Why can't MS and Google publish "metadata" on the number of FISA requests and number of accounts requested?
If it is good for the goose, it's good for the gander.
Agree... You can challenge a gag order by violating it and then if sued or subjected to criminal prosecution argue that the gag order was void.
In any event, Google and Microsoft should have done this before the Snowden revelations if they really wanted any credibility...
Get real...
I live in Denmark, I have yet to hear about no-fly-lists, warrantless wiretapping exists only if
1) waiting for a court order would imply loss of opportunity, however, the case must be presented
before the courts within 24 hours.
2) we're in a state of war, then the minister of defense can with authorize warrantless wiretapping.
I'm not familiar with any secret courts, and seriously doubt that the European Court of Human Rights,
to which my government answers, would look favorably upon secret courts.
Also I'm pretty sure the intelligence services don't have authority to kill people, not foreign citizen, not Danish citizens,
they don't even have the authority to help the American intelligence services commit murder, meaning sharing intelligence
that would lead to murder, is not allowed...
Looking a internet logging, the ISPs are required to log a lot of data, ie. every 20th session or so, by log I mean time and IPs not content.
However, these cannot be accessed without court order, and are held by the ISPs not the agencies that would want to query them.
If the entirety of human history is any indicator, the governed won't see any changes in a situation like this until they're willing to use lethal force against those who govern them.
In fact, if you look at, it looks as if through the entirety of human history non-violent resistance is really in these days:)
(In fact, never before in the history of mankind have you as an individual ever been more empowered than now).
I'm a US citizen that's strongly opposed to all of this bullshit. I've lost my own patience for my government.
What should people like me do to show people like you that we're just as fed up as you are, if not more?
Anything really, just do something, please...
But may I ask, if you have:
- Donated to the EFF?
- Signed all applicable petitions? (optin.stopwatching.us, perhaps? and more...)
- Written a personal letter to your representatives?
Those things are the least you can do... as a concerned citizen it is probably you moral duty to do so...
These things don't really cost you anything, nor does it cost you anything to get your friends and family to do the same.
Many will tell you that these things don't change much, that is however not an excuse to skip them!
In fact writing you representatives is not something many people do, and doing does likely make a difference, even if they don't reply.
That said these things was just the least you could do. Next digging through a congressman's trash to find well trash, just kidding:) But I'm sure there's lots of opportunities to volunteer and spend more than 5min stopping the crimes your country is committing... It's a worthy course.
Isn't this just for show, or getting some benefits from the USA? I'm under the impression that a lot of earopean members are already using intel from prism and in exchange the USA gets access to the network.
I wouldn't be surprised to find the British in bed with the Americans... But I find France and in particular Germany to very unlikely...
I'm sure the intelligence service in Denmark cooperates with the US and maybe they even know when not to ask how the US came about that information... But I have trust that my socialist government isn't selling me out the Americans...
They are way too crazy to keep a secret like that, and for that I love them:)
Note, our former Minister for business and growth is an old member of the communist party, he celebrated the 60 years anniversary of the DDR in east Germany back in 1989... Yes, our politicians are more moderate than they used to be, but not all of them sucking up to the US, any chance they get.
I'm not sure the Viacom situation applies. Legally Viacom would have been well within its rights to upload a clip, then demand YouTube take down an identical clip uploaded by a user, it's their content.
When you hit the upload button, you also agree to some terms... Google give you the ability to login with the user that uploaded the video and remove it.
But if you file a DMCA take-down notice, and/or sue over it, that's probably abuse of the legal system. Considering that the upload terms explicitly grants Google a license to the work (probably an irrevocable licence).
I'm just saying... you need to fix your political system before you can fight this.... claiming that it can be done choosing not to buy from these corps... won't work...
The gov't should dictate what Universities are allowed to charge in tuition to _all_ students, and also require that a certain percentage of the student body be from lower income brackets (and these disadvantaged student could pay even less).
No, but the gov't should dictate what Universities are allowed to charge in tuition when students receive gov't backed student loan...
Additionally, the government should limit how much employees of non-profit universities are allowed to be paid.
I agree that this sounds reasonable... but this tax code changes... and in practice they'll always find a way around if they really want to. Maybe they'll end up paying taxes for the salary part by routing it through a for-profit entity fully owned by the non-profit.
I'm no tax expert... But at the end of the day a non-profit should be run by a board who doesn't make profit on it's activities. However, to achieve the goal of the non-profit, it's not necessarily unreasonable to hire people on a competitive salary.
But this is a hard topic, with reasonable arguments on both sides...
Why is that question absurd? Many people have hired prostitutes?
And in many places it's perfectly legal to do so... Furthermore, if you asked me that question at an interview, I'm sure my union would smell blood a sue the hell out of you...
Though to be fair, my union would probably sue you over the mere suggestion that I submit to a polygraph test:)
In many countries it is very limited what details about a candidates personal life you are allowed to inquire about, as any such inquiry opens you to law suits for discrimination, should you choose not the hire the candidate for any reason what so ever.
We can be passive - and let them (the corporations / governments ) manipulate our lives...
If "them" includes your government then you're truly screwed... The government is exactly the structure you should use to control big corporations, through regulations.
If you don't trust your government to do a good job at that... well, then you should fix your government first.
Sure, you can try not to buy from big corporations, but at this point it is not realistic to do this successfully on a large scale
Cut off loans might work on the long term... but on the short term it'll feel like screwing the students...
In other countries the education is largely paid by the public sector (government) and the government sets limits on how much more Universities are allowed to charge.
In my country the state pays everything, and Universities are not allowed to charge more... If they choose to accept paying students who didn't go through the public admission system (based on merit) the University will not be allowed to hand out the same titles.
Subsidies are fine, in fact an excellent tool to fight negative social heritage... but subsidies should come with requirements. For example subsidies Universities can't charge tuition over 2k per year. That might be something you can actually implement.
and major online retailers in the US are so cowed by the studios and production companies that they almost always refuse to ship DVD/Blu-Ray outside of the US?
Not to mention the fact that if you buy dvds from the US, you'll have to deal with region codes... For blu-ray etc.. I guess it's much worse...
I bought a tv series on DVD from Amazon US once, years ago... Ended up paying 50 USD extra in taxes, 30 USD extra in tax processing fee, and then had to bother with DVD region codes to get it working.
I'm not making that mistake again...
To further support that argument... Recent data shows that when netflix came to my country piracy fell... netflix is still more expensive that the US counter part, and only features a few hundrede movies...
So yes, the availability argument does hold. I have almost stopped pirating since streaming services, although still very poor have been readily available in my country...
Now, if there was better availability and no DRM, piracy would fall significantly...
No surprise... netflix have also said that when they enter a market piracy drops...
Since streaming services have arrived in my country I've also pirated less...
However, netflix in Europe and other streaming services are still way more expensive that their american counter parts and only features a very limited set of content...
That and the DRM issues combined, piracy in Europe is still the primary content route for many users...
Personally, I just stopped consuming content... I can't keep up with the teenagers anyway:)
Disagree - IMHO Unity is innovative and easy to use.
I agree... and I respect the chances they've taken...
Unfortunately, there's some basic things, very basic things in Unity that just doesn't work right. For instance drag-and-drop, doesn't work unless you wait for the animations to finish.
It's a small thing, but it's extremely basic and it's one of those things we'll just expect to work.
Your free education is showing...the word you were looking for was latter not ladder.
Well, in my defense I didn't major in English:)
- That would have been fairly useless...
On topic, where I live nobody wants to study computer science... Kids are so spoiled they study what they want to study... not a subject that gives them a well paying job.
This partly because they don't pay, partly because minimum wage is fairly decent, and welfare support is 2-3k USD per month.
I doubt the solution is the make people pay, because we need more people to take a long education, that doesn't happen by making it less financially viable...
So yeah, when I applied for computer science, everybody who applied was admitted. Yes, the quality of graduates varies, but those who worked hard or started to work hard somewhere a long the way, got out with a very good education.
And please don't bother questioning the quality. The quality is reviewed by independent authorities, I know I've been questioned in such a review.
I also know of several students, yours truly included, who published peer-reviewed papers during their bachelor or master degree.
And yes, it hard to quantify quality of an education, but publication is a pretty good indicator:)
You can lead a student to learning, but you can't make them think.... or do the homework.
It's not that simple... the story is that getting students into class, etc... i.e. the more traditional educational approaches, leads to more students doing the work required to learn something.
I often see people bashing about how universities are expensive, and we should all drop out and just follow online courses... i.e. Learn it on our own...
But this clearly shows that showing up for class, discussion with others and having supervisors expecting things from you is very important.
Obviously, it should come as no surprise that educating your self, versus showing up for class, that ladder options is easiest and, thus, most likely to succeed.
Luckily, I'm from a country where education is free... In fact, my living expenses were more or less covered, during the 5 years I just spend taking an MSc in CS.
And anyone here who thinks only the US does this and their country doesn't spy on its citizens is living in a dream world.
I'm fairly confident that my government is too incompetent to build a secret successful IT project on a scale that can register anything about its 5 million citizen:)
Luckily they're aren't completely incompetent when it comes to non-IT related things. Though they still weren't able to keep extradition of POWs to US troops in Afghanistan a secret. Note such extradition is a war crime, given that US troops are known to employ torture.
On topic, yes - I'm surprised. This is a new low for the US government.
But our government has a good reputation for fucking up IT projects in catastrophic ways
I feel the same way... I live in Denmark where the public sector also has a good reputation for "fucking up IT projects in catastrophic ways".
So when it comes to the government spying on me, I feel fairly safe, knowing that at least my government doesn't have the competence to do so:)
Seriously, we have law specifying that ISPs must log every 20th TCP/IP session, just IP addresses and timestamp.
Everything is stored at the ISPs and they may only release it on court order.
Cost 200 million USD to establish, 20 million USD to maintain every year.
Yet, when asked a couple of years after the law as enacted, the police says they haven't used the logs yet, nor do they have any IT system capable of reading the logs. Because all ISPs writes logs in their own format:)
So fear not, your governments ability to fuckup large IT project most likely also extents to the intelligence services.
I do not require some central authority to inform me of my rights. I am well aware of what they are.
Well, in order to agree on them it makes a lot of sense the use a central authority to standardize the rights.
For instance some people think they have a right to smoke a cigarette next to me in bus, both me and the bus driver would disagree:)
However, had we tried to assert our right to kick them out we would probably have ended up in an unpleasant confrontation.
When two people disagree over what rights they make have, this should not be solved by violence, but by a court.
That's why one shouldn't necessarily have a right to shoot someone for smoking in a bus, even though it may be a clear violation of my rights and the non-smoking sign.
To sum up: When you talk about natural rights, this can be many things and people believe they have difference rights. That why it's important to resolve conflicts in a civilized way, and not by employing violence. Sure, violence cannot always be avoided. But I guess this why many countries, in fact most I think, prohibits self defense, if you are able to get our of the situation without use of violence.
True, but the US is not my country to fix... Are you telling me I'm better of staying away?
I refuse to believe that the free world is coming to an end, there are ups and downs, but are they really as bad as they're being portrayed?
Slashdot Mirror
Why can't MS and Google publish "metadata" on the number of FISA requests and number of accounts requested? If it is good for the goose, it's good for the gander.
Agree... You can challenge a gag order by violating it and then if sued or subjected to criminal prosecution argue that the gag order was void.
In any event, Google and Microsoft should have done this before the Snowden revelations if they really wanted any credibility...
Go ahead, convince us its better where you live.
Get real...
I live in Denmark, I have yet to hear about no-fly-lists, warrantless wiretapping exists only if
1) waiting for a court order would imply loss of opportunity, however, the case must be presented
before the courts within 24 hours.
2) we're in a state of war, then the minister of defense can with authorize warrantless wiretapping.
Source, answer by minister of justice (Danish):
http://www.ft.dk/samling/20101/almdel/reu/spm/381/svar/762713/928490/index.htm?
I'm not familiar with any secret courts, and seriously doubt that the European Court of Human Rights,
to which my government answers, would look favorably upon secret courts.
Also I'm pretty sure the intelligence services don't have authority to kill people, not foreign citizen, not Danish citizens,
they don't even have the authority to help the American intelligence services commit murder, meaning sharing intelligence
that would lead to murder, is not allowed...
Looking a internet logging, the ISPs are required to log a lot of data, ie. every 20th session or so, by log I mean time and IPs not content.
However, these cannot be accessed without court order, and are held by the ISPs not the agencies that would want to query them.
In social "sciences" these are valid means... and can infact be backed by statistics...
In social "sciences" a simple measurement with a lot data points is often better than quantitative data..
Noticeable is an understatement
That's 35 inches in 100 years.
I hope it's even!
Or 9mm per year, 9cm per 10 years, 0.90m per 100 years, to be exact...
If the entirety of human history is any indicator, the governed won't see any changes in a situation like this until they're willing to use lethal force against those who govern them.
Let's take at the history of nonviolent resistance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_resistance
:)
In fact, if you look at, it looks as if through the entirety of human history non-violent resistance is really in these days
(In fact, never before in the history of mankind have you as an individual ever been more empowered than now).
I'm a US citizen that's strongly opposed to all of this bullshit. I've lost my own patience for my government. What should people like me do to show people like you that we're just as fed up as you are, if not more?
Anything really, just do something, please...
:)
But may I ask, if you have:
- Donated to the EFF?
- Signed all applicable petitions? (optin.stopwatching.us, perhaps? and more...)
- Written a personal letter to your representatives?
Those things are the least you can do... as a concerned citizen it is probably you moral duty to do so...
These things don't really cost you anything, nor does it cost you anything to get your friends and family to do the same.
Many will tell you that these things don't change much, that is however not an excuse to skip them!
In fact writing you representatives is not something many people do, and doing does likely make a difference, even if they don't reply.
That said these things was just the least you could do. Next digging through a congressman's trash to find well trash, just kidding
But I'm sure there's lots of opportunities to volunteer and spend more than 5min stopping the crimes your country is committing... It's a worthy course.
Surveillance of French citizens is a job for France!
Yeah, in these times of crisis it's really rude to be stealing other peoples jobs :)
Isn't this just for show, or getting some benefits from the USA? I'm under the impression that a lot of earopean members are already using intel from prism and in exchange the USA gets access to the network.
I wouldn't be surprised to find the British in bed with the Americans... But I find France and in particular Germany to very unlikely...
:)
I'm sure the intelligence service in Denmark cooperates with the US and maybe they even know when not to ask how the US came about that information... But I have trust that my socialist government isn't selling me out the Americans...
They are way too crazy to keep a secret like that, and for that I love them
Note, our former Minister for business and growth is an old member of the communist party, he celebrated the 60 years anniversary of the DDR in east Germany back in 1989... Yes, our politicians are more moderate than they used to be, but not all of them sucking up to the US, any chance they get.
I'm not sure the Viacom situation applies. Legally Viacom would have been well within its rights to upload a clip, then demand YouTube take down an identical clip uploaded by a user, it's their content.
When you hit the upload button, you also agree to some terms... Google give you the ability to login with the user that uploaded the video and remove it.
But if you file a DMCA take-down notice, and/or sue over it, that's probably abuse of the legal system. Considering that the upload terms explicitly grants Google a license to the work (probably an irrevocable licence).
I'm just saying... you need to fix your political system before you can fight this.... claiming that it can be done choosing not to buy from these corps... won't work...
Or maybe do it at state level...
I guess I must have had exceptionally good HDDs. I only had one HDD failure....
As grandparent said "that is a nice anecdote"... but were you "writing 10GB per day"?
I don't know where the 4 years number comes from... but it's not completely unlikely. Just take a look at the research:
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/da//archive/disk_failures.pdf
Granted it's a few years old...
The gov't should dictate what Universities are allowed to charge in tuition to _all_ students, and also require that a certain percentage of the student body be from lower income brackets (and these disadvantaged student could pay even less).
No, but the gov't should dictate what Universities are allowed to charge in tuition when students receive gov't backed student loan...
Additionally, the government should limit how much employees of non-profit universities are allowed to be paid.
I agree that this sounds reasonable... but this tax code changes... and in practice they'll always find a way around if they really want to. Maybe they'll end up paying taxes for the salary part by routing it through a for-profit entity fully owned by the non-profit.
I'm no tax expert... But at the end of the day a non-profit should be run by a board who doesn't make profit on it's activities. However, to achieve the goal of the non-profit, it's not necessarily unreasonable to hire people on a competitive salary.
But this is a hard topic, with reasonable arguments on both sides...
Why is that question absurd? Many people have hired prostitutes?
And in many places it's perfectly legal to do so... Furthermore, if you asked me that question at an interview, I'm sure my union would smell blood a sue the hell out of you... :)
Though to be fair, my union would probably sue you over the mere suggestion that I submit to a polygraph test
In many countries it is very limited what details about a candidates personal life you are allowed to inquire about, as any such inquiry opens you to law suits for discrimination, should you choose not the hire the candidate for any reason what so ever.
We can be passive - and let them (the corporations / governments ) manipulate our lives...
If "them" includes your government then you're truly screwed... The government is exactly the structure you should use to control big corporations, through regulations.
If you don't trust your government to do a good job at that... well, then you should fix your government first.
Sure, you can try not to buy from big corporations, but at this point it is not realistic to do this successfully on a large scale
Cut off loans might work on the long term... but on the short term it'll feel like screwing the students...
In other countries the education is largely paid by the public sector (government) and the government sets limits on how much more Universities are allowed to charge.
In my country the state pays everything, and Universities are not allowed to charge more... If they choose to accept paying students who didn't go through the public admission system (based on merit) the University will not be allowed to hand out the same titles.
Subsidies are fine, in fact an excellent tool to fight negative social heritage... but subsidies should come with requirements. For example subsidies Universities can't charge tuition over 2k per year. That might be something you can actually implement.
and major online retailers in the US are so cowed by the studios and production companies that they almost always refuse to ship DVD/Blu-Ray outside of the US?
Not to mention the fact that if you buy dvds from the US, you'll have to deal with region codes... For blu-ray etc.. I guess it's much worse...
I bought a tv series on DVD from Amazon US once, years ago... Ended up paying 50 USD extra in taxes, 30 USD extra in tax processing fee, and then had to bother with DVD region codes to get it working.
I'm not making that mistake again...
To further support that argument... Recent data shows that when netflix came to my country piracy fell... netflix is still more expensive that the US counter part, and only features a few hundrede movies...
So yes, the availability argument does hold. I have almost stopped pirating since streaming services, although still very poor have been readily available in my country...
Now, if there was better availability and no DRM, piracy would fall significantly...
No surprise... netflix have also said that when they enter a market piracy drops...
:)
Since streaming services have arrived in my country I've also pirated less...
However, netflix in Europe and other streaming services are still way more expensive that their american counter parts and only features a very limited set of content...
That and the DRM issues combined, piracy in Europe is still the primary content route for many users...
Personally, I just stopped consuming content... I can't keep up with the teenagers anyway
Disagree - IMHO Unity is innovative and easy to use.
I agree... and I respect the chances they've taken...
Unfortunately, there's some basic things, very basic things in Unity that just doesn't work right. For instance drag-and-drop, doesn't work unless you wait for the animations to finish.
It's a small thing, but it's extremely basic and it's one of those things we'll just expect to work.
Your free education is showing...the word you were looking for was latter not ladder.
Well, in my defense I didn't major in English :)
:)
- That would have been fairly useless...
On topic, where I live nobody wants to study computer science... Kids are so spoiled they study what they want to study... not a subject that gives them a well paying job.
This partly because they don't pay, partly because minimum wage is fairly decent, and welfare support is 2-3k USD per month.
I doubt the solution is the make people pay, because we need more people to take a long education, that doesn't happen by making it less financially viable...
So yeah, when I applied for computer science, everybody who applied was admitted. Yes, the quality of graduates varies, but those who worked hard or started to work hard somewhere a long the way, got out with a very good education.
And please don't bother questioning the quality. The quality is reviewed by independent authorities, I know I've been questioned in such a review.
I also know of several students, yours truly included, who published peer-reviewed papers during their bachelor or master degree.
And yes, it hard to quantify quality of an education, but publication is a pretty good indicator
You can lead a student to learning, but you can't make them think.... or do the homework.
It's not that simple... the story is that getting students into class, etc... i.e. the more traditional educational approaches, leads to more students doing the work required to learn something.
I often see people bashing about how universities are expensive, and we should all drop out and just follow online courses... i.e. Learn it on our own...
But this clearly shows that showing up for class, discussion with others and having supervisors expecting things from you is very important.
Obviously, it should come as no surprise that educating your self, versus showing up for class, that ladder options is easiest and, thus, most likely to succeed.
Luckily, I'm from a country where education is free... In fact, my living expenses were more or less covered, during the 5 years I just spend taking an MSc in CS.
Germany, France, Denmark and others don't need it at all
Sure we do... we all need a free marked... this is about time...
And anyone here who thinks only the US does this and their country doesn't spy on its citizens is living in a dream world.
I'm fairly confident that my government is too incompetent to build a secret successful IT project on a scale that can register anything about its 5 million citizen :)
Luckily they're aren't completely incompetent when it comes to non-IT related things. Though they still weren't able to keep extradition of POWs to US troops in Afghanistan a secret. Note such extradition is a war crime, given that US troops are known to employ torture.
On topic, yes - I'm surprised. This is a new low for the US government.
But our government has a good reputation for fucking up IT projects in catastrophic ways
I feel the same way... I live in Denmark where the public sector also has a good reputation for "fucking up IT projects in catastrophic ways".
:)
:)
So when it comes to the government spying on me, I feel fairly safe, knowing that at least my government doesn't have the competence to do so
Seriously, we have law specifying that ISPs must log every 20th TCP/IP session, just IP addresses and timestamp.
Everything is stored at the ISPs and they may only release it on court order. Cost 200 million USD to establish, 20 million USD to maintain every year.
Yet, when asked a couple of years after the law as enacted, the police says they haven't used the logs yet, nor do they have any IT system capable of reading the logs. Because all ISPs writes logs in their own format
So fear not, your governments ability to fuckup large IT project most likely also extents to the intelligence services.
I do not require some central authority to inform me of my rights. I am well aware of what they are.
Well, in order to agree on them it makes a lot of sense the use a central authority to standardize the rights. :)
For instance some people think they have a right to smoke a cigarette next to me in bus, both me and the bus driver would disagree
However, had we tried to assert our right to kick them out we would probably have ended up in an unpleasant confrontation.
When two people disagree over what rights they make have, this should not be solved by violence, but by a court.
That's why one shouldn't necessarily have a right to shoot someone for smoking in a bus, even though it may be a clear violation of my rights and the non-smoking sign.
To sum up: When you talk about natural rights, this can be many things and people believe they have difference rights. That why it's important to resolve conflicts in a civilized way, and not by employing violence. Sure, violence cannot always be avoided. But I guess this why many countries, in fact most I think, prohibits self defense, if you are able to get our of the situation without use of violence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
True, but the US is not my country to fix... Are you telling me I'm better of staying away?
I refuse to believe that the free world is coming to an end, there are ups and downs, but are they really as bad as they're being portrayed?