anything over 50% is majority turnout and representative of a majority opinion. Sampling data uses fractional percentages of the population, and produces quite similar results. You don't need 100% sampling to produce an accurate result. The idea that voting should be mandatory is authoritarian, and weakens democracy, forcing huge statistics of uncertain and uninformed votes. So no, 60% turnout isn't sad.. except for activists who want as many like-minded votes as possible.
"This war on terror is total BS" - I agree, the President should have had the balls to come out and say this is a war against Islamic terrorism.
'The key to the quote you provided is "foreign intelligence". If tapping the lines of citizens qualifies as foreign intelligence, then something is wrong..' - Are you suggesting that domestic phone lines are incapable of connecting to foreign agents? Or that domestic wiretaps are incapable of collecting foreign intelligence. Put a paper bag over your face and take slow, deep breaths. I can eavesdrop on the conversation of two foreign agents working in the United States, and gather foreign intelligence. You need to at least know what intelligence information they are gathering before you can presume to make judgements as to whether or not what they are doing is necessary. Isn't that a rational response? Or are you only interested in being an ideologue?
"Important question for you: at what point does security cross the lines of liberty? The government taps your phone and has cameras on every street corner." At the point where I am not reasonably safe from the government. the government tapping my phone doesn't put me at risk for arrest.. at least in this country. That is, unless I'm bragging about the crimes I've committed over the phone. What right do you have to use a public utility to transmit private conversations? I say we have more protection from the government here than any other country in the world. As far as cameras on every street corner, why shouldn't the government have the right to do this? Do you have an imagined right to be anonymous within society, or using government provided facilities, or walking on taxpayer provided property? Should you have the right to tell police officers to turn their back and not look you in the face as you walk past them to? Or do you just feel entitled to do whatever you want without responsiblity? Maybe it was just how you were raised...in the meantime, I don't see any restrictions on expression, which is the entire premise of 1984, otherwise your entire post would not exist so save the comparisons until you comprehend the story. OMG They had police in 1984 and there are police today!!1 we are fux0red!
"How important is privacy to you? I expect my phone calls to go unmonitored and my email not to be read by prying eyes. I have a reasonable expectation of privacy when communicating in this method." You call that reasonable?? You obviously are oblivious to SMTP. Maybe I'll spend the next week reading your email to you. It is simple text switched across public networks. That's like reasonably expecting the right to read aloud in front of Congress, but not to have anyone hear what you are saying. The internet wasn't built with privacy in mind.
"Many will argue privacy is a part of freedom and if you truly think that each person doesn't decide some degree of privacy, then may I come over and install cameras and listening devices throughout your house?" No you may not, and here is the difference. When I am sitting on my property, I am not interacting with society. The imagined "right" to privacy during free exchange with society is exsatly that, imagined... and that is the line. You can say whatever you want in our society, but we hve the right to know who is saying it.
"How can I be free to do anything within the limits of the law if I know that anyone and everyone is watching?"
If what you are doing is not against the law, then how are you not free to do it?
"People have skeletons in their closets and they have
They are most likely explicitly allowed expenses in the contract with these artists. It doesn't matter that the money is not needed to secure these liabilities, they contractually obligated themselves to give this portion of monetary proceeds from their sales to the record company for whatever expenses the record company incurs. I'm no fan of swindling, but I'm not a fan of people suing because they signed shitty contracts either.
They have sold their copyrights to the songs, as well as publishing rights. (C) and (P) respectively. They would be sued by the record company for trying to sell a song with lyrics that resembled a song they sold the rights. I can't believe this got moderated +5.
This will likely be an unpopular opinion here, but there's a few things that irk me about the above reference.
1. Benjamin Franklin never said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.", It was written by Richard Jackson. Benjamin Franklin himself denied writing this phrase in a letter to David Hume dated a year after the book that attributed the phrase to him. Franklin's nearest quote to the same effect holds quite a different meaning: "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power" [1]
2. "This is the same apathy we see every year with laughingly low voter turnouts" - This statement is patently absurd [2]
3. People who frequently pen, "The majority of people in America are too stupid..." are typically intellectually insecure, obnoxiously arrogant, or both. In either regard, they presume to perform with superior judgement to the common sense, which is the antithesis of democracy.
4. "Many Americans sadly enough have no clue the NSA has been spying on Americans." There's 2.2 million webpages on the internet dedicated to reporting the NSA spying efforts. I don't have access to Lexis Nexis anymore or I would happily tell you how many front pages the story has made. The idea that people are 'unaware' of this is stupid. Unlike you, they understand the need to obtain valid intelligence information to fight a war. [3]
5. The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [4]
What I would rather argue, is which of security or privacy are a more essential liberty, and in fact, is privacy even essential. The Constitution requires reasonable privacy, not absolute. Privacy is not essential for freedom, other than the fact it requires accountability. so you are no longer free to be unaccountable for your actions, given the times, would it be reasonable or even prudent to allow this? There's a big difference between the NSA spying, and say, Bill Clinton using illegal wiretaps to spy on Senators. How many people survived the Rose Law firm scandal by the way?
I can't even begin to comprehend the paranoid, anti-government rantings at the idea of needing a nationl id card to receive government services. Like they wouldn't know who you are when you show your freaking driver's license! We ALL have a national identity card, it's called your Social Security card. The only difference is these new IDs will be alot harder to forge, steal, or duplicate. I'm all for a National ID card, it will save the US Taxpayer nearly ten BILLION dollars a year in stolen services.
Do these cities with free wifi access have an intrusive monitoring policy, is there an EULA for usage, or is it basically, you are using the government's shit and we can do whatever we want on it. This is why communications has always been a privatized industry. As someone who has helped design municipal communications architectures (Emergency band, New York City), I'm not a big fan of making them available to the public.
I should think of all the most horrible things a company could use DRM and the likes for, and start filing patents.. then suing the shit out of anyone who tries to implement them. Imagine a world where the consumer uses the patent to detour technology from overrunning their sensibilities.
IMHO, Microsoft used their political muscle to get this trade deal signed over concerns of piracy in China. "WE won't export Windows to China unless you promise to have a legally licensed operating system on every computer that rolls out of the warehouse" and China acquiesces. Microsoft wrings their hands and prepares for a multi-billion dollar windfall, only to hear Chinese manufactures declaring that all the computers shipped out of their factories will have GNU version of linux installed. Microsoft loses tremendously as piracy is more rampant than ever, as their "bundled" sales fall through the floor, and linux makes even more inroads into the market. At least, this is the scenario for which I'm hoping...
I'm amazed the article was posted with such a decidedly partisan jab. I don't see how the 'administration' has really affected technology available to the public or influenced domestic product availability.
Isn't the FCC demanding that VoIP have wiretapping capabilities? That's in direct relation to the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to do any wiretap they please without probably evidence.
That's not a very good example. VoIP is freely available. Demanding access to communication isn't the same as affecting the availability of a product.
a 2 ton probe? I say we crash a hummer into the moon, just to say we did. GM would have the added bonus of saying their hummer has a five star and one moon government safety crash test.
seriously, when I think of the obstacles and hurdles that Linux has to face for consumer acceptance, restricting them from using content doesn't even make the list. realnetworks has always been a boil on the computer industry's ass. I wouldn't install their codec or player if they paid me. why don't they just die already?
I'm amazed the article was posted with such a decidedly partisan jab. I don't see how the 'administration' has really affected technology available to the public or influenced domestic product availability. In fact, I'm pretty sure this would be a new power never weilded by the white house. Speaking then, from experience, the government wouldn't hinder this technology from being available throughout the US. Just don't expect to see it available for export anytime soon. It would actually strengthen homeland security by reducing the ability of china's hacker team to effect major change in our communications ability. Now if we could just start making EMP shielding a requirement for hardware critical to our infrastructure.
That billion was spent paying scientists, not buying lab equipment. I could likely use my local university chemistry lab to engineer bio weapons.. given the right materials and technical knowledge.
This article is horrible. It complacently ignores the fact that Sony ran such huge deficits because of a succession of several multi-billion dollar acquisitions. Not to mention these acquisitions have nothing to do with hardware. Sony is a conglomorate unlike anything else in the world, and the idea that Microsoft could even buy them is absurd. For starters, Sony has a simple market valuation of $50 billion dollars. Microsoft only has an annual income of 8 billion with 30 billion in cash assets and would have to pay upwards to the tune of 80 to 100 billion for Sony. So not only can Microsoft not AFFORD to buy Sony, I don't think there's a single regulatory body in the world that would allow Microsoft to purchase a computer manufacturer.
Windows, now exclusively available with your Microsoft PC!
This was along the lines of my thought.. using old computers that consume tons of power to compute very little.. but showing your ecological awareness by using vegetable oil? Give me a few nuclear powered quad core opterons anyday. I'll show you the definition of progress. Lower power consumption, cleaner energy, and multiples high in productivity and computational gains.
Actually you didn't miss the binary build distribution, sorry about that. The idea of releasing the source-code for every application seemed like non-sense. Binary build distribution is the status quo, and therefore doesn't even present a challenge in my mind. Which is why I assumed you missed this answer. Again, my apologies for misreading you.
"The bad thing about in-order execution is that your compiled, highly-optimized-for-a-specific-CPU code will only really perform its best on one particular CPU. And that's assuming the compiler does its job well. (Unless developers released multiple binaries or the source code itself. While we'd HAVE source code for everything in an ideal world, that just isn't the case for a lot of performance-critical software out there such as games and commerical multimedia software.)"
This isn't an issue that couldn't be solved with binary build distributions. You missed the obvious on that one.
"As a programmer, I like the idea of out-of-order execution and the concept of runtime optimization. Programmers are typically the limiting factor in any software development project. You want those guys (and girls) worrying about efficient, maintainable, and correct code... not CPU specifics."
In the above quote, you placed the burden of efficiency on the compiler, and on this quote, you placed the burden of efficiency on the programmer. Which is responsible for the optimization of the resulting binary, the compiler or the language?
Actually that is a legitimate use of a * recursive record under a legitimate domain. Try a domain like www.expedai.com, a blatant typo of expedia.com and notice how you get redirected to airlineticket.com. Now if airlineticket.com was making money off google ads, then that would be a clear example of 'typosquatting' to collect worthless ad revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
"This war on terror is total BS" - I agree, the President should have had the balls to come out and say this is a war against Islamic terrorism.
'The key to the quote you provided is "foreign intelligence". If tapping the lines of citizens qualifies as foreign intelligence, then something is wrong..' - Are you suggesting that domestic phone lines are incapable of connecting to foreign agents? Or that domestic wiretaps are incapable of collecting foreign intelligence. Put a paper bag over your face and take slow, deep breaths. I can eavesdrop on the conversation of two foreign agents working in the United States, and gather foreign intelligence. You need to at least know what intelligence information they are gathering before you can presume to make judgements as to whether or not what they are doing is necessary. Isn't that a rational response? Or are you only interested in being an ideologue?
"Important question for you: at what point does security cross the lines of liberty? The government taps your phone and has cameras on every street corner." At the point where I am not reasonably safe from the government. the government tapping my phone doesn't put me at risk for arrest.. at least in this country. That is, unless I'm bragging about the crimes I've committed over the phone. What right do you have to use a public utility to transmit private conversations? I say we have more protection from the government here than any other country in the world. As far as cameras on every street corner, why shouldn't the government have the right to do this? Do you have an imagined right to be anonymous within society, or using government provided facilities, or walking on taxpayer provided property? Should you have the right to tell police officers to turn their back and not look you in the face as you walk past them to? Or do you just feel entitled to do whatever you want without responsiblity? Maybe it was just how you were raised...in the meantime, I don't see any restrictions on expression, which is the entire premise of 1984, otherwise your entire post would not exist so save the comparisons until you comprehend the story. OMG They had police in 1984 and there are police today!!1 we are fux0red!
"How important is privacy to you? I expect my phone calls to go unmonitored and my email not to be read by prying eyes. I have a reasonable expectation of privacy when communicating in this method." You call that reasonable?? You obviously are oblivious to SMTP. Maybe I'll spend the next week reading your email to you. It is simple text switched across public networks. That's like reasonably expecting the right to read aloud in front of Congress, but not to have anyone hear what you are saying. The internet wasn't built with privacy in mind.
"Many will argue privacy is a part of freedom and if you truly think that each person doesn't decide some degree of privacy, then may I come over and install cameras and listening devices throughout your house?" No you may not, and here is the difference. When I am sitting on my property, I am not interacting with society. The imagined "right" to privacy during free exchange with society is exsatly that, imagined... and that is the line. You can say whatever you want in our society, but we hve the right to know who is saying it. "How can I be free to do anything within the limits of the law if I know that anyone and everyone is watching?"
If what you are doing is not against the law, then how are you not free to do it?
"People have skeletons in their closets and they have
Speech is not free if you have to be anonymous to say it.
They are most likely explicitly allowed expenses in the contract with these artists. It doesn't matter that the money is not needed to secure these liabilities, they contractually obligated themselves to give this portion of monetary proceeds from their sales to the record company for whatever expenses the record company incurs. I'm no fan of swindling, but I'm not a fan of people suing because they signed shitty contracts either.
They have sold their copyrights to the songs, as well as publishing rights. (C) and (P) respectively. They would be sued by the record company for trying to sell a song with lyrics that resembled a song they sold the rights. I can't believe this got moderated +5.
This will likely be an unpopular opinion here, but there's a few things that irk me about the above reference. 1. Benjamin Franklin never said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.", It was written by Richard Jackson. Benjamin Franklin himself denied writing this phrase in a letter to David Hume dated a year after the book that attributed the phrase to him. Franklin's nearest quote to the same effect holds quite a different meaning: "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power" [1] 2. "This is the same apathy we see every year with laughingly low voter turnouts" - This statement is patently absurd [2] 3. People who frequently pen, "The majority of people in America are too stupid..." are typically intellectually insecure, obnoxiously arrogant, or both. In either regard, they presume to perform with superior judgement to the common sense, which is the antithesis of democracy. 4. "Many Americans sadly enough have no clue the NSA has been spying on Americans." There's 2.2 million webpages on the internet dedicated to reporting the NSA spying efforts. I don't have access to Lexis Nexis anymore or I would happily tell you how many front pages the story has made. The idea that people are 'unaware' of this is stupid. Unlike you, they understand the need to obtain valid intelligence information to fight a war. [3] 5. The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [4] What I would rather argue, is which of security or privacy are a more essential liberty, and in fact, is privacy even essential. The Constitution requires reasonable privacy, not absolute. Privacy is not essential for freedom, other than the fact it requires accountability. so you are no longer free to be unaccountable for your actions, given the times, would it be reasonable or even prudent to allow this? There's a big difference between the NSA spying, and say, Bill Clinton using illegal wiretaps to spy on Senators. How many people survived the Rose Law firm scandal by the way?
I can't even begin to comprehend the paranoid, anti-government rantings at the idea of needing a nationl id card to receive government services. Like they wouldn't know who you are when you show your freaking driver's license! We ALL have a national identity card, it's called your Social Security card. The only difference is these new IDs will be alot harder to forge, steal, or duplicate. I'm all for a National ID card, it will save the US Taxpayer nearly ten BILLION dollars a year in stolen services.
This might not sound very helpful to the never reboot crowd, but I sure wouldn't mind a system halt on reboot if my system was compromised.
Do these cities with free wifi access have an intrusive monitoring policy, is there an EULA for usage, or is it basically, you are using the government's shit and we can do whatever we want on it. This is why communications has always been a privatized industry. As someone who has helped design municipal communications architectures (Emergency band, New York City), I'm not a big fan of making them available to the public.
I should think of all the most horrible things a company could use DRM and the likes for, and start filing patents.. then suing the shit out of anyone who tries to implement them. Imagine a world where the consumer uses the patent to detour technology from overrunning their sensibilities.
IMHO, Microsoft used their political muscle to get this trade deal signed over concerns of piracy in China. "WE won't export Windows to China unless you promise to have a legally licensed operating system on every computer that rolls out of the warehouse" and China acquiesces. Microsoft wrings their hands and prepares for a multi-billion dollar windfall, only to hear Chinese manufactures declaring that all the computers shipped out of their factories will have GNU version of linux installed. Microsoft loses tremendously as piracy is more rampant than ever, as their "bundled" sales fall through the floor, and linux makes even more inroads into the market. At least, this is the scenario for which I'm hoping...
Isn't the FCC demanding that VoIP have wiretapping capabilities? That's in direct relation to the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to do any wiretap they please without probably evidence.
That's not a very good example. VoIP is freely available. Demanding access to communication isn't the same as affecting the availability of a product.
a 2 ton probe? I say we crash a hummer into the moon, just to say we did. GM would have the added bonus of saying their hummer has a five star and one moon government safety crash test.
This was lobbyist dollars hard at work, and if I lived in this state, I would be calling my legislature and governor ASAP.
seriously, when I think of the obstacles and hurdles that Linux has to face for consumer acceptance, restricting them from using content doesn't even make the list. realnetworks has always been a boil on the computer industry's ass. I wouldn't install their codec or player if they paid me. why don't they just die already?
I'm amazed the article was posted with such a decidedly partisan jab. I don't see how the 'administration' has really affected technology available to the public or influenced domestic product availability. In fact, I'm pretty sure this would be a new power never weilded by the white house. Speaking then, from experience, the government wouldn't hinder this technology from being available throughout the US. Just don't expect to see it available for export anytime soon. It would actually strengthen homeland security by reducing the ability of china's hacker team to effect major change in our communications ability. Now if we could just start making EMP shielding a requirement for hardware critical to our infrastructure.
That billion was spent paying scientists, not buying lab equipment. I could likely use my local university chemistry lab to engineer bio weapons.. given the right materials and technical knowledge.
I know a new mouse is only $10 but it is still funny to point out.
This article is horrible. It complacently ignores the fact that Sony ran such huge deficits because of a succession of several multi-billion dollar acquisitions. Not to mention these acquisitions have nothing to do with hardware. Sony is a conglomorate unlike anything else in the world, and the idea that Microsoft could even buy them is absurd. For starters, Sony has a simple market valuation of $50 billion dollars. Microsoft only has an annual income of 8 billion with 30 billion in cash assets and would have to pay upwards to the tune of 80 to 100 billion for Sony. So not only can Microsoft not AFFORD to buy Sony, I don't think there's a single regulatory body in the world that would allow Microsoft to purchase a computer manufacturer. Windows, now exclusively available with your Microsoft PC!
This was along the lines of my thought.. using old computers that consume tons of power to compute very little.. but showing your ecological awareness by using vegetable oil? Give me a few nuclear powered quad core opterons anyday. I'll show you the definition of progress. Lower power consumption, cleaner energy, and multiples high in productivity and computational gains.
i didn't appreciate the anti-semitism of this thread either, which dismisses the fact that Israel is one of the most high-tech economies in the world.
Actually you didn't miss the binary build distribution, sorry about that. The idea of releasing the source-code for every application seemed like non-sense. Binary build distribution is the status quo, and therefore doesn't even present a challenge in my mind. Which is why I assumed you missed this answer. Again, my apologies for misreading you.
(Unless developers released multiple binaries or the source code itself. While we'd HAVE source code for everything in an ideal world, that just isn't the case for a lot of performance-critical software out there such as games and commerical multimedia software.)"
This isn't an issue that couldn't be solved with binary build distributions. You missed the obvious on that one.
"As a programmer, I like the idea of out-of-order execution and the concept of runtime optimization. Programmers are typically the limiting factor in any software development project. You want those guys (and girls) worrying about efficient, maintainable, and correct code... not CPU specifics."
In the above quote, you placed the burden of efficiency on the compiler, and on this quote, you placed the burden of efficiency on the programmer. Which is responsible for the optimization of the resulting binary, the compiler or the language?
Actually that is a legitimate use of a * recursive record under a legitimate domain. Try a domain like www.expedai.com, a blatant typo of expedia.com and notice how you get redirected to airlineticket.com. Now if airlineticket.com was making money off google ads, then that would be a clear example of 'typosquatting' to collect worthless ad revenue.
Someone mod that insightful. I hadn't read it aloud. Nice touch.
block out the RIAA.