I thought DHS was created for a purpose of streamlining the defense to avoid this kind of crap between different agencies.
No, the DHS was mainly created to create the appearance of "doing something" about terrorism by shuffling boxes about on an org chart and renaming a few existing agencies.
What we need is strong DOD leadership so that the incessant rivalries between the CIA, FBI, NSA and military intelligence agencies are at least made less harmful I am not optimistic however.
How does strong DoD leadership play into that when DoD doesn't even notionally have authority out of anything other than the military intelligence agencies (including the NSA.) Prior to the recent creation of the post of Director of National Intelligence, the designated head of the intelligence community was the Director of Central Intelligence, now its the DNI, and neither of those are within DoD.
If you are arguing that moving the intelligence community under the authority of the Department of Defense would improve things, well, that's an argument that probably needs to be developed more before it could be convincing.
Isn't that the reason we have one person who is the head of the entire executive branch?
Its also the problem within the intelligence community specifically that designating the Director of Central Intelligennce as the single head of the intelligence community in, IIRC, 1948 was supposed to address.
Its also the problem within the intelligence community that moving that responsibility out of the office of the DCI (who is also the head of the CIA, and thus was thought to be in danger of being parochially tied to that particular agency) into the new Director of National Intelligence a few years ago was supposed to address.
When we decide that certain items must include certain safety features, we pass a law specifying that.
We also have general product liability laws making manufacturer's liable for products where reasonable steps aren't taken to assure they are safe for their intended use.
Often, the kind of more specific laws you refer to are actually exceptions to the more general liability rules, in that companies are specifically protected from liability for certain types of hazard provided that they provide features that meet certain standards.
If we want all saws to have this technology, we need to pass a law, otherwise, this is a horrible blurring of the separation of powers, amounting to legislation from the judiciary.
The accusation that this amounts to legislation by the judiciary really is an extraordinary claim which should be supported by specific reference to the asserted basis of the decision in this case and a substantial argument on how the decision is not justified by the law on which it is notionally based.
More than that, they don't care about their online privacy either.
Whether or not they care, in some kind of general sense, about "online privacy", they are certainly using social networking systems specifically because they wish to share some things, not keep them private.
I have pondered the idea of a decentralized Social networking protocol, similar to email/Jabber/etc. Standard IM protocols along with standard (XML based?) data formatting for social information would be used to allow socialnetworking servers to talk to each other, and find friends.
Plenty of such things exist already. In terms of communications protocols covering parts of this space, you have (among others):
E-mail HTTP XMPP PubSubHubbub Google Wave Federation Protocol WebFinger
For social content, you have (again, among others): Atom FOAF XFN
Here's a problem for free software: most social networks are built using it, yet through their constant monitoring of users they do little to promote freedom.
How is this a problem for free software?
Eben Moglen, General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation for 13 years, and the legal brains behind several versions of the GNU GPL, thinks that the free software world needs to fix this with a major new hardware+software project.
Um, why?
'The most attractive hardware is the ultra-small, ARM-based, plug it into the wall, wall-wart server. [Such] an object can be sold to people at a very low one-time price, and brought home and plugged into an electrical outlet and plugged into a wall jack for the Ethernet, and you're done. It comes up, it gets configured through your Web browser on whatever machine you want to have in the apartment with it, and it goes and fetches all your social networking data from all the social networking applications, closing all your accounts. It backs itself up in an encrypted way to your friends' plugs, so that everybody is secure in the way that would be best for them, by having their friends holding the secure version of their data.' Could such a plan work, or is it simply too late to get people to give up their Facebook accounts for something that gives them more freedom?
Stallman, Moglen, and others seem absolutely dead set against people using cloud services, including free-as-in-beer services (even when they are also free-as-in-GPL systems, apparently), but what they haven't done is articulated a value proposition that's going to convince the average non-geek user (or, even, the average geek user) to drop off all existing remotely-hosted social networking services in favor of buying and administering their own server.
For users that are so inclined, open protocols for federation with free software implementations already exist, as do low cost server options on which they can run. At most, you need an integration and polishing project to serve the market to which dedicated devices would appeal.
But its not that big of a market, IMO. It may grow if the FCC succeeds in its goal of making high-speed (in both directions) broadband widely affordable, but then I suspect that the applications that will make having your own server worthwhile will also be ones that demand more than a wall-wart.
Agencies under the Obama administration cite security provisions to withhold information more often than they did under the Bush administration. For example, the 'deliberative process' exemption of the Freedom of Information Act was used 70,779 times in 2009, up from the 47,395 of 2008.
This makes no sense: it uses the frequency of use of the (non-security) "deliberative process" exemption as a supposed example of the Obama administration using "security provisions" more frequently than Bush's did. It clearly isn't an example of that, since the deliberative process exemption isn't a security provision.
It's like saying "John Doe owns more pickup trucks than Bob Smith. For instance, John Doe owns 36 Toyota Corollas, while Bob Smith only owns 24."
There a number of ways to transfer money using the web (including via smartphone.)
This isn't a replacement for those as a mechanism to send money to someone else using your phone, its a replacement for going to the bank (or ATM) and doing a physical deposit when you receive a check.
Re:ASIDE from Youtube and Hulu?!
on
I Want My GTV
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· Score: 1
Streaming HD Netflix takes about 3-7 seconds to start going, and once it starts you will NEVER get buffer issues.
I watch streaming HD from Netflix all the time, and "NEVER get buffer issues" is somewhat optimistic. But it is pretty rare (I personally probably experience a buffer issue maybe one in a dozen hours of viewing.)
The video quality varies slightly depending on which device you use (Roku and PC are best, Xbox 360 and Blu-Ray players are close behind, and the PS3 is slightly grainy...no clue what it will be like on the Wii come April), but they all still look great.
The Wii, IIRC, doesn't support anything more than 480p, so when Netflix comes to Wii, I rather expect it won't include HD at all. And, IME, Netflix HD streaming on PS3 is better than PC, but I suspect it depends on your PC hardware and software configuration and your local network setup.
(the "non-search" traffic) Facebook has the most traffic.
So, if we turn that around, and ignore 1/3 of Facebook's traffic, who (besides, obviously, Google, who is ahead if we don't ignore anything) else would be ahead of Facebook.
And, more importantly, why would we ignore a huge chunk of anyone's traffic when evaluating who gets more traffic?
What makes you think that corporate programmers are necessarily going to do drudge work better than volunteers?
Corporate programmers aren't any better.
OTOH, a corporation can assign people who are proficient in non-programming tasks (UI design, tech writing, etc.) to cover the tasks programmers are neither inclined nor, often, qualified to do. (They can also assign programmers to drudge work programming tasks that programmers who aren't doing it for a paycheck would prefer to not do.)
A volunteer community could in theory attract non-programmers, but most community projects aren't configure to attract (or effectively empower) non-programmers because their tools and processes are geared to programmer-to-programmer collaboration. Solving that problem is a neat challenge, since developing the processes and tools to effectively incorporate (e.g.) UI designers into a community-driven project probably requires collaboration with UI designers in the first place.
Most corporations that do software development (open source or not) have processes that incorporate non-programmers (and not just as users that are the source of issues to resolve). But the processes and tools that work inside a corporation aren't always directly translatable into a community project.
The problem is that majority of open source developers are programmers and UI designing is a completely different profession. Two possible solutions: - Programmers must learn UI designing also - We need more UI designers to join us
The big barrier to getting more UI designers (and this also includes System Analysts, Tech Writers, Graphic Designers and, well, anything other than programmers) to join open source projects is that lots of open source projects use processes and collaborations tools that are are designed principally to support programmer-to-programmer collaboration.
If you're UI changes are implemented by someone checking in changes directly to the code, and not by someone changing a UI design artifact and then someone changing the code to implement that change, there's not a lot a UI designer can do on the project without first becoming a programmer, as well. The same absence of design documentation outside of the code itself is a barrier to most non-programmers participating effectively in many open source projects.
I'm not sure I see Wikipedia as being the "killer app" for video standards. I'm not sure how many articles would be really enhanced by the addition of video, baring in mind that video would need to be licenced under CC or similar
This assumption seems flawed. Wikipedia prefers open licensed content for images, but will accept non-open content with a fair use rationale. Presumably, the same would be true of video clips.
It's all nice and all, but if open video technology really wants to win, they have to be technically better. There is no other way.
For any definition of "technically better" where this is not a vacuous tautology (that is, any definition other than "technically better means whatever ends up winning"), this isn't true: solutions that aren't "technically better" by almost any definition you choose will win all the time, because the business model behind selling them allows them to be sold cheaper (even if they aren't any cheaper to produce), because they are imposed by market-dominant players, or for all kinds of other reasons beside technical superiority.
Compatibilty of patent-unencumbered formats with a venue like Wikipedia would be exactly that kind of non-technical factor. (As would, on the other side, the competitive advantage that those who co-own the patents see in the dominance of patent-encumbered formats that they are part of the controlling syndicate for.)
If US Citizens are employed in the service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil, then what the hell does the ACLU want?
That's a pretty big "If".
I suspect what the ACLU wants is some insight into whether and how the executive branch is assuring that the US citizens it decides on its own to have killed are, in fact, "employed int he service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil" whom it is appropriate to summarily execute.
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens.
Many of them aren't taking (much less stealing) jobs at all: they are the non-working family members of legal immigrants or naturalized citizens who are notionally in one of the "priority" categories for legal immigration, and who otherwise would be supported by money sent out of the country by the worker who is legally here. Unfortunately, because instead of an overall limit within which the number of slots per country is set by the number of qualified immigrants in the priority category per country, our immigration quotas are set up to limit any one country to a particular small percentage of the overall total annually. Consequently, in most of the family categories, countries where there are lots of eligible immigrants with relatives who wish to sponsor them -- Mexico, obviously, but also India and a number of other countries -- have very long (decade plus) backlogs.
This defeats the entire purpose of having family-priority for immigration, which is reinforce the ties of current legal immigrants to this country by having whole families here.
Our immigration policy is poorly designed to meet its notional purposes.
This is a vulnerability to them. They want to be YOUR portal to the rest of the internet.
Actually, they want to be your portal to all of human knowledge; the internet is a means, not an ends.
If they can make it easier for you to get to Facebook via Google they will. If they can pull you away from facebook into BUZZ or GoogleWave they will.
I don't think that they view pulling people into Buzz or Wave as properties as a major strategic goal, they want to use Buzz and Wave properties as showcases for the underlying open protocols (Wave Federation Protocol, PubSubHubbub, etc.) so that more third party vendors will use those open, easy-to-federate-with protocols, and Google can connect to, index, search, and present them.
This is not hacking any more than someone walking up to you on the street, asking you for your keys, then taking your car for a joyride is theft.
If someone asks for my keys under pretenses other than "I intend to take your car for a joyride", and then uses the keys to take my car for a joyride, it is theft (larceny) of the car. (It's also, in many jurisdictions, theft [false pretenses] with respect to the keys.)
So this probably isn't the analogy you want to use to make your argument.
My point is that, because A) 100Mbps service will most likely NOT include 100Mbps upload speed (or even 50Mbps upload speed, most likely), and B) I don't *think* the backbones can actually handle millions of users all transferring 100Mbps data at the same time, that I *still think* the usage cases you bring are still not going to happen?
Why would you criticize the plan based on the assumption that it will reach part of its target (100 million homes with 100 Mbps real download speed) but not assume part of the same target (that those same homes would also have 50 Mbps real upload speed.)
Does this FCC proposal even *address* upload speeds?
Yes, in the very same sentence that it addresses download speeds.
Goal No. 1: At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.
Suggestion, at least skimthe plan for the specific things you want to criticize it based on before criticizing it.
My point still stands. The world is replete with examples of how state-run telecoms stagnate until private competition is allowed.
If the world is replete with such examples and they are really relevant to the immediate issue (which, btw, has nothing to do with "state run telecoms" directly, since none of the plan involves creating a national telecommunications provider), it should be trivial to make your case with one relevant to the specific kind of state intervention being discussed here. (Not that an example of how something similar can be done wrong is a particularly strong argument that a proposal is wrong in the first place, but its better than just waving a hand and saying that there are examples out there.)
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No, the DHS was mainly created to create the appearance of "doing something" about terrorism by shuffling boxes about on an org chart and renaming a few existing agencies.
How does strong DoD leadership play into that when DoD doesn't even notionally have authority out of anything other than the military intelligence agencies (including the NSA.) Prior to the recent creation of the post of Director of National Intelligence, the designated head of the intelligence community was the Director of Central Intelligence, now its the DNI, and neither of those are within DoD.
If you are arguing that moving the intelligence community under the authority of the Department of Defense would improve things, well, that's an argument that probably needs to be developed more before it could be convincing.
Its also the problem within the intelligence community specifically that designating the Director of Central Intelligennce as the single head of the intelligence community in, IIRC, 1948 was supposed to address.
Its also the problem within the intelligence community that moving that responsibility out of the office of the DCI (who is also the head of the CIA, and thus was thought to be in danger of being parochially tied to that particular agency) into the new Director of National Intelligence a few years ago was supposed to address.
Last I looked, the courts were a branch of government.
We also have general product liability laws making manufacturer's liable for products where reasonable steps aren't taken to assure they are safe for their intended use.
Often, the kind of more specific laws you refer to are actually exceptions to the more general liability rules, in that companies are specifically protected from liability for certain types of hazard provided that they provide features that meet certain standards.
The accusation that this amounts to legislation by the judiciary really is an extraordinary claim which should be supported by specific reference to the asserted basis of the decision in this case and a substantial argument on how the decision is not justified by the law on which it is notionally based.
Whether or not they care, in some kind of general sense, about "online privacy", they are certainly using social networking systems specifically because they wish to share some things, not keep them private.
Plenty of such things exist already. In terms of communications protocols covering parts of this space, you have (among others):
E-mail
HTTP
XMPP
PubSubHubbub
Google Wave Federation Protocol
WebFinger
For social content, you have (again, among others):
Atom
FOAF
XFN
How is this a problem for free software?
Um, why?
Stallman, Moglen, and others seem absolutely dead set against people using cloud services, including free-as-in-beer services (even when they are also free-as-in-GPL systems, apparently), but what they haven't done is articulated a value proposition that's going to convince the average non-geek user (or, even, the average geek user) to drop off all existing remotely-hosted social networking services in favor of buying and administering their own server.
For users that are so inclined, open protocols for federation with free software implementations already exist, as do low cost server options on which they can run. At most, you need an integration and polishing project to serve the market to which dedicated devices would appeal.
But its not that big of a market, IMO. It may grow if the FCC succeeds in its goal of making high-speed (in both directions) broadband widely affordable, but then I suspect that the applications that will make having your own server worthwhile will also be ones that demand more than a wall-wart.
Only when you ignore, IIRC, ~40% of Google's traffic; Google is far ahead of Facebook, except when you exclude Google's "non-search properties".
This makes no sense: it uses the frequency of use of the (non-security) "deliberative process" exemption as a supposed example of the Obama administration using "security provisions" more frequently than Bush's did. It clearly isn't an example of that, since the deliberative process exemption isn't a security provision.
It's like saying "John Doe owns more pickup trucks than Bob Smith. For instance, John Doe owns 36 Toyota Corollas, while Bob Smith only owns 24."
There a number of ways to transfer money using the web (including via smartphone.)
This isn't a replacement for those as a mechanism to send money to someone else using your phone, its a replacement for going to the bank (or ATM) and doing a physical deposit when you receive a check.
I watch streaming HD from Netflix all the time, and "NEVER get buffer issues" is somewhat optimistic. But it is pretty rare (I personally probably experience a buffer issue maybe one in a dozen hours of viewing.)
The Wii, IIRC, doesn't support anything more than 480p, so when Netflix comes to Wii, I rather expect it won't include HD at all. And, IME, Netflix HD streaming on PS3 is better than PC, but I suspect it depends on your PC hardware and software configuration and your local network setup.
(the "non-search" traffic) Facebook has the most traffic.
So, if we turn that around, and ignore 1/3 of Facebook's traffic, who (besides, obviously, Google, who is ahead if we don't ignore anything) else would be ahead of Facebook.
And, more importantly, why would we ignore a huge chunk of anyone's traffic when evaluating who gets more traffic?
Corporate programmers aren't any better.
OTOH, a corporation can assign people who are proficient in non-programming tasks (UI design, tech writing, etc.) to cover the tasks programmers are neither inclined nor, often, qualified to do. (They can also assign programmers to drudge work programming tasks that programmers who aren't doing it for a paycheck would prefer to not do.)
A volunteer community could in theory attract non-programmers, but most community projects aren't configure to attract (or effectively empower) non-programmers because their tools and processes are geared to programmer-to-programmer collaboration. Solving that problem is a neat challenge, since developing the processes and tools to effectively incorporate (e.g.) UI designers into a community-driven project probably requires collaboration with UI designers in the first place.
Most corporations that do software development (open source or not) have processes that incorporate non-programmers (and not just as users that are the source of issues to resolve). But the processes and tools that work inside a corporation aren't always directly translatable into a community project.
The big barrier to getting more UI designers (and this also includes System Analysts, Tech Writers, Graphic Designers and, well, anything other than programmers) to join open source projects is that lots of open source projects use processes and collaborations tools that are are designed principally to support programmer-to-programmer collaboration.
If you're UI changes are implemented by someone checking in changes directly to the code, and not by someone changing a UI design artifact and then someone changing the code to implement that change, there's not a lot a UI designer can do on the project without first becoming a programmer, as well. The same absence of design documentation outside of the code itself is a barrier to most non-programmers participating effectively in many open source projects.
This assumption seems flawed. Wikipedia prefers open licensed content for images, but will accept non-open content with a fair use rationale. Presumably, the same would be true of video clips.
For any definition of "technically better" where this is not a vacuous tautology (that is, any definition other than "technically better means whatever ends up winning"), this isn't true: solutions that aren't "technically better" by almost any definition you choose will win all the time, because the business model behind selling them allows them to be sold cheaper (even if they aren't any cheaper to produce), because they are imposed by market-dominant players, or for all kinds of other reasons beside technical superiority.
Compatibilty of patent-unencumbered formats with a venue like Wikipedia would be exactly that kind of non-technical factor. (As would, on the other side, the competitive advantage that those who co-own the patents see in the dominance of patent-encumbered formats that they are part of the controlling syndicate for.)
The Constitution forbids the US government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
It does not add a qualifier "so long as they are on American soil".
That's a pretty big "If".
I suspect what the ACLU wants is some insight into whether and how the executive branch is assuring that the US citizens it decides on its own to have killed are, in fact, "employed int he service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil" whom it is appropriate to summarily execute.
Many of them aren't taking (much less stealing) jobs at all: they are the non-working family members of legal immigrants or naturalized citizens who are notionally in one of the "priority" categories for legal immigration, and who otherwise would be supported by money sent out of the country by the worker who is legally here. Unfortunately, because instead of an overall limit within which the number of slots per country is set by the number of qualified immigrants in the priority category per country, our immigration quotas are set up to limit any one country to a particular small percentage of the overall total annually. Consequently, in most of the family categories, countries where there are lots of eligible immigrants with relatives who wish to sponsor them -- Mexico, obviously, but also India and a number of other countries -- have very long (decade plus) backlogs.
This defeats the entire purpose of having family-priority for immigration, which is reinforce the ties of current legal immigrants to this country by having whole families here.
Our immigration policy is poorly designed to meet its notional purposes.
That depends on the content of the law.
Actually, they want to be your portal to all of human knowledge; the internet is a means, not an ends.
I don't think that they view pulling people into Buzz or Wave as properties as a major strategic goal, they want to use Buzz and Wave properties as showcases for the underlying open protocols (Wave Federation Protocol, PubSubHubbub, etc.) so that more third party vendors will use those open, easy-to-federate-with protocols, and Google can connect to, index, search, and present them.
If someone asks for my keys under pretenses other than "I intend to take your car for a joyride", and then uses the keys to take my car for a joyride, it is theft (larceny) of the car. (It's also, in many jurisdictions, theft [false pretenses] with respect to the keys.)
So this probably isn't the analogy you want to use to make your argument.
Why would you criticize the plan based on the assumption that it will reach part of its target (100 million homes with 100 Mbps real download speed) but not assume part of the same target (that those same homes would also have 50 Mbps real upload speed.)
Yes, in the very same sentence that it addresses download speeds.
Goal No. 1: At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.
Suggestion, at least skim the plan for the specific things you want to criticize it based on before criticizing it.
If the world is replete with such examples and they are really relevant to the immediate issue (which, btw, has nothing to do with "state run telecoms" directly, since none of the plan involves creating a national telecommunications provider), it should be trivial to make your case with one relevant to the specific kind of state intervention being discussed here. (Not that an example of how something similar can be done wrong is a particularly strong argument that a proposal is wrong in the first place, but its better than just waving a hand and saying that there are examples out there.)