it's electronic voting. electronic voting removes transparency and introduces distrust into the voting process. electronic voting will prove to be the biggest mistake and the greatest threat to american democracy
Electronic voting merely makes fraud a little easier to conceal (most people know zilch about the voodoo that goes on inside those boxes). Does it make it easier or more likely? Not really -- voting fraud and manipulation has gone on since time immemorial. Recall how LBJ got his first Senate seat in the 40's. What put him over the top in a practically deadlocked election were several dozen last-minute votes in a poor, rural county in which his buddies basically ran the place. Those "last-minute" voters were all down on the end of the register in the same handwriting.....same color ink.....in alphabetical order. You can't get much more obvious than that. But because the local sheriff and other officials were allies of LBJ, nothing was ever said or done about it. Thus started the Senate career of one of the most influential men ever to be "elected" to that institution. And his buddies nicknamed him "Landslide Lyndon," probably always said with a wink and a nudge.
And yes, dirty tricks and voting fraud are equal-opportunity sins by both sides. Usually, it is not "which side is cheating" -- they BOTH cheat -- but "which side did the better job of cheating." Some still maintain that the real reason Nixon never contested the Illinois vote in the 1960 election (there was ample evidence of rampant voting fraud on the part of Daley's Democratic Chicago machine) was because he feared that an investigation into the Chicago irregularities would also uncover GOP fraud in downstate, rural Illinois.
The Internet will have to remain a 2-way communications medium. It can't function without being so. That's a technical limitation that cannot be overcome.
"They", which I assume you mean the Big Content Providers, will not be able to cause you to be charged more to provide content from your residence, since increasing the cost of the upstream more than 10x the cost of the downstream will not work in any market. Even if Big Content Providers merge with bandwidth providers, they still will not be able to stop you from having upstream bandwidth, albeit less than your downstream.
I'm not talking about bandwidth at the source (from your computer to and from wherever) and I'm not talking about 1-way versus 2-way communication (obviously, the Net HAS to be "2-way" to some extent as you are sending commands and requests to view various content every time you click on something).
What I am saying is this: if you want to have a website, blog, online store, etc., that content has to be "parked" -- hosted -- somewhere on somebody's server. And that's what ultimately will be made prohibitively expensive -- that piece of electronic "real estate" as well as the "traffic" costs to access the site content (THAT'S where the bandwidth will be increasingly costly). Not to mention that having anything "controversial" hosted becomes harder and harder as the companies providing the web space cover their own asses. And most folks have neither the money nor the technical expertise to house their stuff on their own server.
Enter the secondary Internet that I have been speaking about. Freenet is a wonderful example of the potential for the future. It will be refined, improved, and strenghtened, since the incentives to do so grow every year. Shutting down and controlling "software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship." is not that easy. Especially when it is a functional secondary Internet providing a decentralized, private, and anonymous distribution of data across it.
What makes you think that such a separate and independent net would even be allowed to continue functioning? They wouldn't have to make it technically impossible, just illegal. TV and radio are already controlled (largely because of the limited number of stations that can be accommodated on the airwaves, but controlled nonetheless). You can put your own "pirate" station on the air -- there are no real technical barriers (though it will probably be quite lo-power and limited in coverage) -- but it's likely to be shut down by the FCC pretty quickly. They don't have to try to block or circumvent the technology -- just DF the signal and haul you off to the pokey. As the Internet becomes more and more of a "consumer accessing corporate content" medium rather than a "anything goes, everyone can play and participate" fee-for-all, there are increasing sentiments to regulate and control content, just like the airwaves, and to exercise FCC-like control over the whole show. (I wouldn't be a bit surprised if one day a "license" is required to originate a website.) Everything I'm describing is already happening.
So you want to set up a separate net apart from that control and oversight -- you think that wouldn't be made illegal one day? No such net would ever be truly anonymous -- just as the hackers continually find ways around DRM and other impediments, the guvmint will use their own geeks to find ways to trace what's going on on your "freenet" -- at least to some extent. And don't talk about "free speech" and "this is America" and "1st Amendment" -- those concepts have already begun to be eviscerated, and I see no abatement of the erosion of speech rights.
The only possible solution, the only end game that can be played, is to outlaw the ability to create truly private and anonymous communications.
Another project that is already well underway.....
I'm suspicious of this. I concede that illegal filesharing is a problem, but it sounds more like an attempt to turn the internet into a tightly controlled broadcase medium, like television.
It's already well on the way there. The Internet in the "good ol' days" was like one gigantic public forum where anybody with a cheap modem, a shareware program, and a free web host could establish a beachhead from which they could proclaim their likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, hobbies and avocations, opinions and rants to the world. And while, of course, that element is still a part of the Net, look how dominated it has become by huge corporate commercial websites. Some of us still search for the individual blogs and sites that enrich our lives, but increasingly a lot of Net users probably spend most of their time with the Big Boys.
I foresee an increasingly widening divide between content providers and content consumers. "Net neutrality" is just the tip of the iceberg in the effort to clamp down on and marginalize the little guys. See, technically right now, even TV and newspapers DO afford an opportunity for anyone to broadcast their thing to the masses -- IF you have the money. I see the Net heading in the same direction. I believe that eventually the ability to put up your own website is going to cost ya, and cost big.....no more cheapie/freebie blogs and such. Your internet connection will remain affordable -- on a par with cable TV or subscribing to a magazine -- as long as you are just consuming the content that the corporations want you to see and hear. But if you want to actually speak to the masses instead of being a passive lump, well, show us the money and we'll see. If you want to buy even a single 30-second ad on the smallest TV station, it will run you at least hundreds, probably thousands of dollars. I see the Internet as eventually degenerating into the same unbalanced affair -- it will largely cease to be an interactive medium, and become another mass medium for the dissemination of what the folks with the power and the money want you to see.
They didn't have to go to all that trouble to figure this out. Anyone observing human behavior for a length of time knows that people generally believe what they want to believe -- facts, logic, and common sense notwithstanding. This is why I eventually stopped trying to "convert" anyone's thinking in a rational manner, and avoid like the plague any personal conversation in politics, religion, or any controversial subject.
There is a very strong emotional bond to our beliefs. Strongly held beliefs, especially those that have a key role in shaping our concepts of ourselves and the world, are almost impossible to break. Someone once suggested that our key beliefs are preciously held "possessions," and when you try to show someone the error or illogic of their position, no matter how courteously or gently, it is as if you walked into their home with an axe and started smashing up their furniture.
Like it or not, man is a creature that still acts largely on impulse and emotion, not reasoning and logic. Once most folks get solidly into their adult years, their beliefs and attitudes do not change much, if at all. I've always said that if you have reached the age of at least, say, 30-35 or so, and have not in that time had at least one or two very strongly held beliefs turned 180 degrees because of evidence and facts presented to you, then you are not a thinking person, and will likely never really change.
Every time I read about the latest in "criminal/terrorist spotting techniques/technology," it just makes me more paranoid. I happen to be rather sociophobic, and am very uncomfortable in public places. And that often leads to behaviors that some would find "suspicious." I'm not a goddamn terrorist....I just avoid close contact with others as much as possible.
I wear dark glasses all the time, regardless of weather, simply because I feel more comfortable that way. I frequently look around and glance over my shoulder to insure that I'm not about to have my personal space violated by another pedestrian (or, for that matter, by some idiot bicyclist riding on the sidewalk when there is a bike lane 10 feet away in the street). I do not want strangers I don't know closely approaching me, or trying to address or converse with me for no good reason. (Acceptable reasons: "Your hair is on fire" or "You are about to be run over by a semi." Unacceptable reasons: "Got a light?" or "Some weather we're having, huh?") I have been known to cross a busy street rather than encounter a large group of people walking my way on the sidewalk. At bus stops, if there are people there I wait some distance away and out of direct sight. In line at the post office or wherever, I usually have to stand several feet to the side of the line because modern-day people tend to want to stand close enough to me to conduct a proctology exam. I do not make casual eye contact, and keep my tunes cranked up and am in my own little world out there.
Sure, you may say I'm mentally ill, or just a dick. And you may be right on one or both counts -- me, I just accept that this is the way I am. I'm a private person, almost a hermit, and I don't like mingling with the masses. And none of that is a crime. Yet, already I have a history of having been approached by the local gendarmes several times because I am acting "suspiciously." If these "Terrorist-O-Matic" type devices start to be widely deployed, I'm going to end up not merely an asocial loner, but an agoraphobe as well, because I'm sure alarm bells are going to go off every time I'm in range of one of these things.
Suspicion, like so many things, is in the eye of the beholder. And what we term as "suspicious behavior" increasingly is being broadened to "anything different or non-conformist." Basically, the post-9/11 world has made it dangerous to be eccentric.
Here's a warning. If you see someone running for political office, and there are over a hundred lobbyists involved in his campaign, it's a good bet that his (or her) number one priority is not going to be the well-being of citizens.
Hell, it doesn't even take that many -- just a few key lobbyists with deep pockets from influential industries can do the trick.
Fortunately, anyone who would try to run for office with a campaign staff of nothing but lobbyists would end up getting laughed right out of the election.
I try to laugh at John McCain every chance I get, but he still won't go away.
"McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign Manager Rick Davis: 'This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment'..."
When someone does this sort of hacking/eavesdropping/snooping to a government official, it's called "a shocking invasion of...privacy and a violation of law."
When the government does it to you, it's called the "Patriot Act."
The proposal is fair, appropriate, and will go a long way towards balancing security with privacy, as well as providing accountability from DHS and recourse for those wronged. It makes perfect sense. Which is why it doesn't have a bat's chance in hell of ever passing......
It's only a right insofar as you're not committing any crimes.
It's still a right regardless because the mere act of concealing one's identity does not necessarily have criminal implications, and because there are no mind readers or psychics (legit, anyway) who can devine ahead of time your intent. Of course criminals desire anonymity, and it doesn't have to involve the Web. The robber still wears a mask, the safecracker gloves, and muggers and rapists don't hand out business cards before their acts. But there are many legitimate reasons for anonymity that must not be compromised simply because a certain small percentage of those who use it might be doing so to perpetrate a crime. The anonymity (a right) and the criminal act (obviously not a right) are two different issues, IMHO. This is just one of many areas in which governments want to take a "baby with the bathwater" approach and ban technologies or methodologies that might be used in furtherance of a crime from all potential users.
I half expect that at this rate, one day even whispering in public will be illegal, on the basis that a hushed conversation means you obviously have something to hide, and may well be plotting some nastiness with a confederate. Laugh, but a lot of the crap going on in the world today is stuff that not many years ago, I would have found amusingly unrealistic.
The RIAA knows damn well that this whole battle has never been about shifting legitimately purchased content between devices in your "domain" (insert your own Seinfeld "master of your domain" joke here). Unfortunately, that is one of the arguments that many (including posters here) have used in the past: "I just want to shift the music I've already paid for (snort) from CD to computer to iPod to [insert device] -- I would never (suppressed giggle), EVER think of downloading it for free (fingers crossed behind back) or ripping it and uploading it (nose growing) to some P2P net!" This smacks to me of a big PR concept that will enable them to justify even more draconian crackdowns on file sharing, with carefully orchestrated public sympathy. "See -- we gave these people what they claimed they wanted, but piracy goes on, and has even increased! They are really just a bunch of freeloaders -- that whole "content shifting" argument was nothing but a vile canard! Off with their heads!!" Could very well be a case of many of us being hoist by our own petard here.....
Didn't they already tell us that they had record-breaking profits for the last few years?.....They don't seem to be losing money.
You don't understand....it doesn't matter that they are still making a profit. It doesn't even matter that they are still making a large, record-setting profit. They will argue that they are losing money because their profit could be oh, so much higher if it weren't for those meddling pirates and their dog. The difference between what they actually made and what they think they should have made, theoretically, without "freeloaders" downloading and sharing their product, is the "loss" that they claim to have suffered.
Remember.....in America (especially at the corporate level), there is no such thing as making "enough" money -- it's never "enough."
Single, childless men (especially past a certain age) have always been viewed with some degree of suspicion. People tend to think you are either gay ("not that there's anything wrong with that"), a pedo, or some other variety of fill-in-the-blank weirdo. At best, you are written off as pathetic, worthless, or selfish.
Example: in many U.S. states, if you are a single, childless man, and happen to be poor, just try and get benefits like Medicaid, food stamps, etc. In many cases, you can't -- they reserve those things for poor mothers and their children. Plus they get other forms of assistance like AFDC, etc.
So, basically, you can be a single mother who has kids with 3 different fathers, in spite of being in no economic shape to feed and raise them, and get all kinds of help. But a male who has been responsible and kept his weenie under control, eschewing procreation because he knows he's not in a position economically to raise a family -- well, you're outta luck if you get sick or hungry.
Rant aside, a policy like that in the story should not pass muster in any Democratic society. If your taxes pay for that park, you have every right to be there. Unfortunately, the "if you've got nothing to hide" crowd is more and more comfortable with random, warrantless, baseless searches and interrogations in the name of (a)protecting the children, or (b)fighting the terrorists (choose one).
but it's still a pain in the ass trying to reach someone who doesn't have a cellphone.
You're assuming they want to be reached. They simply may not want people calling them. Or at least not want you calling them.
since getting a cellphone in high school i've lost the ability to remember people's phone numbers.
Not to mention the ability to use the SHIFT key.....
this led to a rather embarrassing situation at the hospital when i couldn't tell the nurse what number to dial to reach my girlfriend.
Technology to the rescue! There's a marvelous new invention around that works wonders -- it's called "pen and paper." See, you take this flat sheet of pulped wood ("paper"), and this stick ("pen") that emits ink (you know, the stuff like what's in those cartridges in your printer). You sort of inscribe the important numbers on the sheet with the stick, then the sheet can actually be folded (without damage) and inserted into your wallet. Ain't that somethin'?
'Course, the way things are going, the ability to write letters and numbers manually may well be rare or non-existent before long.....
The first words spoken by the next President after being sworn in this January and looking at the real numbers: "What the fuck is this shit?"
Regardless of whether McCain or Obama is the name of our next Prez, I think there will be some pretty serious sicker shock when they start to get briefed about internal WH matters and become privy to the actual degree of incompetence, malfeasance, and fiscal irresponsibility that awaits them. It makes me think of JFK's half-joking, half-serious response when an interviewer asked him early in his presidency what surprised him most about the job. "I think what surprised me the most was finding out that things were as bad, if not worse, than we had been saying that they were."
Just because the show hasn't aired doesn't mean it's not being talked about. The fact that such an investigation was undertaken, and the results so bad that the CC folks are so desperate to keep it under wraps, makes the issue now not merely the insecure nature of the system, but also the deception/concealment of those flaws from the general public and (most importantly) their cardholders. No matter how bad the results of the Mythbusters investigation, it will seem doubly bad if the results are kept secret and imaginations run wild. If they simply bit the bullet, let it be aired, acknowledged the flaws, and vowed to work on the problems, it would be far less damaging in the long run. Nothing stays secret for long in today's world -- the sooner you own up to it, the better the outcome. Nothing is so bad that it can't be made worse by trying to cover it up. (Think of Tricky Dicky...)
High-speed pizza delivery we had somewhere in the 80s-90s, but we lost in before 2000 in my area. Unless you consider high-speed delivery to be 45-50 minutes. It's a shame when we grew up with under 30 minutes or free.
Yeah, that was until drivers started killing themselves and others racing to beat that 30-minute deadline, under pressure from their bosses. (Big lawsuits have a funny way of changing corporate behavior sometimes...) Trust me -- I did a stint with Domino's back in the 80's. Publicly, loudly, collectively the official line was "It's just a pizza -- don't break any laws and don't endanger yourself or others." Privately, it would be a whispered "This order is 26 minutes old -- do what you have to do, just don't tell me." Drivers who weren't aggressive enough and racked up too many freebies would quickly see their hours cut or their employment terminated.
I think Americans in general are too impatient. The longer you wait, the more appreciated the payoff. If you are so hungry that you can't wait 50 minutes for a pizza, you're either way too busy, or need to just eat a little more often...
Of course, now that the story is propagating all over the Net, pretty soon everyone will know about the alleged security flaws (if not the details), and the CC companies and their legal eagles will look quite villainous. When will they ever learn?
Simulations are not as effective: given three years and a beowulf cluster one can model improbable events, and an improbable event verified three out of three times in the case of the WTC buildings won't satisfy conspiracy theorists.
Nothing satisfies conspiracy theorists...
Happy birthday! (and thank you...)
on
Ray Bradbury Turns 88
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I fondly recall that Fahrenheit 451 (along with Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm) was one of the first really serious "adult" (in the non-porno sense) books I read, when I was all of maybe 11? 12? The visions and dark allegories of all three books, combined with the events of the late 60's (and Watergate, soon to follow), which made me realize that the Real World (TM) was not at all like what my History and Civics textbooks portrayed, helped to turn that impressionable, too-smart-for-his-own-good adolescent into the bitter, paranoid, mistrusting, cynical middle-aged grunt I have become. For all the ulcers, the insomnia, the times I beat my head against the wall in frustration at the direction of government and society, and the accumulated hair I tore out of my head along the way.....I thank you.
Actually, I think they are happy for the "good guy" to win just once in a while. It gives them something to point to with a used car salesman grin and say, "See? The system works!" while the other several thousand of innocents continue to get screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
it's electronic voting. electronic voting removes transparency and introduces distrust into the voting process. electronic voting will prove to be the biggest mistake and the greatest threat to american democracy
Electronic voting merely makes fraud a little easier to conceal (most people know zilch about the voodoo that goes on inside those boxes). Does it make it easier or more likely? Not really -- voting fraud and manipulation has gone on since time immemorial. Recall how LBJ got his first Senate seat in the 40's. What put him over the top in a practically deadlocked election were several dozen last-minute votes in a poor, rural county in which his buddies basically ran the place. Those "last-minute" voters were all down on the end of the register in the same handwriting.....same color ink.....in alphabetical order. You can't get much more obvious than that. But because the local sheriff and other officials were allies of LBJ, nothing was ever said or done about it. Thus started the Senate career of one of the most influential men ever to be "elected" to that institution. And his buddies nicknamed him "Landslide Lyndon," probably always said with a wink and a nudge.
And yes, dirty tricks and voting fraud are equal-opportunity sins by both sides. Usually, it is not "which side is cheating" -- they BOTH cheat -- but "which side did the better job of cheating." Some still maintain that the real reason Nixon never contested the Illinois vote in the 1960 election (there was ample evidence of rampant voting fraud on the part of Daley's Democratic Chicago machine) was because he feared that an investigation into the Chicago irregularities would also uncover GOP fraud in downstate, rural Illinois.
The Internet will have to remain a 2-way communications medium. It can't function without being so. That's a technical limitation that cannot be overcome.
"They", which I assume you mean the Big Content Providers, will not be able to cause you to be charged more to provide content from your residence, since increasing the cost of the upstream more than 10x the cost of the downstream will not work in any market. Even if Big Content Providers merge with bandwidth providers, they still will not be able to stop you from having upstream bandwidth, albeit less than your downstream.
I'm not talking about bandwidth at the source (from your computer to and from wherever) and I'm not talking about 1-way versus 2-way communication (obviously, the Net HAS to be "2-way" to some extent as you are sending commands and requests to view various content every time you click on something).
What I am saying is this: if you want to have a website, blog, online store, etc., that content has to be "parked" -- hosted -- somewhere on somebody's server. And that's what ultimately will be made prohibitively expensive -- that piece of electronic "real estate" as well as the "traffic" costs to access the site content (THAT'S where the bandwidth will be increasingly costly). Not to mention that having anything "controversial" hosted becomes harder and harder as the companies providing the web space cover their own asses. And most folks have neither the money nor the technical expertise to house their stuff on their own server.
Enter the secondary Internet that I have been speaking about. Freenet is a wonderful example of the potential for the future. It will be refined, improved, and strenghtened, since the incentives to do so grow every year. Shutting down and controlling "software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship." is not that easy. Especially when it is a functional secondary Internet providing a decentralized, private, and anonymous distribution of data across it.
What makes you think that such a separate and independent net would even be allowed to continue functioning? They wouldn't have to make it technically impossible, just illegal. TV and radio are already controlled (largely because of the limited number of stations that can be accommodated on the airwaves, but controlled nonetheless). You can put your own "pirate" station on the air -- there are no real technical barriers (though it will probably be quite lo-power and limited in coverage) -- but it's likely to be shut down by the FCC pretty quickly. They don't have to try to block or circumvent the technology -- just DF the signal and haul you off to the pokey. As the Internet becomes more and more of a "consumer accessing corporate content" medium rather than a "anything goes, everyone can play and participate" fee-for-all, there are increasing sentiments to regulate and control content, just like the airwaves, and to exercise FCC-like control over the whole show. (I wouldn't be a bit surprised if one day a "license" is required to originate a website.) Everything I'm describing is already happening.
So you want to set up a separate net apart from that control and oversight -- you think that wouldn't be made illegal one day? No such net would ever be truly anonymous -- just as the hackers continually find ways around DRM and other impediments, the guvmint will use their own geeks to find ways to trace what's going on on your "freenet" -- at least to some extent. And don't talk about "free speech" and "this is America" and "1st Amendment" -- those concepts have already begun to be eviscerated, and I see no abatement of the erosion of speech rights.
The only possible solution, the only end game that can be played, is to outlaw the ability to create truly private and anonymous communications.
Another project that is already well underway.....
I'm suspicious of this. I concede that illegal filesharing is a problem, but it sounds more like an attempt to turn the internet into a tightly controlled broadcase medium, like television.
It's already well on the way there. The Internet in the "good ol' days" was like one gigantic public forum where anybody with a cheap modem, a shareware program, and a free web host could establish a beachhead from which they could proclaim their likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, hobbies and avocations, opinions and rants to the world. And while, of course, that element is still a part of the Net, look how dominated it has become by huge corporate commercial websites. Some of us still search for the individual blogs and sites that enrich our lives, but increasingly a lot of Net users probably spend most of their time with the Big Boys.
I foresee an increasingly widening divide between content providers and content consumers. "Net neutrality" is just the tip of the iceberg in the effort to clamp down on and marginalize the little guys. See, technically right now, even TV and newspapers DO afford an opportunity for anyone to broadcast their thing to the masses -- IF you have the money. I see the Net heading in the same direction. I believe that eventually the ability to put up your own website is going to cost ya, and cost big.....no more cheapie/freebie blogs and such. Your internet connection will remain affordable -- on a par with cable TV or subscribing to a magazine -- as long as you are just consuming the content that the corporations want you to see and hear. But if you want to actually speak to the masses instead of being a passive lump, well, show us the money and we'll see. If you want to buy even a single 30-second ad on the smallest TV station, it will run you at least hundreds, probably thousands of dollars. I see the Internet as eventually degenerating into the same unbalanced affair -- it will largely cease to be an interactive medium, and become another mass medium for the dissemination of what the folks with the power and the money want you to see.
But it was fun while it lasted...
They didn't have to go to all that trouble to figure this out. Anyone observing human behavior for a length of time knows that people generally believe what they want to believe -- facts, logic, and common sense notwithstanding. This is why I eventually stopped trying to "convert" anyone's thinking in a rational manner, and avoid like the plague any personal conversation in politics, religion, or any controversial subject.
There is a very strong emotional bond to our beliefs. Strongly held beliefs, especially those that have a key role in shaping our concepts of ourselves and the world, are almost impossible to break. Someone once suggested that our key beliefs are preciously held "possessions," and when you try to show someone the error or illogic of their position, no matter how courteously or gently, it is as if you walked into their home with an axe and started smashing up their furniture.
Like it or not, man is a creature that still acts largely on impulse and emotion, not reasoning and logic. Once most folks get solidly into their adult years, their beliefs and attitudes do not change much, if at all. I've always said that if you have reached the age of at least, say, 30-35 or so, and have not in that time had at least one or two very strongly held beliefs turned 180 degrees because of evidence and facts presented to you, then you are not a thinking person, and will likely never really change.
Every time I read about the latest in "criminal/terrorist spotting techniques/technology," it just makes me more paranoid. I happen to be rather sociophobic, and am very uncomfortable in public places. And that often leads to behaviors that some would find "suspicious." I'm not a goddamn terrorist....I just avoid close contact with others as much as possible.
I wear dark glasses all the time, regardless of weather, simply because I feel more comfortable that way. I frequently look around and glance over my shoulder to insure that I'm not about to have my personal space violated by another pedestrian (or, for that matter, by some idiot bicyclist riding on the sidewalk when there is a bike lane 10 feet away in the street). I do not want strangers I don't know closely approaching me, or trying to address or converse with me for no good reason. (Acceptable reasons: "Your hair is on fire" or "You are about to be run over by a semi." Unacceptable reasons: "Got a light?" or "Some weather we're having, huh?") I have been known to cross a busy street rather than encounter a large group of people walking my way on the sidewalk. At bus stops, if there are people there I wait some distance away and out of direct sight. In line at the post office or wherever, I usually have to stand several feet to the side of the line because modern-day people tend to want to stand close enough to me to conduct a proctology exam. I do not make casual eye contact, and keep my tunes cranked up and am in my own little world out there.
Sure, you may say I'm mentally ill, or just a dick. And you may be right on one or both counts -- me, I just accept that this is the way I am. I'm a private person, almost a hermit, and I don't like mingling with the masses. And none of that is a crime. Yet, already I have a history of having been approached by the local gendarmes several times because I am acting "suspiciously." If these "Terrorist-O-Matic" type devices start to be widely deployed, I'm going to end up not merely an asocial loner, but an agoraphobe as well, because I'm sure alarm bells are going to go off every time I'm in range of one of these things.
Suspicion, like so many things, is in the eye of the beholder. And what we term as "suspicious behavior" increasingly is being broadened to "anything different or non-conformist." Basically, the post-9/11 world has made it dangerous to be eccentric.
It's not a bug -- it's a feature.
Sincerely,
Diebold and the GOP
Here's a warning. If you see someone running for political office, and there are over a hundred lobbyists involved in his campaign, it's a good bet that his (or her) number one priority is not going to be the well-being of citizens.
Hell, it doesn't even take that many -- just a few key lobbyists with deep pockets from influential industries can do the trick.
Fortunately, anyone who would try to run for office with a campaign staff of nothing but lobbyists would end up getting laughed right out of the election.
I try to laugh at John McCain every chance I get, but he still won't go away.
"McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign Manager Rick Davis: 'This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment'..."
When someone does this sort of hacking/eavesdropping/snooping to a government official, it's called "a shocking invasion of...privacy and a violation of law."
When the government does it to you, it's called the "Patriot Act."
Citizens of New York who prefer not to carry an identifying RFID chip can still get an old-style license.
And those who refuse will go right on the master list under "troublemaker/refusnik/something to hide/potential terrorist."
The proposal is fair, appropriate, and will go a long way towards balancing security with privacy, as well as providing accountability from DHS and recourse for those wronged. It makes perfect sense. Which is why it doesn't have a bat's chance in hell of ever passing......
It's only a right insofar as you're not committing any crimes.
It's still a right regardless because the mere act of concealing one's identity does not necessarily have criminal implications, and because there are no mind readers or psychics (legit, anyway) who can devine ahead of time your intent. Of course criminals desire anonymity, and it doesn't have to involve the Web. The robber still wears a mask, the safecracker gloves, and muggers and rapists don't hand out business cards before their acts. But there are many legitimate reasons for anonymity that must not be compromised simply because a certain small percentage of those who use it might be doing so to perpetrate a crime. The anonymity (a right) and the criminal act (obviously not a right) are two different issues, IMHO. This is just one of many areas in which governments want to take a "baby with the bathwater" approach and ban technologies or methodologies that might be used in furtherance of a crime from all potential users.
I half expect that at this rate, one day even whispering in public will be illegal, on the basis that a hushed conversation means you obviously have something to hide, and may well be plotting some nastiness with a confederate. Laugh, but a lot of the crap going on in the world today is stuff that not many years ago, I would have found amusingly unrealistic.
The RIAA knows damn well that this whole battle has never been about shifting legitimately purchased content between devices in your "domain" (insert your own Seinfeld "master of your domain" joke here). Unfortunately, that is one of the arguments that many (including posters here) have used in the past: "I just want to shift the music I've already paid for (snort) from CD to computer to iPod to [insert device] -- I would never (suppressed giggle), EVER think of downloading it for free (fingers crossed behind back) or ripping it and uploading it (nose growing) to some P2P net!" This smacks to me of a big PR concept that will enable them to justify even more draconian crackdowns on file sharing, with carefully orchestrated public sympathy. "See -- we gave these people what they claimed they wanted, but piracy goes on, and has even increased! They are really just a bunch of freeloaders -- that whole "content shifting" argument was nothing but a vile canard! Off with their heads!!" Could very well be a case of many of us being hoist by our own petard here.....
Didn't they already tell us that they had record-breaking profits for the last few years?.....They don't seem to be losing money.
You don't understand....it doesn't matter that they are still making a profit. It doesn't even matter that they are still making a large, record-setting profit. They will argue that they are losing money because their profit could be oh, so much higher if it weren't for those meddling pirates and their dog. The difference between what they actually made and what they think they should have made, theoretically, without "freeloaders" downloading and sharing their product, is the "loss" that they claim to have suffered.
Remember.....in America (especially at the corporate level), there is no such thing as making "enough" money -- it's never "enough."
Single, childless men (especially past a certain age) have always been viewed with some degree of suspicion. People tend to think you are either gay ("not that there's anything wrong with that"), a pedo, or some other variety of fill-in-the-blank weirdo. At best, you are written off as pathetic, worthless, or selfish.
Example: in many U.S. states, if you are a single, childless man, and happen to be poor, just try and get benefits like Medicaid, food stamps, etc. In many cases, you can't -- they reserve those things for poor mothers and their children. Plus they get other forms of assistance like AFDC, etc.
So, basically, you can be a single mother who has kids with 3 different fathers, in spite of being in no economic shape to feed and raise them, and get all kinds of help. But a male who has been responsible and kept his weenie under control, eschewing procreation because he knows he's not in a position economically to raise a family -- well, you're outta luck if you get sick or hungry.
Rant aside, a policy like that in the story should not pass muster in any Democratic society. If your taxes pay for that park, you have every right to be there. Unfortunately, the "if you've got nothing to hide" crowd is more and more comfortable with random, warrantless, baseless searches and interrogations in the name of (a)protecting the children, or (b)fighting the terrorists (choose one).
but it's still a pain in the ass trying to reach someone who doesn't have a cellphone.
You're assuming they want to be reached. They simply may not want people calling them. Or at least not want you calling them.
since getting a cellphone in high school i've lost the ability to remember people's phone numbers.
Not to mention the ability to use the SHIFT key.....
this led to a rather embarrassing situation at the hospital when i couldn't tell the nurse what number to dial to reach my girlfriend.
Technology to the rescue! There's a marvelous new invention around that works wonders -- it's called "pen and paper." See, you take this flat sheet of pulped wood ("paper"), and this stick ("pen") that emits ink (you know, the stuff like what's in those cartridges in your printer). You sort of inscribe the important numbers on the sheet with the stick, then the sheet can actually be folded (without damage) and inserted into your wallet. Ain't that somethin'?
'Course, the way things are going, the ability to write letters and numbers manually may well be rare or non-existent before long.....
The first words spoken by the next President after being sworn in this January and looking at the real numbers: "What the fuck is this shit?"
Regardless of whether McCain or Obama is the name of our next Prez, I think there will be some pretty serious sicker shock when they start to get briefed about internal WH matters and become privy to the actual degree of incompetence, malfeasance, and fiscal irresponsibility that awaits them. It makes me think of JFK's half-joking, half-serious response when an interviewer asked him early in his presidency what surprised him most about the job. "I think what surprised me the most was finding out that things were as bad, if not worse, than we had been saying that they were."
Just because the show hasn't aired doesn't mean it's not being talked about. The fact that such an investigation was undertaken, and the results so bad that the CC folks are so desperate to keep it under wraps, makes the issue now not merely the insecure nature of the system, but also the deception/concealment of those flaws from the general public and (most importantly) their cardholders. No matter how bad the results of the Mythbusters investigation, it will seem doubly bad if the results are kept secret and imaginations run wild. If they simply bit the bullet, let it be aired, acknowledged the flaws, and vowed to work on the problems, it would be far less damaging in the long run. Nothing stays secret for long in today's world -- the sooner you own up to it, the better the outcome. Nothing is so bad that it can't be made worse by trying to cover it up. (Think of Tricky Dicky...)
How about we have an international network that is completely free from politics and that politicians can't touch?
Yup. And I would like a night of hot animalistic sex with Jessica Biel. Both have about an equal chance of happening.
High-speed pizza delivery we had somewhere in the 80s-90s, but we lost in before 2000 in my area. Unless you consider high-speed delivery to be 45-50 minutes. It's a shame when we grew up with under 30 minutes or free.
Yeah, that was until drivers started killing themselves and others racing to beat that 30-minute deadline, under pressure from their bosses. (Big lawsuits have a funny way of changing corporate behavior sometimes...) Trust me -- I did a stint with Domino's back in the 80's. Publicly, loudly, collectively the official line was "It's just a pizza -- don't break any laws and don't endanger yourself or others." Privately, it would be a whispered "This order is 26 minutes old -- do what you have to do, just don't tell me." Drivers who weren't aggressive enough and racked up too many freebies would quickly see their hours cut or their employment terminated.
I think Americans in general are too impatient. The longer you wait, the more appreciated the payoff. If you are so hungry that you can't wait 50 minutes for a pizza, you're either way too busy, or need to just eat a little more often...
Yep, and now the Internet routes around brain damage.
Really? I thought it ran on brain damage...
Of course, now that the story is propagating all over the Net, pretty soon everyone will know about the alleged security flaws (if not the details), and the CC companies and their legal eagles will look quite villainous. When will they ever learn?
Simulations are not as effective: given three years and a beowulf cluster one can model improbable events, and an improbable event verified three out of three times in the case of the WTC buildings won't satisfy conspiracy theorists.
Nothing satisfies conspiracy theorists...
I fondly recall that Fahrenheit 451 (along with Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm) was one of the first really serious "adult" (in the non-porno sense) books I read, when I was all of maybe 11? 12? The visions and dark allegories of all three books, combined with the events of the late 60's (and Watergate, soon to follow), which made me realize that the Real World (TM) was not at all like what my History and Civics textbooks portrayed, helped to turn that impressionable, too-smart-for-his-own-good adolescent into the bitter, paranoid, mistrusting, cynical middle-aged grunt I have become. For all the ulcers, the insomnia, the times I beat my head against the wall in frustration at the direction of government and society, and the accumulated hair I tore out of my head along the way.....I thank you.
"Several senators have formally complained that citizens could be investigated 'without any basis for suspicion...'"
I believe, in the current climate, that we are all pretty much considered "suspicious" anyway...
If the good guy wins, it's only ever temporary.
Actually, I think they are happy for the "good guy" to win just once in a while. It gives them something to point to with a used car salesman grin and say, "See? The system works!" while the other several thousand of innocents continue to get screwed.