We get about one a month here in Phoenix. Some random "undocumented worker" from an unnamed country abducts a child from some neighborhood and it is Amber Alert time.
Happens a lot here in Phoenix. When I lived in Illinois it hardly ever happened. Guess it is the proximity to a border.
Graduating High School is today primarily what graduating college used to be. It is an exercise in proving that you have the dilligence to accomplish a task. Does it take any extraordinary talents to do so? No, but it takes that dilligence. If you don't have it, expect to be a burger flipper for life because even with a GED you will have proven that you lack the determination, dilligence and maturity to accomplish goals that are set before you. Hence, you are not qualified for most jobs that require determination, dilligence and maturity.
You are, however, highly qualified to flip burgers.
However, launching an Orion propulsion vehicle from the Earth's surface should be something reserved for emergencies. Dire emergencies. Using Orion from orbit to anywhere else is somewhat reasonable but again it is pretty risky and is probably something that should be held as an option for emergencies.
Think Deep Impact. They had the right idea with the wrong graphics. If we needed to intercept a comet in 12 months that pretty much counts as an emergency. Think Footfall. Repelling an invasion (no matter how absurd or unlikely) would count as an emergency.
The Mayflower wasn't an emergency and we shouldn't think of establishing a colony under similar circumstances as one either. But we do need to think in terms of an offworld colony, even a one-way "generation ship" design before there is a real emergency.
Right now, an asteroid or a good-size comet could mean the end of humanity. All of it. No second chances, no options just "the end". We are at the threshold of being able to sidestep that and at least give a branch of the human race a chance.
The problem is, you would like to turn the "personal computer" into a something that needs attention and continual review and updating. What 99% of the world wants is an email appliance that they can download the latest neat stuff on. We need to move to more of an appliance that needs less, not more administration.
The second problem is that there is no "administrator", at least no qualified one for most of the home computers in the world. Windows needs some administration, arguably more administration than it gets. Linux can't operate without administration although it can be less frequent but requires more knowledge.
This is the correct approach, if you can really afford it.
Emailed receipts from online vendors? What are they thinking? Email is fundamentally broken and results in most real mail not getting through. Why bother with the emailed receipt, because the user isn't going to get it. Maybe 1 out of 10 times.
If everyone used solid whitelisting email would either be replaced or it would just be abandoned. Replacement would be tough, but once there was enough motivation it would happen. As things are today it is just broken and consists primarily of spam.
Yes, we are running 10,000 or so spam emails a day with four real users. One "sales" email address and one "support" email address get maybe 50% of the spam. Does this sound broken to you? If you send an email that somehow is classified as spam, there is no way we are ever going to find it, much less respond. Better use the telephone or fax - email is broken.
The issue is that most hardware is a commodity now, with all of the specialization and unique features being done in the driver or firmware. Take that out with "open drivers" and you have opened the door for Dell, HP, etc. to make their own copy of anything that a vendor doesn't want to play ball with. Too much margin? Fine, just buy the Chinese copy.
This has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with control over their own destiny. Being able to tell Broadcom, nVidia and everyone else to take a hike. Thanks, but we found a new supplier. With 100% of the functionality and 100% compatibility.
Wrong. These days the hardware is pretty much commodity and the driver is the only unique IP there is. The problem is if they give away the driver they have given away all there is that is unique - any Chinese knock-off company can the duplicate the hardware and steal the software to make it work.
No, you would probably go down in history as an idiot that doomed Africa.
You see, it costs money to develop drugs. Money that usually isn't just lying around waiting for someone to need it. It comes from people that want something for their money. They would be happy to lend you the money to develop your drug, but they want something for it. If you don't want to help them, they certainly aren't going to help you - or the rest of the world.
So, likely as not under your terms nobody would ever develop your drug to save Africa. Africans would keep on dying and you would go down in history as a selfish monster that was responsible for millions dying needlessly.
It isn't greed to get paid. It is instead greed to think that everyone else should support you because you are a nice person.
There is the issue of groundwater contamination. Without the concrete vault, literally thousands of bodies buried each day come into contact with groundwater and can leech biological contaminates into the groundwater. This makes life unpleasant for everyone nearby.
Jewish cemetaries which accept unsealed burials I suspect are far more regulated. Being there are fewer of them and fewer Jewish burials, this is probably not as big a problem and can be managed. I do not know how it is managed, but it would not suprise me to find that Jewish (and Muslim) cemetaries are required to be enclosed to prevent groundwater contamination of any type - just like a landfill.
Just try to arrange a burial without the required concrete vault. It is illegal in most places. You might be able to do it if you own the land and it is outside of any city, town or village. But there may be overriding county or state regulations to prevent it.
The point really is that if IP != Individual, then Internet = Consequences Free Zone. Period.
If you can't connect a "person" with an "action" in any way, then "actions" have no consequences any longer. You can use all the hand-waving you want, but that is what it comes down to. Either someone is responsible, or nobody is.
Today, ISPs shielding customers means pretty much that nobody is ever responsible. Unless you brag or otherwise spill the beans, whatever you do online can never be traced to a person, just an IP address. There was somewhat of a tacit understanding that IP == Account == Person for a while but that seems to be over now. Now it is IP == Forgible MAC == ????
So where does that get us? Well, for many it means free music, movies and software. For others it means the ability to extort, threaten and destroy lives. Another group can exploit whatever technical or social gaps there may be to take over computers worldwide. All without consequences because there is no provable link between an IP address and a person. And utterly no responsibility for the use of services by an "account holder". I see this every day and there doesn't seem to be any legal, moral or other alternative here.
It does mean that DRM is king and "security" is whatever you can purchase - because the people with the time available cannot be stopped from attacking servers, people and services.
Law enforcement may be able to, but there is this little problem. Who do they get a subpoena for and how much proof do they need ahead of time? We are in the process of disassociating the idea that an IP address can be tied to an account holder. This pretty much means that an IP address is meaningless. You aren't going to get a subpoena for "John Doe a.k.a. 192.168.1.1". And it is highly unlikely that a grand jury is going to pass on a subpoena because someone is suspected have having used a given IP address.
Rulings like this also pretty much mean that any social or technical mischief caused on the Internet is absolutely protected. Sure, you know that 24.1.1.47 logged into your server, deleted files and turned on an FTP server for hosting porn videos. But, unless the person behind this admits to it in a chat room your ability to get them to stop is zero. Will law enforcement help? No, there isn't enough monetary damage. When you get tired of cleaning up after someone the fourth or fifth time you will discover there is nothing that you can do. Someone found an appealing target and they can hammer you into submission. About your best hope is to offer to pay them to stop - but what if they aren't interested in the money and just want to have fun?
Today, there are some ISPs that will take action against a customer that is committing mayhem on the Internet. But that number is getting smaller and smaller all the time.
Today, virtually no electronics are actually manufactured within the US. There are potentially toxic and carcinogenic chemicals used in the manufacturing and soldering of circuit boards and we, as a nation, have seemingly decided that our fate would be better in the hands of others than allow these processes to take place within the US.
Just try to set up a new manufacturing line in California. Without serious bribes, you will never get the first permit. Even then, your factory may be shut down by protesters.
We have lost the possibility of the government purchasing sensitive gear from American sources. We get to take what we can get from overseas suppliers. Even Cisco's gear is manufactured offshore, so if someone wants to sneak stuff in it is almost certainly possible.
It is pointless to consider "paper" ballots in any real way. Any election that takes longer than about 12 hours is going to be "called on account of time" by the news services. They will announce a winner, based on exit polling, other polling, the way the wind is blowing and the entrails of a calf. But by God they are going to release the name of the winner before everyone goes to bed.
Look at 2000 - Gore was announced as the winner by CBS. Then, later, that announcement was retracted but there are people that believe today that Gore won the election fair and square. Too bad they couldn't reproduced the winning after two months of selective recounts and rule changes. Can the US survive another announced winner later proven to be false? I don't think so.
If the news services can't be silenced, we cannot rely on recounts or anything else that takes days to count properly. The authoritative answer has to be presented the evening of the election, probably by midnight Eastern Time or there will be all hell to pay. And by "authoritative" I do not be absolutely correct, just accepted by the majority of the population. This is what we had until 2000. It is something we will never have again if the news services preempt the process and announce a winner in advance of ballot counting again.
The reason you, your children and everyone else in your community needs to be vaccinated is real simple. The biggest risk is losing something called "herd immunity" where today most of these diseases that are being vaccinated against are rare and not life-threatening in the US could spiral out of control if they were allowed a safe haven.
While today a case of pertussis is almost unheard of this was not the case 150 years ago. But at the same time it cannot be assumed that this disease is "extinct" in any fashion. It is that most people in the US are vaccinated against it so there are no hosts for it. Turn that around with people not being vaccinated for it - even in numbers like 5-10% of the population - and we would see outbreaks of the disease.
Similarly, in no way can it be assumed that a childhood vaccination lasts a lifetime. It was assumed this would be the case in the early 20th Century but since proven not to be true. However, there are no outbreaks of these diseases in the population simply because there are no hosts and any potential outbreaks are bounded by a majority of the population being vaccinated.
It is my understanding that most children are excellent disease vectors. They touch things and touch others with a frequency that is not present in adults. Therefore it makes sense to vaccinate the most vulnerable and most likely to transfer the disease to others while leaving the rest of the population to work with a declining immunity carried from childhood.
Sure, if we stopped manditory vaccinations we would all be "freer". But we would also be a lot sicker. This is not an experiment that needs to be done. With any sense of historical context it can easily be shown as already having been proven. We need to learn from history and avoid repeating it.
What has happened is a complete disconnect between the content producers and the consumers. At least most of the content producers view their material as something extremely valuable that took their time, energy and creativity to produce. Consumers are looking at it thinking that anyone could produce this, maybe even their neighbor in his garage.
The problem as the article points out, is there too much, too low quality and too easily sampled content out there. In this glut we have Darwin Reedy (of American Idol fame) and every other self-produced, self-promoted "artist" out there thinking they are what the world has been waiting for. Too much!
So you have a truely talented artist or performer and their stuff is dumped in the bin with all the rest. We've moved beyond the point where people are looking at professionals for guides to quality. Instead, we're looking at blogs and overloaded paid shills and seeing that they have no monopoly on the truth.
Where does this go? Well, content has zero value today is a good start. If you are thinking of a career in something involving creativity, forget it - it isn't a career but only a hobby. Copyright is probably dead because it is hoping we will respect something as a treasure when it is clear it has no value. Software, books, movies and music are now going to be created by unprofessional folks that will occasionally turn out a gem. But there aren't going to be any more reviewers or awards that mean anything so they will likely be overlooked.
Think of it as the open source revolution for content. Most of it, like open source software, will be unfinished and unpolished. Sometimes, there will be something great that comes of it.
But the fact that will remain is that no matter how great it is, the value will still be zero.
The amount of idiocy here is amazing. Most people seem to have the historical perspective of a three-year-old. And, they have about the same understanding of the marketplace.
Today, ISPs pay for bandwidth resources. They are indeed responsible at some level of compensation for how much they are sucking down from elsewhere on the network. Then they have their own infrastructure to contend with. Let's ignore for a moment that their infrastructure isn't quite up to the task of 10x (or 100x) increases in demand.
The ISP suddenly is sucking down 10x more stuff than they were before. This upsets all sorts of nice balances they have worked out with peering arrangements and the like. So, now the folks they are sucking it down from - higher tier carriers - want them to pay fro all this extra bandwidth. What, did you think they just plugged in and got whatever they wanted?
Next we have the problem that for the last 10-15 years or so the Internet has been defined by web surfing and email and not much else. Sure it would have been nice if a few ISPs had been forward-thinking enough to build out 10x the capacity they needed to operate. You know, just in case some need came along. Suprisingly, this isn't a very effective way to operate a business.
Finally, in the US (and I suspect elsewere as well) the Internet has grown to the proportions it has primarily because it has been incredibly cheap. What started out as $25 a month for dial-up became $15 a month for DSL. Were these prices sustainable in the face of increased usage? No. Heck, they were sustainable in the face of any usage at all because it was to build market share and prove to the investors that this "Internet" think actually was something people were interested in.
Today, you have businesses paying $400 a month for a T1 circuit that is 1.5Mb while home users are paying $50 a month for 15Mb. The home folks are getting a deal based on the bandwidth not really being used. If you were paying for guaranteed bandwidth capacity, like the business with the T1 is, you would be paying lots more. Probably not $4000 a month (10x a T1) but no way would it be $50 or even $100 a month. Expecting to have 15Mb access 24x7 for $50 a month will get you disappointed. Badly.
The reality of the situation in the US today is that the costs are finally beginning to come down a little - like maybe $300 for that T1 instead of $400. But on the consumer front if the ISPs can't justify shared bandwidth where the average use is far far less than the possible maximum, today's pricing isn't going to hold. At some level there is a cost-per-Mb that isn't going to go away. If you want to be assured of 15Mb access with 15Mb being used constantly you are really going to have to pay for 15Mb. Today, you are paying for something more like 0.005Mb and the providers "know" that is the real level of utilization.
When the level of utilization changes, they are going to have to eventually upgrade the system. Eventually. This isn't going to happen overnight because of the costs involved. Should they have done it before? Maybe. But as of a couple of years ago the majority of use was still email and web browsing and everyone was happy with their 0.005Mb slice of the pie.
I'd bet on people getting more access capability but not a lot more total capacity in the near term. That means things like 20Mb bandwidth that bogs down a lot at peak times and caps on total utilization. I'd also bet on some big price changes coming down. You want to download 20Gb a month at 15Mb/sec? Sure, but you are going to pay. And start paying a lot closer to what dedicated bandwidth costs businesses today.
Why do you want to discrminate against people? Shouldn't the ability to use the Internet to remain anonymous and private be extended to robbers as well as anyone else? If you are going to have people doing things in the privacy of their homes remain private and anonymous, as long as they are using the Internet, shouldn't this be extended to casing out likely targets for robbery as well as everything else?
Some people just don't get it. It is the Internet. Laws are different there. Mostly, there aren't any. Cluttering things up with outmoded concepts like discrimation, racial profiling and labelling people as criminals needs to stop.
The problem with that sort of intensive security model for the average user is that neither the user nor the software can be trusted today. The user can't administer their computer: it is simply too complicated and requires too much knowledge for the average user. But every operating system available today requires the user to administer their own home computer.
The same operating systems are in use on businesses all over the planet and no company in their right mind would simply dump the computer on the user's desk with a note saying this was theirs now and they should figure it out.
The second problem is the software. You hear about some game or whatnot from a friend who says they is really great and you have to have it. OK, so it gets downloaded and installed. How was it qualified as being suitable for that computer? How was it qualified as not containins malicious content? Well, neither qualification happened, it was just installed. Period. Whatever operating system administration is required to install the program is done. Without consulting anyone else.
Of course, if two weeks later you discover that your computer isn't working so good then it is time to call in the "expert". And often pay someone to remove whatever it was that is causing all the trouble. Not just reactive but long-time-after-occurrence reactive.
I know of no operating system today that doesn't work in this mode when self-administered. I assure you that if you give a program to an average user that requires both access to all the files on the computer and network access it will be granted, by whatever procedure requires this. Sure, someone clever might wonder why this is necessary but most clever geniuses distributing such malware will have some utterly wonderful sounding total BS answers to such questions.
Sorry, you can't escape the trap that is where we are today. If your computer isn't administered by a competent administrator and you install random crap on it that "Internet friends" tell you about, you are going to have troubles. No question about it. And no "security model" is going to change that. Locked-down machines that cannot be compromised by rogue software being installed will change that. And 90% of home users have no need of something they personally can install software on. Random software. Potentially harmful software.
You misunderstand the legal system. First off, in UK there is no presumption of innocence.
Next, while the court system in the US has a presumption of innocence, the police do not. If they think they have cause to think you might be guilty, they are going to arrest you. It is then up to the prosecutor to decide if they think you can be convicted or not. Then, finally, you get to court where there is this presumption of innocence.
I'd be a heck of a lot more worried about middle-class Mexican undocumented workers flooding the US with a new amnesty program (also currently under consideration, just like SAVE is) that will take your job for half the pay. What utterly unique skills do you have that are worth double the going rate of pay? Unless you are working in theoretical physics or biomedical research the answer is almost certainly that you have no unique skills.
Jobs are going to go to the lowest bidder, and as an employer I get to choose, you don't. There are laws about employment discrimination that make it illegal to use just about any form of constructive "discrimination", like choosing to only hire native-born Americans.
Should something get enacted that doesn't throw undocumented workers out of the country, we are looking at a whole new world of labor in the US as more and more cheap labor floods in. In 1986 there was a promise of "never again". You see how long that lasted. I live in Phoenix, AZ and jobs are getting cheaper here all the time, even with the new state employer sanctions law.
Can you live on a salary that is good enough for undocumented workers? Better hope so. Our elected representatives want to make sure that labor gets cheaper and there are lots of people that are very thankful for their jobs - and vote for the people that gave them their jobs in the US.
By the way, there is an appeal process for the E-Verify system when it kicks you out that makes sure you keep your job. So your nonsense about no appeal is bunk. But if you have no ID or just a matriculation document from the Mexican Embassy and E-Verify says no good, I'd think about finding a different employer. Texas is hiring big time, and plenty of undocumented workers are moving there from Arizona and Oklahoma where they enacted new sanctions laws. But here in Phoenix the mayor is fighting the county Sheriff over deporting people, fighting for the right to have cheap labor.
I don't understand the idea that people have that the music industry should "take some theft". Sure, if it was 1% or 5% it would be tolerable. Maybe even 10%. But it's not.
It's 95%. At least. I don't know anyone that is going ever pay $0.10 for a recording ever again. They have seen the wealth set before them by the folks that are "publishing" their music collections online. They are partaking of this great wealth and it is impossible to stop. No amount of lawsuits in the US is going to turn off the tap.
Today, the people that are buying music must be the ones with dial-up Internet connections and are still playing CDs on portable devices. The folks with the 3 or 4 three-inch binders of CDs in their car. Maybe a few people with 8-track players or something. They don't have the opportunity to download music, so they have no choice but to buy and get gifts from their friends that are downloading.
Come on, do you know anyone that would actually pay for music today? Someone that uses the Internet? Naa, I didn't think so.
It isn't a question of putting up with "some theft". It is a question of quietly shutting down because nobody is going to ever buy their product again. Ever. When Wal-Mart pulls the plug on CD sales this will pretty much mean the end because that means that even the poor slobs with dial-up found a way to avoid buying music.
Success of iTunes? What are they 20% of the music SALES and 0.001% of the music downloads? I'd hardly call that a success. The iTunes music store is a add-on that is designed to help the clueless iPod owner stay legal. The fact that they too are irrelevent to music downloads in general and only relevent to the few music sales that are still occuring is interesting but not useful.
The lowest price is zero, and they can't live with that. Today, it is free as long as you don't mind not being "legal". Tomorrow, it will still be free and it might even be legal.
Until they come to terms with the idea that society (as defined by the people under 30) have determined that it should all be free, trying to get paid for music is hopeless. Maybe then they can figure out how to get paid for something - just not music.
Worried about crappy music? Well, if nobody is paying then there is no "gatekeeper" anymore. Welcome to the American Idol Rejects Compilation CD! But, it is all free.
1. I think there have been laws against stealing since Hammurabi. A sign saying "don't steal" is irrelevent, as is a notice that you shouldn't steal.
2. No. The whole point is to get as much as you can without paying for it. If it is on the Internet, I and the rest of the Internet-using world doesn't have to pay. Period. The. Internet. Is. Free. OK, can we move on now?
While it may be regrettable, I do not believe that copyright can survive the way children are being educated today. They learn everything is free on the Internet and nobody can stop them. DRM stops the less knowledgable today but in a few years that will be pointless as everyone will know how to get around it.
It comes down to a fundamental matter of respect - either you respect the rights of others or you do not. Copyright today is a matter of respect, and there isn't much of that going around. We are now arguing about whether or not someone deserves to have their right to live their life respected, with lots of folks coming down on the side of "personal freedom" allowing them to trash other people's lives with impunity.
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We get about one a month here in Phoenix. Some random "undocumented worker" from an unnamed country abducts a child from some neighborhood and it is Amber Alert time.
Happens a lot here in Phoenix. When I lived in Illinois it hardly ever happened. Guess it is the proximity to a border.
Graduating High School is today primarily what graduating college used to be. It is an exercise in proving that you have the dilligence to accomplish a task. Does it take any extraordinary talents to do so? No, but it takes that dilligence. If you don't have it, expect to be a burger flipper for life because even with a GED you will have proven that you lack the determination, dilligence and maturity to accomplish goals that are set before you. Hence, you are not qualified for most jobs that require determination, dilligence and maturity.
You are, however, highly qualified to flip burgers.
Yes, we need an offworld self-sufficient colony.
However, launching an Orion propulsion vehicle from the Earth's surface should be something reserved for emergencies. Dire emergencies. Using Orion from orbit to anywhere else is somewhat reasonable but again it is pretty risky and is probably something that should be held as an option for emergencies.
Think Deep Impact. They had the right idea with the wrong graphics. If we needed to intercept a comet in 12 months that pretty much counts as an emergency. Think Footfall. Repelling an invasion (no matter how absurd or unlikely) would count as an emergency.
The Mayflower wasn't an emergency and we shouldn't think of establishing a colony under similar circumstances as one either. But we do need to think in terms of an offworld colony, even a one-way "generation ship" design before there is a real emergency.
Right now, an asteroid or a good-size comet could mean the end of humanity. All of it. No second chances, no options just "the end". We are at the threshold of being able to sidestep that and at least give a branch of the human race a chance.
The problem is, you would like to turn the "personal computer" into a something that needs attention and continual review and updating. What 99% of the world wants is an email appliance that they can download the latest neat stuff on. We need to move to more of an appliance that needs less, not more administration.
The second problem is that there is no "administrator", at least no qualified one for most of the home computers in the world. Windows needs some administration, arguably more administration than it gets. Linux can't operate without administration although it can be less frequent but requires more knowledge.
This is the correct approach, if you can really afford it.
Emailed receipts from online vendors? What are they thinking? Email is fundamentally broken and results in most real mail not getting through. Why bother with the emailed receipt, because the user isn't going to get it. Maybe 1 out of 10 times.
If everyone used solid whitelisting email would either be replaced or it would just be abandoned. Replacement would be tough, but once there was enough motivation it would happen. As things are today it is just broken and consists primarily of spam.
Yes, we are running 10,000 or so spam emails a day with four real users. One "sales" email address and one "support" email address get maybe 50% of the spam. Does this sound broken to you? If you send an email that somehow is classified as spam, there is no way we are ever going to find it, much less respond. Better use the telephone or fax - email is broken.
Yes, but perhaps a closer situation is where the shopkeeper says "Yes, we have X right here" and hands you a box of Y.
This is exactly the situation that needs to be fought out over trademarks and Internet advertising.
The issue is that most hardware is a commodity now, with all of the specialization and unique features being done in the driver or firmware. Take that out with "open drivers" and you have opened the door for Dell, HP, etc. to make their own copy of anything that a vendor doesn't want to play ball with. Too much margin? Fine, just buy the Chinese copy.
This has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with control over their own destiny. Being able to tell Broadcom, nVidia and everyone else to take a hike. Thanks, but we found a new supplier. With 100% of the functionality and 100% compatibility.
Wrong. These days the hardware is pretty much commodity and the driver is the only unique IP there is. The problem is if they give away the driver they have given away all there is that is unique - any Chinese knock-off company can the duplicate the hardware and steal the software to make it work.
No, you would probably go down in history as an idiot that doomed Africa.
You see, it costs money to develop drugs. Money that usually isn't just lying around waiting for someone to need it. It comes from people that want something for their money. They would be happy to lend you the money to develop your drug, but they want something for it. If you don't want to help them, they certainly aren't going to help you - or the rest of the world.
So, likely as not under your terms nobody would ever develop your drug to save Africa. Africans would keep on dying and you would go down in history as a selfish monster that was responsible for millions dying needlessly.
It isn't greed to get paid. It is instead greed to think that everyone else should support you because you are a nice person.
There is the issue of groundwater contamination. Without the concrete vault, literally thousands of bodies buried each day come into contact with groundwater and can leech biological contaminates into the groundwater. This makes life unpleasant for everyone nearby.
Jewish cemetaries which accept unsealed burials I suspect are far more regulated. Being there are fewer of them and fewer Jewish burials, this is probably not as big a problem and can be managed. I do not know how it is managed, but it would not suprise me to find that Jewish (and Muslim) cemetaries are required to be enclosed to prevent groundwater contamination of any type - just like a landfill.
Just try to arrange a burial without the required concrete vault. It is illegal in most places. You might be able to do it if you own the land and it is outside of any city, town or village. But there may be overriding county or state regulations to prevent it.
The point really is that if IP != Individual, then Internet = Consequences Free Zone. Period.
If you can't connect a "person" with an "action" in any way, then "actions" have no consequences any longer. You can use all the hand-waving you want, but that is what it comes down to. Either someone is responsible, or nobody is.
Today, ISPs shielding customers means pretty much that nobody is ever responsible. Unless you brag or otherwise spill the beans, whatever you do online can never be traced to a person, just an IP address. There was somewhat of a tacit understanding that IP == Account == Person for a while but that seems to be over now. Now it is IP == Forgible MAC == ????
So where does that get us? Well, for many it means free music, movies and software. For others it means the ability to extort, threaten and destroy lives. Another group can exploit whatever technical or social gaps there may be to take over computers worldwide. All without consequences because there is no provable link between an IP address and a person. And utterly no responsibility for the use of services by an "account holder". I see this every day and there doesn't seem to be any legal, moral or other alternative here.
It does mean that DRM is king and "security" is whatever you can purchase - because the people with the time available cannot be stopped from attacking servers, people and services.
Law enforcement may be able to, but there is this little problem. Who do they get a subpoena for and how much proof do they need ahead of time? We are in the process of disassociating the idea that an IP address can be tied to an account holder. This pretty much means that an IP address is meaningless. You aren't going to get a subpoena for "John Doe a.k.a. 192.168.1.1". And it is highly unlikely that a grand jury is going to pass on a subpoena because someone is suspected have having used a given IP address.
Rulings like this also pretty much mean that any social or technical mischief caused on the Internet is absolutely protected. Sure, you know that 24.1.1.47 logged into your server, deleted files and turned on an FTP server for hosting porn videos. But, unless the person behind this admits to it in a chat room your ability to get them to stop is zero. Will law enforcement help? No, there isn't enough monetary damage. When you get tired of cleaning up after someone the fourth or fifth time you will discover there is nothing that you can do. Someone found an appealing target and they can hammer you into submission. About your best hope is to offer to pay them to stop - but what if they aren't interested in the money and just want to have fun?
Today, there are some ISPs that will take action against a customer that is committing mayhem on the Internet. But that number is getting smaller and smaller all the time.
Today, virtually no electronics are actually manufactured within the US. There are potentially toxic and carcinogenic chemicals used in the manufacturing and soldering of circuit boards and we, as a nation, have seemingly decided that our fate would be better in the hands of others than allow these processes to take place within the US.
Just try to set up a new manufacturing line in California. Without serious bribes, you will never get the first permit. Even then, your factory may be shut down by protesters.
We have lost the possibility of the government purchasing sensitive gear from American sources. We get to take what we can get from overseas suppliers. Even Cisco's gear is manufactured offshore, so if someone wants to sneak stuff in it is almost certainly possible.
It is pointless to consider "paper" ballots in any real way. Any election that takes longer than about 12 hours is going to be "called on account of time" by the news services. They will announce a winner, based on exit polling, other polling, the way the wind is blowing and the entrails of a calf. But by God they are going to release the name of the winner before everyone goes to bed.
Look at 2000 - Gore was announced as the winner by CBS. Then, later, that announcement was retracted but there are people that believe today that Gore won the election fair and square. Too bad they couldn't reproduced the winning after two months of selective recounts and rule changes. Can the US survive another announced winner later proven to be false? I don't think so.
If the news services can't be silenced, we cannot rely on recounts or anything else that takes days to count properly. The authoritative answer has to be presented the evening of the election, probably by midnight Eastern Time or there will be all hell to pay. And by "authoritative" I do not be absolutely correct, just accepted by the majority of the population. This is what we had until 2000. It is something we will never have again if the news services preempt the process and announce a winner in advance of ballot counting again.
The reason you, your children and everyone else in your community needs to be vaccinated is real simple. The biggest risk is losing something called "herd immunity" where today most of these diseases that are being vaccinated against are rare and not life-threatening in the US could spiral out of control if they were allowed a safe haven.
While today a case of pertussis is almost unheard of this was not the case 150 years ago. But at the same time it cannot be assumed that this disease is "extinct" in any fashion. It is that most people in the US are vaccinated against it so there are no hosts for it. Turn that around with people not being vaccinated for it - even in numbers like 5-10% of the population - and we would see outbreaks of the disease.
Similarly, in no way can it be assumed that a childhood vaccination lasts a lifetime. It was assumed this would be the case in the early 20th Century but since proven not to be true. However, there are no outbreaks of these diseases in the population simply because there are no hosts and any potential outbreaks are bounded by a majority of the population being vaccinated.
It is my understanding that most children are excellent disease vectors. They touch things and touch others with a frequency that is not present in adults. Therefore it makes sense to vaccinate the most vulnerable and most likely to transfer the disease to others while leaving the rest of the population to work with a declining immunity carried from childhood.
Sure, if we stopped manditory vaccinations we would all be "freer". But we would also be a lot sicker. This is not an experiment that needs to be done. With any sense of historical context it can easily be shown as already having been proven. We need to learn from history and avoid repeating it.
What has happened is a complete disconnect between the content producers and the consumers. At least most of the content producers view their material as something extremely valuable that took their time, energy and creativity to produce. Consumers are looking at it thinking that anyone could produce this, maybe even their neighbor in his garage.
The problem as the article points out, is there too much, too low quality and too easily sampled content out there. In this glut we have Darwin Reedy (of American Idol fame) and every other self-produced, self-promoted "artist" out there thinking they are what the world has been waiting for. Too much!
So you have a truely talented artist or performer and their stuff is dumped in the bin with all the rest. We've moved beyond the point where people are looking at professionals for guides to quality. Instead, we're looking at blogs and overloaded paid shills and seeing that they have no monopoly on the truth.
Where does this go? Well, content has zero value today is a good start. If you are thinking of a career in something involving creativity, forget it - it isn't a career but only a hobby. Copyright is probably dead because it is hoping we will respect something as a treasure when it is clear it has no value. Software, books, movies and music are now going to be created by unprofessional folks that will occasionally turn out a gem. But there aren't going to be any more reviewers or awards that mean anything so they will likely be overlooked.
Think of it as the open source revolution for content. Most of it, like open source software, will be unfinished and unpolished. Sometimes, there will be something great that comes of it.
But the fact that will remain is that no matter how great it is, the value will still be zero.
The amount of idiocy here is amazing. Most people seem to have the historical perspective of a three-year-old. And, they have about the same understanding of the marketplace.
Today, ISPs pay for bandwidth resources. They are indeed responsible at some level of compensation for how much they are sucking down from elsewhere on the network. Then they have their own infrastructure to contend with. Let's ignore for a moment that their infrastructure isn't quite up to the task of 10x (or 100x) increases in demand.
The ISP suddenly is sucking down 10x more stuff than they were before. This upsets all sorts of nice balances they have worked out with peering arrangements and the like. So, now the folks they are sucking it down from - higher tier carriers - want them to pay fro all this extra bandwidth. What, did you think they just plugged in and got whatever they wanted?
Next we have the problem that for the last 10-15 years or so the Internet has been defined by web surfing and email and not much else. Sure it would have been nice if a few ISPs had been forward-thinking enough to build out 10x the capacity they needed to operate. You know, just in case some need came along. Suprisingly, this isn't a very effective way to operate a business.
Finally, in the US (and I suspect elsewere as well) the Internet has grown to the proportions it has primarily because it has been incredibly cheap. What started out as $25 a month for dial-up became $15 a month for DSL. Were these prices sustainable in the face of increased usage? No. Heck, they were sustainable in the face of any usage at all because it was to build market share and prove to the investors that this "Internet" think actually was something people were interested in.
Today, you have businesses paying $400 a month for a T1 circuit that is 1.5Mb while home users are paying $50 a month for 15Mb. The home folks are getting a deal based on the bandwidth not really being used. If you were paying for guaranteed bandwidth capacity, like the business with the T1 is, you would be paying lots more. Probably not $4000 a month (10x a T1) but no way would it be $50 or even $100 a month. Expecting to have 15Mb access 24x7 for $50 a month will get you disappointed. Badly.
The reality of the situation in the US today is that the costs are finally beginning to come down a little - like maybe $300 for that T1 instead of $400. But on the consumer front if the ISPs can't justify shared bandwidth where the average use is far far less than the possible maximum, today's pricing isn't going to hold. At some level there is a cost-per-Mb that isn't going to go away. If you want to be assured of 15Mb access with 15Mb being used constantly you are really going to have to pay for 15Mb. Today, you are paying for something more like 0.005Mb and the providers "know" that is the real level of utilization.
When the level of utilization changes, they are going to have to eventually upgrade the system. Eventually. This isn't going to happen overnight because of the costs involved. Should they have done it before? Maybe. But as of a couple of years ago the majority of use was still email and web browsing and everyone was happy with their 0.005Mb slice of the pie.
I'd bet on people getting more access capability but not a lot more total capacity in the near term. That means things like 20Mb bandwidth that bogs down a lot at peak times and caps on total utilization. I'd also bet on some big price changes coming down. You want to download 20Gb a month at 15Mb/sec? Sure, but you are going to pay. And start paying a lot closer to what dedicated bandwidth costs businesses today.
Why do you want to discrminate against people? Shouldn't the ability to use the Internet to remain anonymous and private be extended to robbers as well as anyone else? If you are going to have people doing things in the privacy of their homes remain private and anonymous, as long as they are using the Internet, shouldn't this be extended to casing out likely targets for robbery as well as everything else?
Some people just don't get it. It is the Internet. Laws are different there. Mostly, there aren't any. Cluttering things up with outmoded concepts like discrimation, racial profiling and labelling people as criminals needs to stop.
The problem with that sort of intensive security model for the average user is that neither the user nor the software can be trusted today. The user can't administer their computer: it is simply too complicated and requires too much knowledge for the average user. But every operating system available today requires the user to administer their own home computer.
The same operating systems are in use on businesses all over the planet and no company in their right mind would simply dump the computer on the user's desk with a note saying this was theirs now and they should figure it out.
The second problem is the software. You hear about some game or whatnot from a friend who says they is really great and you have to have it. OK, so it gets downloaded and installed. How was it qualified as being suitable for that computer? How was it qualified as not containins malicious content? Well, neither qualification happened, it was just installed. Period. Whatever operating system administration is required to install the program is done. Without consulting anyone else.
Of course, if two weeks later you discover that your computer isn't working so good then it is time to call in the "expert". And often pay someone to remove whatever it was that is causing all the trouble. Not just reactive but long-time-after-occurrence reactive.
I know of no operating system today that doesn't work in this mode when self-administered. I assure you that if you give a program to an average user that requires both access to all the files on the computer and network access it will be granted, by whatever procedure requires this. Sure, someone clever might wonder why this is necessary but most clever geniuses distributing such malware will have some utterly wonderful sounding total BS answers to such questions.
Sorry, you can't escape the trap that is where we are today. If your computer isn't administered by a competent administrator and you install random crap on it that "Internet friends" tell you about, you are going to have troubles. No question about it. And no "security model" is going to change that. Locked-down machines that cannot be compromised by rogue software being installed will change that. And 90% of home users have no need of something they personally can install software on. Random software. Potentially harmful software.
You misunderstand the legal system. First off, in UK there is no presumption of innocence.
Next, while the court system in the US has a presumption of innocence, the police do not. If they think they have cause to think you might be guilty, they are going to arrest you. It is then up to the prosecutor to decide if they think you can be convicted or not. Then, finally, you get to court where there is this presumption of innocence.
I'd be a heck of a lot more worried about middle-class Mexican undocumented workers flooding the US with a new amnesty program (also currently under consideration, just like SAVE is) that will take your job for half the pay. What utterly unique skills do you have that are worth double the going rate of pay? Unless you are working in theoretical physics or biomedical research the answer is almost certainly that you have no unique skills.
Jobs are going to go to the lowest bidder, and as an employer I get to choose, you don't. There are laws about employment discrimination that make it illegal to use just about any form of constructive "discrimination", like choosing to only hire native-born Americans.
Should something get enacted that doesn't throw undocumented workers out of the country, we are looking at a whole new world of labor in the US as more and more cheap labor floods in. In 1986 there was a promise of "never again". You see how long that lasted. I live in Phoenix, AZ and jobs are getting cheaper here all the time, even with the new state employer sanctions law.
Can you live on a salary that is good enough for undocumented workers? Better hope so. Our elected representatives want to make sure that labor gets cheaper and there are lots of people that are very thankful for their jobs - and vote for the people that gave them their jobs in the US.
By the way, there is an appeal process for the E-Verify system when it kicks you out that makes sure you keep your job. So your nonsense about no appeal is bunk. But if you have no ID or just a matriculation document from the Mexican Embassy and E-Verify says no good, I'd think about finding a different employer. Texas is hiring big time, and plenty of undocumented workers are moving there from Arizona and Oklahoma where they enacted new sanctions laws. But here in Phoenix the mayor is fighting the county Sheriff over deporting people, fighting for the right to have cheap labor.
I don't understand the idea that people have that the music industry should "take some theft". Sure, if it was 1% or 5% it would be tolerable. Maybe even 10%. But it's not.
It's 95%. At least. I don't know anyone that is going ever pay $0.10 for a recording ever again. They have seen the wealth set before them by the folks that are "publishing" their music collections online. They are partaking of this great wealth and it is impossible to stop. No amount of lawsuits in the US is going to turn off the tap.
Today, the people that are buying music must be the ones with dial-up Internet connections and are still playing CDs on portable devices. The folks with the 3 or 4 three-inch binders of CDs in their car. Maybe a few people with 8-track players or something. They don't have the opportunity to download music, so they have no choice but to buy and get gifts from their friends that are downloading.
Come on, do you know anyone that would actually pay for music today? Someone that uses the Internet? Naa, I didn't think so.
It isn't a question of putting up with "some theft". It is a question of quietly shutting down because nobody is going to ever buy their product again. Ever. When Wal-Mart pulls the plug on CD sales this will pretty much mean the end because that means that even the poor slobs with dial-up found a way to avoid buying music.
Success of iTunes? What are they 20% of the music SALES and 0.001% of the music downloads? I'd hardly call that a success. The iTunes music store is a add-on that is designed to help the clueless iPod owner stay legal. The fact that they too are irrelevent to music downloads in general and only relevent to the few music sales that are still occuring is interesting but not useful.
The lowest price is zero, and they can't live with that. Today, it is free as long as you don't mind not being "legal". Tomorrow, it will still be free and it might even be legal.
Until they come to terms with the idea that society (as defined by the people under 30) have determined that it should all be free, trying to get paid for music is hopeless. Maybe then they can figure out how to get paid for something - just not music.
Worried about crappy music? Well, if nobody is paying then there is no "gatekeeper" anymore. Welcome to the American Idol Rejects Compilation CD! But, it is all free.
1. I think there have been laws against stealing since Hammurabi. A sign saying "don't steal" is irrelevent, as is a notice that you shouldn't steal.
2. No. The whole point is to get as much as you can without paying for it. If it is on the Internet, I and the rest of the Internet-using world doesn't have to pay. Period. The. Internet. Is. Free. OK, can we move on now?
While it may be regrettable, I do not believe that copyright can survive the way children are being educated today. They learn everything is free on the Internet and nobody can stop them. DRM stops the less knowledgable today but in a few years that will be pointless as everyone will know how to get around it.
It comes down to a fundamental matter of respect - either you respect the rights of others or you do not. Copyright today is a matter of respect, and there isn't much of that going around. We are now arguing about whether or not someone deserves to have their right to live their life respected, with lots of folks coming down on the side of "personal freedom" allowing them to trash other people's lives with impunity.