Failure to do so means everybody loses because it is impossible to say what is allowed and what is not. At that point censorship is either non-existant or is arbitrary. I assure you that without some control Facebook would become a cesspool. So the control has to be something that everyone understands and can be implemented without a great deal of context.
So how does the two adults showing "breastfeeding" get handled? How about the completely nude woman with a baby on one breast? There are a million examples like this of "pushing the envelope" that someone somewhere has to deal with. Quickly and without a lot of contextual judgement.
Two things to keep in mind:
1. it is the same part of the body involved in both feeding a child and in spring break flashing. Lots of people have difficulty in separating two things when the only differece is context.
2. Would you consider breastfeeding a 25-year-old man the same as an infant? Context again, huh?
Let's say there is an exception made for breastfeeding. How context-sensitive do people need to be about this and how exactly does one deal with claims that a given picture should be permissible based on the contextual view of the poster which may or may not be shared by anyone else?
This is theft of material, pretty much plain and simple. Treating stuff on the web as a free-for-all and just republishing/redistributing it freely is fine as long as it benefits the person doing it. Nobody likes getting their stuff stolen and redistributed but most people on Slashdot can't see that far in front of their nose.
And as for a new way to deal with injustice, I think dueling needs a comeback. If you knew that offending someone, stealing from them or usurping their rights could lead to staring down a gun barrel people might think just a little bit. Maybe. Heinlein said it: an armed society is a polite society.
Obviously, market share has nothing to do with it. Any business that is serious is going to just use Linux and develop all its software for Linux, right?
Dream on. Windows has what, 90% market share? Followed by OS X with maybe 7%. Linux is last with perhaps 3%. And if you just count end-user machines and not servers it is probably more like 92%, 7% and 1% for Linux.
Sure, maybe it will change in the future. But for now the reality is that Linux commands such an incredibly small number of end-user machines that it isn't worth paying attention to for packaged software development.
If software can be installed, then your average user is going to do something bad.
Best answer is a web appliance that does email and web browsing and NOTHING ELSE and CANNOT have anything installed on it, no matter how attractive is sounds.
This is all 99% of the "home computer using population" needs. The other 1% can have computers they can screw up to their hearts content. The problem is today this move would put all of the PC manufacturers out of business. It would also put anyone who gets paid for cleaning up screwed up computers out of business. Geek Squad, anyone?
(a) There are relatively few CO locations as compared to the number of cell towers.
(b) Your average 24-hour runtime generator is a little bigger than the average cell tower "house". Therefore, it would be at least double the space to add the generator. And that is for the ground-level towers - what about those on the top of buildings?
In the US, ISPs are fighting for market share. Most home connections are operating at zero or negative profit so they can acquire greater market share. This is offset by other business operations, such as telephone service, cable TV, etc.
If things are in the same state in the UK, then the ISPs (a) can't charge their customers more and (b) aren't charging what the connection costs.
One big clue to this is to look at pricing where market share isn't being fought over. Business connections in the US are anywhere 2-4x the prices being charged for home connections. This is not a matter of higher utilization because these business connections are sold on the same terms as home connections with "burstable" bandwidth and maximum transfer caps.
In the US one "solution" to this is to charge the folks supplying content. Some of them, notably Google, aren't making anything and aren't selling anything directly. But their operation is extremely cash-rich and they aren't subject to market share issues. Face it, the ISPs are going to have to start charging what the connections cost when they stop fighting over market share. And either consumer prices are going to match the business prices or they are going to get paid by someone else.
How does 3,000 a month average sound? Yes, I know someone that does that much texting. That is 100 a day.
You miss the point - delivering the Internet to conumers is only profitable for a company if they are a near-monopoly. Having a couple of customers here, a couple there doesn't work - there are labor-intensive resources that are tied to geography. Like fixing wires when they break.
So what we have been seeing for the last 10 years or so is just a pure market penetration play. If AT&T gets to take people away from Comcast they "win" and Comcast will pretty much cease operations in that area. And so the battle goes on and on. Each side offering better numbers (speeds, etc.) and lower prices - utterly unsustainable prices that make no sense but designed to capture market share. Once the competition is eliminated prices can return to that which actually pays for the service, but not until.
Trying to fight that mindset is impossible and it is the way anyone with substantial physical resource requirements operate from WalMart to Verizon.
Another side effect of this is the consumer isn't paying for access - they are paying some token amount that is less than their competition. Price fixing? I suppose you could call it that because if someone drops their price to gain more market share it is immediately matched by everyone else. Pricing has nothing to do with reality - especially when you can get a DSL connection for $14.95 a month. This sort of silliness leaves the providers in a quandry - can they afford to take such big losses or do they look for revenue elsewhere?
Obviously they can't raise prices to the consumer - they would lose market share and therefore in the end just lose completely. Hence the ISP approach to Google which does nothing, makes nothing and has nothing but is utterly dependent on the ISP to deliver the customer to them. And Google is raking in billions because of it. Neutrality? Ha. The only way you get "neutrality" out of this is for the customers to be paying for access. That means parity with "business rates" where they aren't fighting for market share. Your $14.95 DSL line goes to $149.95 in that case.
And for the most part, people aren't interested in the ISP as a "service". It is a vehicle to access services. Sort of a necessary evil for which there is no justification other than it seems to be necessary. I don't see any marketing campaign for the ISP which will gain them anything. All then can hope for is possibility of 70-80% market share and driving out all others because of it. Until then, they offer a service at a loss because they have to - the alternative is to just give up.
Think people are comfortable with the idea that the current ISPs are running at a loss and just hanging on with the hope of driving everyone else out? This isn't a long-term business strategy and only works if you have some other business to make payroll with. This is why there are no "independent" ISPs left and why all the ones that tried either got bought or failed. Answering the question of what comes next is why people talk about regulation because it alone holds the possibility of not having the country carved up into ISP fifedoms.
The fundamental flaw with communism is that it fails to meet the test of reality. If people were wired to be altruistic and benevelent, communism might work. But people are wired to be selfish and not all that altristic.
Capitalism is built on the idea that if you are looking out for yourself, everyone around you benefits. Maybe not directly and maybe not without some work, but it generally works out that way. Communism tries (and fails) to achive a state where everyone is looking out for each other more so than themselves. Nope. Sorry, fails basic motivation test.
What we've spent the last 160 years or so proving is that if you give people an opportunity to better their lives, they will do it - even if they have to bring some others along. Communism doesn't allow people to better themselves, only to contribute to the good of all. And people just aren't motivated that way.