Could the US simply refuse visas to anybody who will not provide them that information?
And could they turn away a plane carrying somebody without a visa?
In general EU citizens get their visas in customs, after having landed in the US, and US citizens get the same treatment in the EU. That's always struck me as odd, actually; what if they refuse you a visa? You've flown all that way for nothing?
I wonder if they need to move the visa procedures back closer to the country of origin. That would probably be a massive regulatory hassle. And it would sure make relations between the US and the EU seem chillier.
I'm reluctant to apply slippery-slope thinking like this, because it misses opportunities. If firing people for genetic predisposition is bad, then let's make that illegal. Stopping all potentially good things because of potentially bad outcomes smacks of luddism to me.
Note that I'm arguing here against the thinking, not the goal of the argument. I myself am very worried about the government being able to track people in the kind of detail that this proposes. I don't know if they'll start refusing jobs based on genetic profiles Gattaca-style, but I am certain that once they have a perfect ID card in everybody's hands they'll apply it everywhere because it's easier to do so than not to.
But I'm convinced that some sort of ID card system will happen. There already exists one (social security numbers, credit card numbers, driver's license numbers), and it's so intolerably insecure that it's amazing that identity theft isn't worse than it is.
Personally I'd like to see some sort of public/private key based ID cards. Using DNA is like have a shared key, and that's incredibly dangerous: it's hard to change and prone to snooping. So I'm opposed to national DNA databases like this. I just want the reasons to be clear.
Well, that's a little much. Gattaca was about detailed gene analysis, to remove "defectives" from society. This is a much nearer-term civil liberties issue about anonymity and privacy.
Yes, there are, but who gets to decide what they are?
Science gets a special place in making those decisions. If it says, "The sky is going to fall if you don't do this, no matter what it costs", they (we, actually; I'm a scientist) merit special attention. People stopped using CFCs on scientists' say-so, for an ozone hole most people never noticed.
That means that they have to be right. Scientists get that pass because they're so often right. When they're wrong, especially on big stuff, it chips away at that special voice scientists have.
You're right that there are things more important than money. But we have to agree on what those are; no individual gets to say, "The ozone hole is the most important thing in the world and you have to spend your money to fix it!" The same applies to any other issue: global warming, fisheries management, logging, etc.
You may spend your money any way you like, but when you start reaching into somebody else's pocket to solve problems you'd better be damn sure you're right.
Note that all of those organizations stand to profit from network neutrality. The technical companies are big guys who would have to pay more to deliver content in the absence of network neutrality. The action groups seem to have gotten into this from AOL's email tax, where people who send out lots of fundraising email (like the NRA and moveon.org) would have to pay more.
In other words, the list isn't quite as diverse as it appears to be. They fall into two categories with different financial motiviations. Opposing forces unite because their cause is both on one side with respect to the (greedy) ISPs.
I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying that they're not necessarily answering from the best technical level. Brahm Cohen's also answering from his profit motive, but if profit motive is what it comes down to, it's a lot easier for MoveOn and Microsoft to have their voices heard than for small inventors trying to develop new ideas that might one day become big ideas.
So ultimately there may be good reasons for network neutrality, but I'm not going to let the heft of those companies decide for me.
As long as Ticketmaster has contracts with the venues, their day isn't anywhere near over.
Best of luck to your friends and thundertix. The reason Ticketmaster gets to be so evil is that they've been a monopoly. If thundertix can make a better offer to the venue when Ticketmaster's contract is up, they'll be doing a great public service.
It's a money grab, pure and simple.
As are all of new TLD proposals. One of these days we might see a TLD proposal where the domain registrars actually do work for their money, thus providing some sort of value (the way the guys who run.edu ensure that only legitimate institutions get a.edu domain). Any new TLD that doesn't require work from the registrars is just a money grab.
Depressing, I'm afraid, but probably true. Identity theft makes it easy to apply for a loan and then skip town. Except if you've stolen the identity of somebody already out of town, you don't even have to rent a moving van.
And it takes relatively few people to poison that well. If an investor charges 6% and could get 5% elsewhere, there's only a 1% margin keeping him in the game at all. If only 1% of the applications are scams, the entire enterprise falls to the ground.
It may be working today for the same reason that email used to work: until there is a critical mass of people involved, the scammers have better ways to spend their time. These are comparatively small loans. So past success is not necessarily an indication of future performance.
If we're very lucky we'll find that throwing many minds at the problem will solve it. Perhaps a network of trust would work; say, cheaper loan rates to people recommended by others who have paid back their loans, or even co-signing. The scammers would then escalate (form into clumps to take loans, pay them back, recommend each other, take another loan, and all default at once) and maybe the collective minds would solve that problem (the way Google tries to weed out search engine cheaters).
Or a wholly different tack, where lenders pay money directly to merchants (say, the owner of a house being sold, or a car dealer) so that the customer has goods rather than money, which are harder to simply pack up and move with. There are ways for scammers and counter-scammers to escalate that game, too.
It would be interesting to find out if an open-source/P2P type hive mind can keep ahead of the scammers.
Slashdot Mirror
Could the US simply refuse visas to anybody who will not provide them that information?
And could they turn away a plane carrying somebody without a visa?
In general EU citizens get their visas in customs, after having landed in the US, and US citizens get the same treatment in the EU. That's always struck me as odd, actually; what if they refuse you a visa? You've flown all that way for nothing?
I wonder if they need to move the visa procedures back closer to the country of origin. That would probably be a massive regulatory hassle. And it would sure make relations between the US and the EU seem chillier.
no mention of copylefted / public domain / other non-infringing uses.
I've always assumed that was because legal uses comprised a trivial fraction of cases, at least with respect to music and movies.
I'm reluctant to apply slippery-slope thinking like this, because it misses opportunities. If firing people for genetic predisposition is bad, then let's make that illegal. Stopping all potentially good things because of potentially bad outcomes smacks of luddism to me.
Note that I'm arguing here against the thinking, not the goal of the argument. I myself am very worried about the government being able to track people in the kind of detail that this proposes. I don't know if they'll start refusing jobs based on genetic profiles Gattaca-style, but I am certain that once they have a perfect ID card in everybody's hands they'll apply it everywhere because it's easier to do so than not to.
But I'm convinced that some sort of ID card system will happen. There already exists one (social security numbers, credit card numbers, driver's license numbers), and it's so intolerably insecure that it's amazing that identity theft isn't worse than it is.
Personally I'd like to see some sort of public/private key based ID cards. Using DNA is like have a shared key, and that's incredibly dangerous: it's hard to change and prone to snooping. So I'm opposed to national DNA databases like this. I just want the reasons to be clear.
Well, that's a little much. Gattaca was about detailed gene analysis, to remove "defectives" from society. This is a much nearer-term civil liberties issue about anonymity and privacy.
Yes, there are, but who gets to decide what they are?
Science gets a special place in making those decisions. If it says, "The sky is going to fall if you don't do this, no matter what it costs", they (we, actually; I'm a scientist) merit special attention. People stopped using CFCs on scientists' say-so, for an ozone hole most people never noticed.
That means that they have to be right. Scientists get that pass because they're so often right. When they're wrong, especially on big stuff, it chips away at that special voice scientists have.
You're right that there are things more important than money. But we have to agree on what those are; no individual gets to say, "The ozone hole is the most important thing in the world and you have to spend your money to fix it!" The same applies to any other issue: global warming, fisheries management, logging, etc.
You may spend your money any way you like, but when you start reaching into somebody else's pocket to solve problems you'd better be damn sure you're right.
Note that all of those organizations stand to profit from network neutrality. The technical companies are big guys who would have to pay more to deliver content in the absence of network neutrality. The action groups seem to have gotten into this from AOL's email tax, where people who send out lots of fundraising email (like the NRA and moveon.org) would have to pay more.
In other words, the list isn't quite as diverse as it appears to be. They fall into two categories with different financial motiviations. Opposing forces unite because their cause is both on one side with respect to the (greedy) ISPs.
I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying that they're not necessarily answering from the best technical level. Brahm Cohen's also answering from his profit motive, but if profit motive is what it comes down to, it's a lot easier for MoveOn and Microsoft to have their voices heard than for small inventors trying to develop new ideas that might one day become big ideas.
So ultimately there may be good reasons for network neutrality, but I'm not going to let the heft of those companies decide for me.
As long as Ticketmaster has contracts with the venues, their day isn't anywhere near over.
Best of luck to your friends and thundertix. The reason Ticketmaster gets to be so evil is that they've been a monopoly. If thundertix can make a better offer to the venue when Ticketmaster's contract is up, they'll be doing a great public service.
It's a money grab, pure and simple. As are all of new TLD proposals. One of these days we might see a TLD proposal where the domain registrars actually do work for their money, thus providing some sort of value (the way the guys who run .edu ensure that only legitimate institutions get a .edu domain). Any new TLD that doesn't require work from the registrars is just a money grab.
Depressing, I'm afraid, but probably true. Identity theft makes it easy to apply for a loan and then skip town. Except if you've stolen the identity of somebody already out of town, you don't even have to rent a moving van.
And it takes relatively few people to poison that well. If an investor charges 6% and could get 5% elsewhere, there's only a 1% margin keeping him in the game at all. If only 1% of the applications are scams, the entire enterprise falls to the ground.
It may be working today for the same reason that email used to work: until there is a critical mass of people involved, the scammers have better ways to spend their time. These are comparatively small loans. So past success is not necessarily an indication of future performance.
If we're very lucky we'll find that throwing many minds at the problem will solve it. Perhaps a network of trust would work; say, cheaper loan rates to people recommended by others who have paid back their loans, or even co-signing. The scammers would then escalate (form into clumps to take loans, pay them back, recommend each other, take another loan, and all default at once) and maybe the collective minds would solve that problem (the way Google tries to weed out search engine cheaters).
Or a wholly different tack, where lenders pay money directly to merchants (say, the owner of a house being sold, or a car dealer) so that the customer has goods rather than money, which are harder to simply pack up and move with. There are ways for scammers and counter-scammers to escalate that game, too.
It would be interesting to find out if an open-source/P2P type hive mind can keep ahead of the scammers.