Perhaps; stupidity does abound, after all. However, my point is mostly that when a tag gets used that liberally, it becomes pretty much useless as a filtering mechanism.
Well sure -- but it's not just this article. It's doesn't seem as bad today, but I swear for the last two weeks over half the articles have been getting tagged as 'stupid'...
Are there ANY articles lately that someone, somewhere isn't tagging "stupid"? Kind of seems to defeat the purpose if one wants to filter based on a meaningful tag...
And are you REALLY going to waste a mod point to mod this as "Offtopic", even though it's already labeled as "OT"?
That makes sense, but the only problem with it is -- in this case -- the unsupported OS's are the ones most badly in need of the protected that Firefox offers to its users.
Yes, there is a contract of sorts on the site -- but this is NOT what the plaintiff filed suit under. He filed suit under provisions of the SCA; the judge ruled that those provisions were not applicable. The judge further ruled that the court did not have jurisdiction over the case -- and after reading through the judge's opinion on the latter, I'd have to say he's right.
It seems that the judge correctly rejected this suit; it's unfortunate, because I suspect that if the plaintiff had a decent lawyer, he would have found a different route than filing under SCA in the first place.
I hear reports of this frequently, but I've had comcast cable 'net in three places so far, and each time my download speed exceeds what's advertised; and my upstream matches exactly what's advertised.
Even if toshiba drastically shrank the size of the surrounding electronics, making the entire cell the same size as a battery, it still would have no advantage. You would still have to carry around extra fuel cartridges (with methanol) for additional power.
That sounds a lot more convenient than... well, actually, there really isn't another practical option out there today. In addition, before it ever comes to market, there will need to be a cheap/convenient/easy way to 'recharge', so it seems that part of your argument is a bit premature.
Actually, that bit about encryption being used as "proof of intent" is crap. What the cnet article does NOT tell you is the host of other information that the judge wrote about in the case opinion:
http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm
There are several interesting bits of information in there, but they key one is that the person who wrote the report (Schaub) stipulated that such software was present on all new macs being sold.
A poll [aftonbladet.se] in the largest evening newspaper in sweden shows what people think of the takedown of TPB. The question in the poll is, is it right to "attack" people that are involved in filesharing. Ja = YES and Nej = NO. The results speak for themselves.
And these things could never be rigged, could they?
Though I'm curious if that's the actual translation? It would be interesting to see the results if it was phrased like this: "Is it OK for the people who own copyrights to take pre-emptive measures to ensure that people aren't attempting to evade those copyrights?"
That's a valid point -- but my answer to that is the media. It's almost a guarantee that even if (and I still doubt this'd happen) every online means of communicating what was being done were somehow squelched, it couldn't possibly stay that way: "Tonight on NBC news at 11:00, are YOU only seeing a fraction of the content available on the Internet? Tune in to find out."
To an extent, it will happen. As you (and others) have said, if this goes through, there will be a 'fast' Internet and a 'slow' Internet -- that's actually the point of the whole thing. But when it comes to using this as a way to 'censor' content, I have very serious doubts that it'd work out.
And 'reasonable' is a matter of debatable degree -- as has been mentioned numerous times on slashdot, it's a question of relative value of safety (or perceived safety, in most cases) vs. liberty and the potential for misuse.
I wrote and erased about three different replies to this, because they all began meandering into a much broader subject. The gist of it is: For ANY power the government holds over its citizens, there is literally no way for anyone in this country to prevent them from abusing it if they are bent on doing so.
With that in mind, there needs to come a point where one decides that maybe in a case like this -- in which the abuse potential is rather limited (picture examining aggregate data from web logs and identifying IP address that are sending what appear to be hack attempts) -- they're only doing what they claim, and nothing more.
For your speeding example, the better metaphor would be to monitor Speedpass/EZPass times to then investigate the driving records, bank records, etc of all people who averaged over the speed limit for distance x. Or even more appropriate, to investigate all people who happen to drive at 10 PM, since that is when there are the most egregious speeders on the road
Probably the speeding example wasn't the best, but I don't think yours fits any better -- they're both flawed because of the nature of the threat. Speeding might kill a handful of people, but it's not an effective form of attack against the general welfare of the nation as a whole (save for the fact that enforcing arbitrary traffic laws weakens meaningful laws, but that's a whole different discussion).
I do think that something like flyover patrols of the borders are more similar, or even satellite surveillance -- it's a passive, non-invasive means of looking for a potential threat. I see data mining from the same perspective.
As to one way in which anyone has been affected -- how about citizens of Middle Eastern descent who are afraid to call their family overseas? How about the fact that it's always in the back of my mind that big brother could be listening?
But the topic at hand wasn't eavesdropping (which is also a whole different discussion) -- it was the presumably automated examination of call patterns to determine what needs to be followed up by actual humans.
Exactly. Which is exactly why we shouldn't allow the government to take measures with a high risk of abuse -- we're allowing it just because of the fear of what might be.
The fact of the matter is that we're allowing the government a tool that would facilitate trampling of our rights. We CANNOT trust government not to misuse this information -- therefore, they should not be allowed to have it. As all the TJ followers have taken to heart, a "healthy mistrust of government" is a predicate for participatory government like ours. To do otherwise is to be naive, short-sighted, and without understanding of history.
I think I gave my perspective on the abuse potential in my first couple of paragraphs (let me know if not -- I really hate when people just ignore the parts of an argument they can't answer, so I try hard not to do that).
It could just be a combination of naivete and fatalism on my part, but on the off chance we can make a difference if there were an administration who truly was in it only for the power, I would rather see that energy focused on thing that impact people in their daily lives.
This is actually a bit frustrating, because I don't seem to be able to quite explain what I want to say here... I see that it makes me come across as someone saying "Big brother knows best", but that's not at all the point I'm trying to make (nor is it a sentiment I subscribe to).
Ah, well. Out of time, so it'll have to do. Work to do, and all that.
I'd be happier if they didn't mix case. It's hard to tell a lowercase C from an uppercase C, especially when it's on a 45 degree angle and 'spattered'.
Other than that, no real issues. SOme of the more professional sites I see do also offer alternatives (telephone or audio files) for the blind. To say that people are "angered" by it may be an exaggeration.
Alright, yet/still/ -- the publicity, financial, and legal ramifications of doing what everyone here thinks they will do are such that they would have to be very, very reluctant to actually do so. Remember, they have to answer to shareholders -- and if their actions do anything that impacts their bottom line, it opens a whole new can of worms for them. My bet is that they're not that fiscally stupid.
But that's still a monopoly/antitrust concern, and not a censorship concern. However, #2 was the more important point. They can do whatever they want since they own the wires -- but they'll be hit with a rather expensive backlash if they do.
1. If you're not the government, censorship doesn't count.
2. Do you really think that this -- and the various bandwidth limiting schemes that everyone here is bleating about -- would be something the telcos could actually afford to do? The second they try, they will be/inundated/ with lawsuits, along with cease & desist orders issued by sympathetic judges.
First, might as well mod me down before going any further, because I know how unpopular these views are here... but here goes.
Data mining is unreasonable search... is speculative work, not investigative, so regardless of whether it *can* be used for speculative 'research' into the activity of American citizens, it *shouldn't* be
I am a very strong advocate for privacy, but I still feel that statement is ridiculous. It seems to me (please clarify if I'm mistaken) that this is comparable to the following statements:
Checking IDs of passengers arriving from other countries is speculative, not investigative, so it shouldn't be permitted"
"That cop has no right to monitor my speed on this road, because that's speculating that I may be speeding.
The air force has no right to patrol our borders, because they're only speculating that someone might attack us.
The government has no right to analyze national flight patterns, because it's only speculation that a deviance would indicate that an attack was underway.
Please tell me one way in which you -- or any citizien -- have been affected by the government looking at the calling patterns of 260+million people. Tell me of one way in which your privacy is compromised? Tell me of one constitutional right which is violated.
Unreasonable search and seizure? Hardly. It's not unreasonable for the government to take non intrusive, reasonable precautions to protect the welfare of the nation from outside threats. THat is, after all, one of the few legitimate purposes of a government. This is true regardless of whether or not people (even the citizens who voted the government into office) believe that those threats are real. 9/11 proved that they are real.
I am aware that the potential for abuse is high -- that is what makes me nervous. But if we lived our lives in fear of what might be, we'd never leave our homes.
Let me clarify one other point -- a LOT of the things that we are letting the government do in the name of 'security' are nothing short of ridiculous (disallowing nailclippers and lighters on airplanes comes to mind). However, this seems to me to be one of the few that isn't one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still struggling to escape from my doomed dementia.
Wait, I mispronounced -- I meant to say Canadians
Damn. Did it again. I really meant to say Americans.
Because in a title, it's correct for all first letters to be capitalized (except for first letters of articles).
Perhaps; stupidity does abound, after all. However, my point is mostly that when a tag gets used that liberally, it becomes pretty much useless as a filtering mechanism.
Well sure -- but it's not just this article. It's doesn't seem as bad today, but I swear for the last two weeks over half the articles have been getting tagged as 'stupid'...
Are there ANY articles lately that someone, somewhere isn't tagging "stupid"? Kind of seems to defeat the purpose if one wants to filter based on a meaningful tag...
And are you REALLY going to waste a mod point to mod this as "Offtopic", even though it's already labeled as "OT"?
That makes sense, but the only problem with it is -- in this case -- the unsupported OS's are the ones most badly in need of the protected that Firefox offers to its users.
Oh, my. I feel silly.
/me shrugs. So get someone to mod me redundant... I didn't see yours.
And the thing that started all this was pressure from the US government and an association that represents US corporations,
Eh? I'm confused. I thought that the US government is the association that represents US corporations.
Wow! I didn't know that they had Gentoo back then! And you could emerge movies?!
Yes, there is a contract of sorts on the site -- but this is NOT what the plaintiff filed suit under. He filed suit under provisions of the SCA; the judge ruled that those provisions were not applicable. The judge further ruled that the court did not have jurisdiction over the case -- and after reading through the judge's opinion on the latter, I'd have to say he's right.
It seems that the judge correctly rejected this suit; it's unfortunate, because I suspect that if the plaintiff had a decent lawyer, he would have found a different route than filing under SCA in the first place.
I hear reports of this frequently, but I've had comcast cable 'net in three places so far, and each time my download speed exceeds what's advertised; and my upstream matches exactly what's advertised.
Even if toshiba drastically shrank the size of the surrounding electronics, making the entire cell the same size as a battery, it still would have no advantage. You would still have to carry around extra fuel cartridges (with methanol) for additional power.
That sounds a lot more convenient than ... well, actually, there really isn't another practical option out there today. In addition, before it ever comes to market, there will need to be a cheap/convenient/easy way to 'recharge', so it seems that part of your argument is a bit premature.
Actually, that bit about encryption being used as "proof of intent" is crap. What the cnet article does NOT tell you is the host of other information that the judge wrote about in the case opinion: http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm
There are several interesting bits of information in there, but they key one is that the person who wrote the report (Schaub) stipulated that such software was present on all new macs being sold.
A poll [aftonbladet.se] in the largest evening newspaper in sweden shows what people think of the takedown of TPB. The question in the poll is, is it right to "attack" people that are involved in filesharing. Ja = YES and Nej = NO. The results speak for themselves.
And these things could never be rigged, could they?
Though I'm curious if that's the actual translation? It would be interesting to see the results if it was phrased like this: "Is it OK for the people who own copyrights to take pre-emptive measures to ensure that people aren't attempting to evade those copyrights?"
That's a valid point -- but my answer to that is the media. It's almost a guarantee that even if (and I still doubt this'd happen) every online means of communicating what was being done were somehow squelched, it couldn't possibly stay that way: "Tonight on NBC news at 11:00, are YOU only seeing a fraction of the content available on the Internet? Tune in to find out."
To an extent, it will happen. As you (and others) have said, if this goes through, there will be a 'fast' Internet and a 'slow' Internet -- that's actually the point of the whole thing. But when it comes to using this as a way to 'censor' content, I have very serious doubts that it'd work out.
And 'reasonable' is a matter of debatable degree -- as has been mentioned numerous times on slashdot, it's a question of relative value of safety (or perceived safety, in most cases) vs. liberty and the potential for misuse.
I wrote and erased about three different replies to this, because they all began meandering into a much broader subject. The gist of it is: For ANY power the government holds over its citizens, there is literally no way for anyone in this country to prevent them from abusing it if they are bent on doing so.
With that in mind, there needs to come a point where one decides that maybe in a case like this -- in which the abuse potential is rather limited (picture examining aggregate data from web logs and identifying IP address that are sending what appear to be hack attempts) -- they're only doing what they claim, and nothing more.
For your speeding example, the better metaphor would be to monitor Speedpass/EZPass times to then investigate the driving records, bank records, etc of all people who averaged over the speed limit for distance x. Or even more appropriate, to investigate all people who happen to drive at 10 PM, since that is when there are the most egregious speeders on the road
Probably the speeding example wasn't the best, but I don't think yours fits any better -- they're both flawed because of the nature of the threat. Speeding might kill a handful of people, but it's not an effective form of attack against the general welfare of the nation as a whole (save for the fact that enforcing arbitrary traffic laws weakens meaningful laws, but that's a whole different discussion).
I do think that something like flyover patrols of the borders are more similar, or even satellite surveillance -- it's a passive, non-invasive means of looking for a potential threat. I see data mining from the same perspective.
As to one way in which anyone has been affected -- how about citizens of Middle Eastern descent who are afraid to call their family overseas? How about the fact that it's always in the back of my mind that big brother could be listening?
But the topic at hand wasn't eavesdropping (which is also a whole different discussion) -- it was the presumably automated examination of call patterns to determine what needs to be followed up by actual humans.
Exactly. Which is exactly why we shouldn't allow the government to take measures with a high risk of abuse -- we're allowing it just because of the fear of what might be. The fact of the matter is that we're allowing the government a tool that would facilitate trampling of our rights. We CANNOT trust government not to misuse this information -- therefore, they should not be allowed to have it. As all the TJ followers have taken to heart, a "healthy mistrust of government" is a predicate for participatory government like ours. To do otherwise is to be naive, short-sighted, and without understanding of history.
I think I gave my perspective on the abuse potential in my first couple of paragraphs (let me know if not -- I really hate when people just ignore the parts of an argument they can't answer, so I try hard not to do that).
It could just be a combination of naivete and fatalism on my part, but on the off chance we can make a difference if there were an administration who truly was in it only for the power, I would rather see that energy focused on thing that impact people in their daily lives.
This is actually a bit frustrating, because I don't seem to be able to quite explain what I want to say here... I see that it makes me come across as someone saying "Big brother knows best", but that's not at all the point I'm trying to make (nor is it a sentiment I subscribe to).
Ah, well. Out of time, so it'll have to do. Work to do, and all that.
I'd be happier if they didn't mix case. It's hard to tell a lowercase C from an uppercase C, especially when it's on a 45 degree angle and 'spattered'.
Other than that, no real issues. SOme of the more professional sites I see do also offer alternatives (telephone or audio files) for the blind. To say that people are "angered" by it may be an exaggeration.
Alright, yet /still/ -- the publicity, financial, and legal ramifications of doing what everyone here thinks they will do are such that they would have to be very, very reluctant to actually do so. Remember, they have to answer to shareholders -- and if their actions do anything that impacts their bottom line, it opens a whole new can of worms for them. My bet is that they're not that fiscally stupid.
But that's still a monopoly/antitrust concern, and not a censorship concern. However, #2 was the more important point. They can do whatever they want since they own the wires -- but they'll be hit with a rather expensive backlash if they do.
This was a joke, right?
1. If you're not the government, censorship doesn't count. 2. Do you really think that this -- and the various bandwidth limiting schemes that everyone here is bleating about -- would be something the telcos could actually afford to do? The second they try, they will be /inundated/ with lawsuits, along with cease & desist orders issued by sympathetic judges.
First, might as well mod me down before going any further, because I know how unpopular these views are here... but here goes.
Data mining is unreasonable search... is speculative work, not investigative, so regardless of whether it *can* be used for speculative 'research' into the activity of American citizens, it *shouldn't* be
I am a very strong advocate for privacy, but I still feel that statement is ridiculous. It seems to me (please clarify if I'm mistaken) that this is comparable to the following statements:
Please tell me one way in which you -- or any citizien -- have been affected by the government looking at the calling patterns of 260+million people. Tell me of one way in which your privacy is compromised? Tell me of one constitutional right which is violated.
Unreasonable search and seizure? Hardly. It's not unreasonable for the government to take non intrusive, reasonable precautions to protect the welfare of the nation from outside threats. THat is, after all, one of the few legitimate purposes of a government. This is true regardless of whether or not people (even the citizens who voted the government into office) believe that those threats are real. 9/11 proved that they are real.
I am aware that the potential for abuse is high -- that is what makes me nervous. But if we lived our lives in fear of what might be, we'd never leave our homes.
Let me clarify one other point -- a LOT of the things that we are letting the government do in the name of 'security' are nothing short of ridiculous (disallowing nailclippers and lighters on airplanes comes to mind). However, this seems to me to be one of the few that isn't one of them.
You missed the most obvious. This wasn't an equipment malfunction, it was a hands-on demonstration of their Customer Lockin(tm) policy.