I innocently went to the sex.com web site mentioned in the article and I was SHOCKED at what I found. I am almost embarrassed to tell you this, but I will because I know that you too will share my outrage: There were...scantily clad women prominently featured EVERYWHERE on the web site! Every time I clicked a link, more images of barely clothed females, cavorting around could be seen on my computer screen!
You read correctly. Apparently, the Inter Net is being appropriated by these rascals and is being used to transmit filthy images of unclothed women!
After making this alarming discovery, I spent the next 4 1/2 hours double-checking my findings by clicking the "Black", "Fetish", "Anal", and "Black Anal Fetish" links on the left portion of the computer screen. I found it necessary to do this repeatedly and vigorously until I finally grew tired, and I anticipate needing to continue on with the double-checking tomorrow.
I estimate that this double-checking process could take upwards of the next 7 months, after which I intend to write an angry letter to the Web Masters of Slash.dot.com and the Wall Street Journal. However, most of my angry missives will be directed to the people behind this horrible, deviant web site, and I will demand that they direct me to other, similar web sites so that I may carry on my investigation.
It's because lawyers are universally disliked, so they become easy targets for insults regardless of how apt the insults might be. Even though professionally fighting with others makes you far less of a "pussy" than some random egghead, lawyers never get the amount of respect outside of their field that is commensurate with the grief they put up with. The fast-tracked, slick Wall Street lawyer prick is the exception, not the rule. Real lawyering is gritty, tireless and it is very personal.
This is according to a friend of mine who was sent to prison for 18 months for his actions during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest, and was also sent to county for a similar offense but the sentence was shorter:
Prisoners are not nearly as rape-happy as they're made out to be in popular culture. There are fights, drug deals, and a lot of angst and widespread hopelessness. But the few outright rapists in the general population are stigmatized and not well-respected. Keeping to yourself and minding your own business go a long way in lockup.
In comparing federal to county: You are better supervised in federal prison, which means there are actually far fewer assaults, sexual or otherwise. Federal prisons have more controls in place for dealing with problems.
And that's about all he was willing to share on the subject. Thankfully, I have managed to stay out of prison myself, so what I am imparting to you is second-hand information.:)
If you don't like it, don't read the site dickhead.
I'll stop reading when you and people like you stop trying to frame your poor understanding of intellectual property laws as the authoritative truth. Pretending to be an authority on something that you obviously don't understand only serves to perpetuate misunderstanding of intellectual property issues, in the Slashdot community and elsewhere.
Where you have attempted to help, you instead do harm. People will now read your "+4 Insightful" comment and think that what you wrote is actually true. I doubt you will be modded down despite the harm you have caused.
I would rank you as worse than most, because rather than try to support your understanding of the issue with good argument (an admittedly hard task, because your point is based on no law or facts to speak of) you choose to:
1.) Completely ignore the other poster who also wanted you to present some evidence of your claims and 2.) Call me a name like some school kid
That's damn impressive. Well played, poster # 50,515. Well played!
explain how there is copyright on databases that consist of nothing but collections of public domain information?
Simple. Electronic compilations of public domain works, such as Gutenberg, own a copyright on the compilation itself, taken as a whole, but never on the individual works that make up the collection. It's not a distinction I expect you to understand, but you could at least make a good faith effort to try. Why don't you read Section 103(b) of the Code instead of trying to get strangers to explain things to you online? There are two possibilities here: Either you're too lazy to follow the link to 103(b) that covers the exact question you just asked, or you did read the relevant law on that subject and still don't understand what you read.
I won't bother explaining it again. Just read what I wrote here. You should take some steps to educate yourself rather than try to place that burden upon me. Frankly, I don't care if you remain ignorant or not.
You can't reason about copyright law. It is what it is.
This made me laugh out loud. Please explain this to the judges who interpret copyright laws every day based on reason and precedent. The law isn't "what it is." That's why we have an entire branch of government dedicated to interpreting the law. I mean, you lack even the rudimentary foundation to understand this stuff--all you're capable of doing is meekly criticizing those who do.
Good resource, but make sure you don't misunderstand this statement from that linked FAQ:
The problem with these practices is that a publisher, having added this copyrighted material, or edited the text even in a minor way, may simply put a copyright notice on the whole book, even though the main part of it -- the text itself -- is in the public domain!
(emphasis added)
That "may" that I bolded DOES NOT MEAN that the publisher has a legally enforceable new copyright (i.e. it doesn't mean "may" as in "they are permitted"), only that this is a common tactic that a publisher might employ to try to give the impression that they have created a new work that is subject to copyright.
Haven't you heard? Intellectual property issues are just one of many things that the C++ coders and 14-year olds that comprise the Slashdot reader base pretend to be authorities on. I'm also intensely interested to learn about this mysterious "how the notes are printed" copyright on public domain music.
Public domain books certainly don't share the same characteristic--it is only meaningful additions to those works, such as annotations, that are subject to copyright under Section 103(b) of the U.S. Code. As far as public domain sheet music is concerned, I would interpret this to mean that additional parts for new instruments as well as significant re-arrangements of existing parts for other instruments would be subject to copyright for an otherwise public domain work. It goes without saying that the new copyright is not extended to the pre-existing portions of the original work when a truly derivative work is created (Id.). That is why I sincerely doubt that the well-settled body of case law on the subject would vindicate the grandparent, since not even the statutes themselves appear to support his claims.
I smell bullshit on this "actual way the printing company formats the score and arranges it on the page is copyrightable" idea. But hey, random Slashdot poster # 50,515 was modded up for his unsubstantiated claims, so they must be true!
Couldn't they also alternate exclamation marks with question marks depending on whether or not they wanted to solicit comments on just how creepy the mask appears to others, and whether or not they wanted to see it?!?!?! You know, like
CREEPY XP HW mask!?!?!?!?!?!?! MUST SEE!?!?!
But I admit, it does lack the confidence of 13 consecutive exclamation marks.
I appreciate your effort in lying to us all by pretending that you were putting on your Big Boy pants and trying to be part of the discussion, but you are clearly a troll. That is why you blockquoted a racist, incendiary statement that appeared in neither the article nor the previous discussion, and then replied to it as though it had been made. The post history speaks for itself.
Good luck furnishing your new under-bridge apartment, jackass. We're done here.
Are you sure you didn't just reply to the wrong post, nitwit? You quoted text that appears neither in my original comment, nor in the article. That leads me to believe that you just made something up so that you'd have something to respond to. And let's not forget how edgy and brave your "anti-racist" stance is. Oh, well played, troll, well played.
As for the other garbage you wrote, it seems that you're in favor of dispensing with the rule of law and just labeling and libeling any content you personally find racist and objectionable. Well that's great, so why exactly are you more qualified than judges who have the job of making those determinations, oh great Arbiter of Thought? That was a rhetorical question, because of course you aren't. You're just another pompous, anonymous jerk who believes that her/his/its bullshit opinion is tantamount to the law.
Exactly. According to the article, the people who want this material removed seem to be just in the preliminary stages of that process. And that's fine--there is no harm in politely asking Google to remove the content first.
If the jurisdictional issue of "Where are the Google Blogger servers?" is decided, and those people get a court order demanding the removal of the content, then and only then should Google comply.
"Let me tell ya something...brother...the Hulkster doesn't appreciate his likeness being used without permission. Blizzard, I'm calling you out right now. You hear me? You and me, in the ring, Smackdown..."
Oh yes, Egypt is a very service-oriented nation. If you know the word "baksheesh" then you're already there. Those tips better flow to the guy who helped lug your bags, to the man at the hotel who told you about a nice place to eat and so on! If you're American or British, do not exchange out all your money into Egyptian Pounds. For the purposes of "baksheesh", many people are really, really pleased about getting dollars or GBP--the latter of which is often worth 10 times the native currency and holds its value a lot better. Practice saying these words, spelled phonetically, in Arabic--they will come in handy:
la shokrun ("la shoke-ron") - it means "no thank you"
la - means "no", pronounced as in the word "ma" or "hah" shoke - as in the word "spoke" or "bloke" ron - as in the word "gone"
My girlfriend was spotted by the monument police. I didn't mean to trivialize them earlier--Egyptian policemen carry prominently displayed automatic weapons, and in the nicer parts of Cairo (such as Zemalek), you will see them literally at every street corner. The monument officials are deliberately made out to be less threatening looking, but they are no less willing to beat ass. I personally witnessed one repeatedly punching a bedouin in the head for getting too close to the tourists at the Pyramids. These people really don't mess around.
You will find that the tourist sites are surprisingly unaccommodating to tourists. You do a lot of walking, climbing, and in some cases a lot of baking out in the hot Egyptian sun. Last I was there, I climbed inside the largest of the pyramids by ascending a rickety vertical ladder that was perhaps 30 - 50 meters long. One misstep and your vacation gets much less enjoyable.
The thing with photographs and the monuments is that you can take pictures of some, but not at others. My girlfriend was spotted taking photos in a tomb and the "no pictures" policy was loosely interpreted by the official as a "permanently confiscate the camera" policy. Like I said, it took money to fix the problem, which was kind of crappy. There may not be a place to put your camera if you've transitioned from a "pictures OK" to a "pictures not OK" area, and depending on the circumstances, they may balk at the idea of your even having the camera out in the first place. Something small and easily concealed is the ticket, and yeah, I would absolutely upload shots on a daily basis. I did it with my laptop--every day I would dump shots onto the hard drive. At the very least, you're insuring against losing your pics if the camera gets damaged or "lost".
If you're going to the Pyramids or to Luxor, hire out a personal guide from a travel company. Seriously. The better ones have Egyptology degrees and will tell you anything you want to know about what you see. Due to the exchange rates, your dollars, GBP, Euros, or whatever else will probably stretch very far in Egypt, and you might be surprised by how cheap the guides can be. The guide becomes the "designated picture taker" and "camera carrier" too;)
I'm still trying to figure out why this got posted. It is a link to half of a transcript and some audio downloads from a television show so far-from-coy about its politics that it comes across as the Left's version of The O'Reilly Factor. If you read the exchange between Copps, Goodman, and Gonzalez, I promise you will come away bewildered and disappointed. And even as someone who is a card-carrying liberal, I find this kind of propaganda hard to justify.
Read the transcript. Read it. Gonzalez himself is the biggest offender. He literally blames whitey for the phenomenon of media consolidation, undoubtedly finding a use for his own Latino ancestry as a carte blanche license through which he may criticize The Man for all of The Man's failings. If you're easily frightened by the cliched Orwellian future that people like Gonzalez try to paint, then here's some fearmongering for you right now:
We are in real danger of waking up one day with a de facto apartheid system, one where a small group of giant firms, run almost exclusively by white investors and managers, control the production and distribution of news and information to a largely non-white population.
"That's right! Our world is run by rich white men!!" It's an understanding of the problem that goes no deeper than what you'd find at a freshmen political science class.
The entire interview is a clumsy mashup of two unrelated ideas: White ownership (framed as the confusingly converse concept of "minority representation") and corporate consolidation. The former is a symptom of the way in which America was settled, and has no place in a rational discussion about the latter (which Gonzalez gladly forgoes in favor of white-baiting).
Corporate consolidation of media outlets, on the other hand, is also a tragedy. But what it means is that the media industry is no different from any other. You can wax philosophical about how the airwaves are free, man--they belong to you and me, man, but in the end there is still a situation where companies who have money buy out those who have less. Don't blame whitey, blame capitalism. To complain bitterly about how the people doing the buying out are white misses the point. It badly and embarrassingly misses the point.
I know this is Slashdot, so by all means, please feel free to copy and paste select portions of what I've written and take them out of context, because I'm sure that works better than actually discussing the issues.
It sounds like you've been globetrotting quite a bit yourself. It's funny you should mention people trying to take items at the Egypt --> Jordan passage.
I remember I was planning on boarding a flight to Jordan at the Cairo airport, and one gentleman was absolutely convinced that the USB flash drive I had on my keychain was some sort of knife (this was years back when they were far less common) that he was more than willing to take from me. After several brief exchanges in my unsophisticated, awkward Arabic I was finally able to plead for a demonstration. I had to power up my laptop and insert the key in and out of the USB port in a coital fashion before he finally believed that I wasn't preparing to stab everyone in sight with my tiny, squarish keychain.
The Egyptians pull that crap while you're doing the tourist thing, too. While we were sightseeing at Luxor, my girlfriend mistakenly took some pictures of the insides of a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The camera was snatched up by one of those cheesy monument policemen and was not returned until I slipped the man two 20 pound Egyptian notes. It wasn't exactly a fortune when you compare it to dollars, but having to bribe people to get our property back left a bitter taste. Shokrun, Egypt.
Years ago, before Zayed died, Airport officials at the Abu Dhabi airport made me stand quiet and motionless in a corner for 2 1/2 hours while my passport sat inside the caged counter area of one of the passport checkers. I was given no explanation as to why this happened. The only thing I could think is that they did it because they could.
This will work like gangbusters if you're running an OS on the laptop that actually employs access rights (*cough* Linux *cough* *cough*). Then there will be no practical way to access your personal, home directory files from the dummy account anyway. Unless security personnel ask for a root password (unlikely) you should be fine.
Instead of seizing your computer, your person will be seized and thrown in quarantine.
Have you ever even traveled overseas before? It's like you just lifted this information from an Orwell novel or made it up off the top of your head just to be an anonymous contrarian. Your language is stilted and sounds like something you heard somebody smarter saying years ago: "Your person" indeed. I'm no Richard Stallman, but I've traveled extensively in the Middle East, Lower Asia, and in Eastern and Western Europe. For an American, I do alright.
Everywhere I've gone, airport and border security has been lax. You are searched, but not invasively so. They ask questions about where you're going and why, but it's not Jeopardy-level stuff. A valid passport does its job for you. Nobody throws you in quarantine for having a cold or pretending to, for godsake. Why don't you do us all a favor and stop bothering us with this unrealistic Checkpoint Charlie crap you saw in a late-night Spike TV Jean Claude Van Damme movie.
Interestingly, it's only when you re-enter the United States as an American citizen that you are subject to the most harassment, at least at O'Hare and Kennedy. They are not afraid to use dogs to sniff you while you're waiting on your luggage. They will whip out the rubber gloves when handling your property, and they will give you that knowing look like "Give us any trouble, and these can be used for you."
But thrown into quarantine? Laptop and briefcase-toting American businessmen? Please get a clue.
Oh, if some of the fields aren't already there, then you can just create them. Right click anywhere and select "new--> boolean", give it the name, and set the value to true. I'm sorry if that tutorial isn't all that self-explanatory--I didn't write it, just linked to it to try to help you out:) There are probably better ones out there, lurking somewhere on Google.
One remedy some companies are considering is telling travelers coming back into the country with sensitive information to encrypt it and e-mail it to themselves, which at least protects access to the data, if not its privacy.
It's kind of ridiculous that it's come to this, but encryption and self-emailing will at least get the porn^H^H^H^H information where it needs to go. How to keep your laptop from being seized is another matter. My tentative plan for next time I'm crossing the border is to pretend to be really sick (tissues in hand, pop Halls, etc.) while I'm being processed. Nobody will want to touch you or your belongings if they think it will cost them days of illness.
Ack, that horrible thing seems to sometimes cause weird problems with some websites that don't like all the simultaneous connections, and it can also cause memory leaks. Just be hardcore and modify your about:config yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
I say just leave it in and call it a feature.
I innocently went to the sex.com web site mentioned in the article and I was SHOCKED at what I found. I am almost embarrassed to tell you this, but I will because I know that you too will share my outrage: There were...scantily clad women prominently featured EVERYWHERE on the web site! Every time I clicked a link, more images of barely clothed females, cavorting around could be seen on my computer screen!
You read correctly. Apparently, the Inter Net is being appropriated by these rascals and is being used to transmit filthy images of unclothed women!
After making this alarming discovery, I spent the next 4 1/2 hours double-checking my findings by clicking the "Black", "Fetish", "Anal", and "Black Anal Fetish" links on the left portion of the computer screen. I found it necessary to do this repeatedly and vigorously until I finally grew tired, and I anticipate needing to continue on with the double-checking tomorrow.
I estimate that this double-checking process could take upwards of the next 7 months, after which I intend to write an angry letter to the Web Masters of Slash.dot.com and the Wall Street Journal. However, most of my angry missives will be directed to the people behind this horrible, deviant web site, and I will demand that they direct me to other, similar web sites so that I may carry on my investigation.
Yours in Christ,
Beebeard
It's because lawyers are universally disliked, so they become easy targets for insults regardless of how apt the insults might be. Even though professionally fighting with others makes you far less of a "pussy" than some random egghead, lawyers never get the amount of respect outside of their field that is commensurate with the grief they put up with. The fast-tracked, slick Wall Street lawyer prick is the exception, not the rule. Real lawyering is gritty, tireless and it is very personal.
This is according to a friend of mine who was sent to prison for 18 months for his actions during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest, and was also sent to county for a similar offense but the sentence was shorter:
:)
Prisoners are not nearly as rape-happy as they're made out to be in popular culture. There are fights, drug deals, and a lot of angst and widespread hopelessness. But the few outright rapists in the general population are stigmatized and not well-respected. Keeping to yourself and minding your own business go a long way in lockup.
In comparing federal to county: You are better supervised in federal prison, which means there are actually far fewer assaults, sexual or otherwise. Federal prisons have more controls in place for dealing with problems.
And that's about all he was willing to share on the subject. Thankfully, I have managed to stay out of prison myself, so what I am imparting to you is second-hand information.
I'll stop reading when you and people like you stop trying to frame your poor understanding of intellectual property laws as the authoritative truth. Pretending to be an authority on something that you obviously don't understand only serves to perpetuate misunderstanding of intellectual property issues, in the Slashdot community and elsewhere.
Where you have attempted to help, you instead do harm. People will now read your "+4 Insightful" comment and think that what you wrote is actually true. I doubt you will be modded down despite the harm you have caused.
I would rank you as worse than most, because rather than try to support your understanding of the issue with good argument (an admittedly hard task, because your point is based on no law or facts to speak of) you choose to:
1.) Completely ignore the other poster who also wanted you to present some evidence of your claims and
2.) Call me a name like some school kid
That's damn impressive. Well played, poster # 50,515. Well played!
Simple. Electronic compilations of public domain works, such as Gutenberg, own a copyright on the compilation itself, taken as a whole, but never on the individual works that make up the collection. It's not a distinction I expect you to understand, but you could at least make a good faith effort to try. Why don't you read Section 103(b) of the Code instead of trying to get strangers to explain things to you online? There are two possibilities here: Either you're too lazy to follow the link to 103(b) that covers the exact question you just asked, or you did read the relevant law on that subject and still don't understand what you read.
I won't bother explaining it again. Just read what I wrote here. You should take some steps to educate yourself rather than try to place that burden upon me. Frankly, I don't care if you remain ignorant or not.
This made me laugh out loud. Please explain this to the judges who interpret copyright laws every day based on reason and precedent. The law isn't "what it is." That's why we have an entire branch of government dedicated to interpreting the law. I mean, you lack even the rudimentary foundation to understand this stuff--all you're capable of doing is meekly criticizing those who do.
(emphasis added)
That "may" that I bolded DOES NOT MEAN that the publisher has a legally enforceable new copyright (i.e. it doesn't mean "may" as in "they are permitted"), only that this is a common tactic that a publisher might employ to try to give the impression that they have created a new work that is subject to copyright.
Haven't you heard? Intellectual property issues are just one of many things that the C++ coders and 14-year olds that comprise the Slashdot reader base pretend to be authorities on. I'm also intensely interested to learn about this mysterious "how the notes are printed" copyright on public domain music.
Public domain books certainly don't share the same characteristic--it is only meaningful additions to those works, such as annotations, that are subject to copyright under Section 103(b) of the U.S. Code. As far as public domain sheet music is concerned, I would interpret this to mean that additional parts for new instruments as well as significant re-arrangements of existing parts for other instruments would be subject to copyright for an otherwise public domain work. It goes without saying that the new copyright is not extended to the pre-existing portions of the original work when a truly derivative work is created (Id.). That is why I sincerely doubt that the well-settled body of case law on the subject would vindicate the grandparent, since not even the statutes themselves appear to support his claims.
I smell bullshit on this "actual way the printing company formats the score and arranges it on the page is copyrightable" idea. But hey, random Slashdot poster # 50,515 was modded up for his unsubstantiated claims, so they must be true!
The frosting layer is gone, commence attack on the shortcake filling!
But I admit, it does lack the confidence of 13 consecutive exclamation marks.
Are they sure it wasn't just humble pie? :)
I appreciate your effort in lying to us all by pretending that you were putting on your Big Boy pants and trying to be part of the discussion, but you are clearly a troll. That is why you blockquoted a racist, incendiary statement that appeared in neither the article nor the previous discussion, and then replied to it as though it had been made. The post history speaks for itself.
Good luck furnishing your new under-bridge apartment, jackass. We're done here.
Are you sure you didn't just reply to the wrong post, nitwit? You quoted text that appears neither in my original comment, nor in the article. That leads me to believe that you just made something up so that you'd have something to respond to. And let's not forget how edgy and brave your "anti-racist" stance is. Oh, well played, troll, well played.
As for the other garbage you wrote, it seems that you're in favor of dispensing with the rule of law and just labeling and libeling any content you personally find racist and objectionable. Well that's great, so why exactly are you more qualified than judges who have the job of making those determinations, oh great Arbiter of Thought? That was a rhetorical question, because of course you aren't. You're just another pompous, anonymous jerk who believes that her/his/its bullshit opinion is tantamount to the law.
Exactly. According to the article, the people who want this material removed seem to be just in the preliminary stages of that process. And that's fine--there is no harm in politely asking Google to remove the content first.
If the jurisdictional issue of "Where are the Google Blogger servers?" is decided, and those people get a court order demanding the removal of the content, then and only then should Google comply.
"Let me tell ya something...brother...the Hulkster doesn't appreciate his likeness being used without permission. Blizzard, I'm calling you out right now. You hear me? You and me, in the ring, Smackdown..."
Oh yes, Egypt is a very service-oriented nation. If you know the word "baksheesh" then you're already there. Those tips better flow to the guy who helped lug your bags, to the man at the hotel who told you about a nice place to eat and so on! If you're American or British, do not exchange out all your money into Egyptian Pounds. For the purposes of "baksheesh", many people are really, really pleased about getting dollars or GBP--the latter of which is often worth 10 times the native currency and holds its value a lot better. Practice saying these words, spelled phonetically, in Arabic--they will come in handy:
;)
la shokrun ("la shoke-ron") - it means "no thank you"
la - means "no", pronounced as in the word "ma" or "hah"
shoke - as in the word "spoke" or "bloke"
ron - as in the word "gone"
My girlfriend was spotted by the monument police. I didn't mean to trivialize them earlier--Egyptian policemen carry prominently displayed automatic weapons, and in the nicer parts of Cairo (such as Zemalek), you will see them literally at every street corner. The monument officials are deliberately made out to be less threatening looking, but they are no less willing to beat ass. I personally witnessed one repeatedly punching a bedouin in the head for getting too close to the tourists at the Pyramids. These people really don't mess around.
You will find that the tourist sites are surprisingly unaccommodating to tourists. You do a lot of walking, climbing, and in some cases a lot of baking out in the hot Egyptian sun. Last I was there, I climbed inside the largest of the pyramids by ascending a rickety vertical ladder that was perhaps 30 - 50 meters long. One misstep and your vacation gets much less enjoyable.
The thing with photographs and the monuments is that you can take pictures of some, but not at others. My girlfriend was spotted taking photos in a tomb and the "no pictures" policy was loosely interpreted by the official as a "permanently confiscate the camera" policy. Like I said, it took money to fix the problem, which was kind of crappy. There may not be a place to put your camera if you've transitioned from a "pictures OK" to a "pictures not OK" area, and depending on the circumstances, they may balk at the idea of your even having the camera out in the first place. Something small and easily concealed is the ticket, and yeah, I would absolutely upload shots on a daily basis. I did it with my laptop--every day I would dump shots onto the hard drive. At the very least, you're insuring against losing your pics if the camera gets damaged or "lost".
If you're going to the Pyramids or to Luxor, hire out a personal guide from a travel company. Seriously. The better ones have Egyptology degrees and will tell you anything you want to know about what you see. Due to the exchange rates, your dollars, GBP, Euros, or whatever else will probably stretch very far in Egypt, and you might be surprised by how cheap the guides can be. The guide becomes the "designated picture taker" and "camera carrier" too
Hope that helps. Have a great time!
Read the transcript. Read it. Gonzalez himself is the biggest offender. He literally blames whitey for the phenomenon of media consolidation, undoubtedly finding a use for his own Latino ancestry as a carte blanche license through which he may criticize The Man for all of The Man's failings. If you're easily frightened by the cliched Orwellian future that people like Gonzalez try to paint, then here's some fearmongering for you right now:
"That's right! Our world is run by rich white men!!" It's an understanding of the problem that goes no deeper than what you'd find at a freshmen political science class.
The entire interview is a clumsy mashup of two unrelated ideas: White ownership (framed as the confusingly converse concept of "minority representation") and corporate consolidation. The former is a symptom of the way in which America was settled, and has no place in a rational discussion about the latter (which Gonzalez gladly forgoes in favor of white-baiting).
Corporate consolidation of media outlets, on the other hand, is also a tragedy. But what it means is that the media industry is no different from any other. You can wax philosophical about how the airwaves are free, man--they belong to you and me, man, but in the end there is still a situation where companies who have money buy out those who have less. Don't blame whitey, blame capitalism. To complain bitterly about how the people doing the buying out are white misses the point. It badly and embarrassingly misses the point.
I know this is Slashdot, so by all means, please feel free to copy and paste select portions of what I've written and take them out of context, because I'm sure that works better than actually discussing the issues.
That was...*sniff*...so beautiful. Preach on, brother, preach on!
It sounds like you've been globetrotting quite a bit yourself. It's funny you should mention people trying to take items at the Egypt --> Jordan passage.
I remember I was planning on boarding a flight to Jordan at the Cairo airport, and one gentleman was absolutely convinced that the USB flash drive I had on my keychain was some sort of knife (this was years back when they were far less common) that he was more than willing to take from me. After several brief exchanges in my unsophisticated, awkward Arabic I was finally able to plead for a demonstration. I had to power up my laptop and insert the key in and out of the USB port in a coital fashion before he finally believed that I wasn't preparing to stab everyone in sight with my tiny, squarish keychain.
The Egyptians pull that crap while you're doing the tourist thing, too. While we were sightseeing at Luxor, my girlfriend mistakenly took some pictures of the insides of a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The camera was snatched up by one of those cheesy monument policemen and was not returned until I slipped the man two 20 pound Egyptian notes. It wasn't exactly a fortune when you compare it to dollars, but having to bribe people to get our property back left a bitter taste. Shokrun, Egypt.
Years ago, before Zayed died, Airport officials at the Abu Dhabi airport made me stand quiet and motionless in a corner for 2 1/2 hours while my passport sat inside the caged counter area of one of the passport checkers. I was given no explanation as to why this happened. The only thing I could think is that they did it because they could.
This will work like gangbusters if you're running an OS on the laptop that actually employs access rights (*cough* Linux *cough* *cough*). Then there will be no practical way to access your personal, home directory files from the dummy account anyway. Unless security personnel ask for a root password (unlikely) you should be fine.
You're right, it does make more sense when you reverse it. Just learned something, thanks :)
Have you ever even traveled overseas before? It's like you just lifted this information from an Orwell novel or made it up off the top of your head just to be an anonymous contrarian. Your language is stilted and sounds like something you heard somebody smarter saying years ago: "Your person" indeed. I'm no Richard Stallman, but I've traveled extensively in the Middle East, Lower Asia, and in Eastern and Western Europe. For an American, I do alright.
Everywhere I've gone, airport and border security has been lax. You are searched, but not invasively so. They ask questions about where you're going and why, but it's not Jeopardy-level stuff. A valid passport does its job for you. Nobody throws you in quarantine for having a cold or pretending to, for godsake. Why don't you do us all a favor and stop bothering us with this unrealistic Checkpoint Charlie crap you saw in a late-night Spike TV Jean Claude Van Damme movie.
Interestingly, it's only when you re-enter the United States as an American citizen that you are subject to the most harassment, at least at O'Hare and Kennedy. They are not afraid to use dogs to sniff you while you're waiting on your luggage. They will whip out the rubber gloves when handling your property, and they will give you that knowing look like "Give us any trouble, and these can be used for you."
But thrown into quarantine? Laptop and briefcase-toting American businessmen? Please get a clue.
Oh, if some of the fields aren't already there, then you can just create them. Right click anywhere and select "new--> boolean", give it the name, and set the value to true. I'm sorry if that tutorial isn't all that self-explanatory--I didn't write it, just linked to it to try to help you out :) There are probably better ones out there, lurking somewhere on Google.
It's kind of ridiculous that it's come to this, but encryption and self-emailing will at least get the porn^H^H^H^H information where it needs to go. How to keep your laptop from being seized is another matter. My tentative plan for next time I'm crossing the border is to pretend to be really sick (tissues in hand, pop Halls, etc.) while I'm being processed. Nobody will want to touch you or your belongings if they think it will cost them days of illness.
Ack, that horrible thing seems to sometimes cause weird problems with some websites that don't like all the simultaneous connections, and it can also cause memory leaks. Just be hardcore and modify your about:config yourself.