In the past, I probably would have similarly noted that I doubted the NSA cared at all about what I was doing, but as each of these stories comes out, I am increasingly less sure.
I was thinking about this the other day myself. A year ago I would have said I was too insignificant to be noticed, these days I'm not so sure.
I use Linux, I use YaCy, I've experimented with Tor, Freeworld and I2P, I read Techdirt daily, I comment about anonymity, privacy, Constitutional rights and so forth. I occasionally read EFF and ALCU sites. I sometimes even wade into the crazy on the conspiracy theory sites that are out there.
You add all this up with recent revelations about the NSA programs and, yes, I do now wonder about it and I do now think twice about what I am saying. Chilling indeed.
Except those laws have been found unconstitutional, and are therefore not in effect, even if they are still "on the books". While you might find a drug law to be silly, it's not unconstitutional to have those laws.
Alright. Fair enough. Bad example on my part. Still, there are tons of constitutional laws that DA's and the police choose not to enforce.
It's not the place of a DA to say that he doesn't think it should be a crime.
He didn't say it wasn't a crime, just that his office won't pursue those cases. Isn't that exactly part of a DA's job description? They decide which cases to bring to court and which ones to ignore.
Discretion is one thing; declaring you won't prosecute an entire class of crimes is another.
So declaring it is the problem? If he just kept his mouth shut and didn't pursue any of those cases, it's all cool? I'd rather he saved the police the time, money and effort myself. (Not like it mattered here since the NYPD is ignoring him anyways)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
Regardless of that, I think his core message is right: if we want to deal with this issue it will have to be by making sure, somehow, that people who need training and education to qualify for these new jobs can get it.
Agreed. Retooling the workforce is and has always been important.
I just tend to get annoyed with people tossing out the "lost jobs" mantra sometimes. I heard it too many times growing up in the Detroit area. Yes, Detroit has much less manual labor factory workers then ever before, but now we are one of the largest technology, automation and robotics centers in the world.
Failing to uphold the statutes on the book because of a personal opinion or a political stand isn't a very good idea.
This happens everyday, in every DA's office, in the entire country. I can't really believe you are naive enough to think it doesn't.
For example, when was the last time anyone was prosecuted for having sex in a position other than missionary in places where those laws still exist? You can't believe that knowledge of this "crime" hasn't been brought to the DA's or an ADA's attention a time or two.
What really needs to happen is that the state needs to turn low level drug offenses into a "ticket" crime, like a jaywalking ticket. The officer writes up the ticket, confiscates the weed, and calls it a day. If the offender really wants to fight the ticket, they can do so in court.
That's pretty much the way it was before the "war on drugs", mandatory sentencing and the ever increasing criminalization of recreational drug use. Personally, I think legalization, regulation and taxation is the way to go with marijuana. Treat it like alcohol. We learned nothing from the mistakes of prohibition.
Re: Re: Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
actually, no. There are much less jobs created then destroyed...
You have anything to back up assertion with? When you look at the employment to population ratios for the US from 1948 to present they hold fairly steady between 55% and 65%. There was an increase from the 70's to the 90's which, I assume, was more women entering the work force and a dip with the latest recession of course.
If what you state is true and you consider *all* technological disruptions since '48 that number should be dropping like a rock. It's not. Overall, jobs do not get *lost*, they change.
You think the patent system makes no "economic sense," and yet you are not against it?
Wow dude. You are creating absolutes where none are required.
Just because someone says the *current* system doesn't make economic sense doesn't automatically mean they are saying any and all systems don't make sense.
You seem to be implying that it is a all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave-it situation when it's not. We can *improve* our current system and fix some of the issues that curtail innovation without scrapping the whole thing.
I, for one, feel that the protection that patents give the garage inventor against large corporations just swooping and taking their invention is important. I also feel that patent trolls looking for easy money by suing everything that remotely resembles some obscure patent they purchased is hurting us too. The system does need some fixing, in my opinion.
The constitution requires congress to do something to protect inventors and try to promote the sciences and useful arts.
Incorrect reading of the Constitution, in my opinion.
The actual wording is:
The Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Nothing in there is a requirement, per se. It's just an enumerated power the Constitution gives Congress. Congress does actually have ability to reverse, revise and/or revoke patent and copyright laws, if they wish. Of course, that may run afoul of various international treaties and whatnot, but not the Constitution itself.
For the open source movement to survive legal attacks from megacorps with endless supplies of both cash and sociopathy, it needs to progress past centralized code storage like Github. We need some sort of distributed code repository.
Or anonymous git hosting like the one on I2P. Looks like the Popcorn guys anticipated this move since their code appears to mirrored there also:
Re: Re: Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
I am truly, truly happy for you, Gwiz, that for you finding a new job is such a trivial thing that losing a job isn't an idea that bothers you. That is not the experience of the majority of Americans, however.
I never said it was trivial or that it wouldn't bother me. Please don't put words into my mouth. But, you are talking to someone who started a career as a manual draftsman in the early 80's that evolved into CADD and then was eliminated because engineers can now produce the drawings themselves. I now design and sell signs.
When I say jobs are going away and not being replaced, what did you think that means? It means that the people displaced DON'T find jobs doing other things, because there are no jobs to find.
I think your are wrong. You have fallen into the zero-sum fallacy. Jobs are changing, sure. People may not want to do jobs below what they believe worth to be, but the jobs are there nevertheless. Take my personal example - many draftsmen lost jobs, but plenty of jobs were created making CAD software and hardware.
If the answer to this is that I need to pay more for shipping, and the FAA disallows Amazon from using drones - but tens of thousands of UPS drivers keep their livings - well, it's worth talking about the value proposition there.
And the inverse of that would be that drone manufacturers would be hiring people to keep up with demand. A loss in one place would create jobs in other places.
Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
That's the thing about efficiency - the money that it saves is saved through eliminating jobs. Jobs that aren't replaced anywhere else in the economy and will never come back.
Employment is not a zero sum game. Even if those jobs "aren't replaced anywhere else in the economy" the majority of those displaced will find jobs doing other things.
If my job gets eliminated tomorrow, I'm not going to throw my hands up in the air, sit down in the dirt and starve to death. That's silly.
There is no such thing as being 'Anonymous on the Internet' because there is always a trail (of some sort) to follow back to a tablet, laptop, desktop, or terminal.
Actually, there are ways to not leave a trail.
Tor is one example, it routes through other connections and obscures your true IP pretty well. Combine that with Tails, which, via a USB boot-up, uses Tor and assures no traces are left on the host computer.
Add in MAC spoofing and using a no-login public access point and you are pretty much untraceable as long as you aren't stupid enough to login into your everyday email or Facebook account or something like that.
Who would make such a motion? Answer: The defendant. Since that person (or persons) chooses to be unreachable...
If that person *is* actually unknown and unable to be served how is there a actually a case in the first place? In this case, a default judgement against some unnamed John Doe isn't going to get the website taken down anyways, so I'm not sure of point of it all.
And just out of curiosity, how do you reconcile the use of Tor with the firm stance the courts have held on allowing anonymity? In SCOTUS's own words:
Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.
Wouldn't removing the shield that Tor and similar projects provide undermine the doctrines we have always held concerning anonymity?
When SCOTUS wrote that, I'm sure they had to realize that anonymity does allow some people to do bad things, but they still held that allowing anonymity is more important to our society.
Doesn't anyone remember the infographic that made it startlingly clear that an artist would have to have 4.1 million streams per month to make the same amount of money from selling 155 CD's online or at shows?
Useless comparison. Apples to oranges.
CD sales are a one time purchase for most all consumers. Pay once, listen forever.
Streaming sales are ongoing forever. You get paid for each play.
To make your comparison even close to accurate you need to calculate the earnings from streaming all of the songs on the CD, on every streaming service, over the average lifetime of a CD, say 10 years or so, not just over one month.
On the post: Saying That You're Not Concerned Because The NSA Isn't Interested In You Is Obnoxious And Dangerous
I was thinking about this the other day myself. A year ago I would have said I was too insignificant to be noticed, these days I'm not so sure.
I use Linux, I use YaCy, I've experimented with Tor, Freeworld and I2P, I read Techdirt daily, I comment about anonymity, privacy, Constitutional rights and so forth. I occasionally read EFF and ALCU sites. I sometimes even wade into the crazy on the conspiracy theory sites that are out there.
You add all this up with recent revelations about the NSA programs and, yes, I do now wonder about it and I do now think twice about what I am saying. Chilling indeed.
On the post: France Passes Anti-Amazon Law Eliminating Free Shipping; Amazon Responds With 0.01 Euro Shipping Fees
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
On the post: NYPD Tells Brooklyn Officers To Continue Making Low-Level Drug Arrests DA Has Stated He Won't Prosecute
Re: Re: Re:
Alright. Fair enough. Bad example on my part. Still, there are tons of constitutional laws that DA's and the police choose not to enforce.
It's not the place of a DA to say that he doesn't think it should be a crime.
He didn't say it wasn't a crime, just that his office won't pursue those cases. Isn't that exactly part of a DA's job description? They decide which cases to bring to court and which ones to ignore.
Discretion is one thing; declaring you won't prosecute an entire class of crimes is another.
So declaring it is the problem? If he just kept his mouth shut and didn't pursue any of those cases, it's all cool? I'd rather he saved the police the time, money and effort myself. (Not like it mattered here since the NYPD is ignoring him anyways)
On the post: France Passes Anti-Amazon Law Eliminating Free Shipping; Amazon Responds With 0.01 Euro Shipping Fees
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
Agreed. Retooling the workforce is and has always been important.
I just tend to get annoyed with people tossing out the "lost jobs" mantra sometimes. I heard it too many times growing up in the Detroit area. Yes, Detroit has much less manual labor factory workers then ever before, but now we are one of the largest technology, automation and robotics centers in the world.
On the post: NYPD Tells Brooklyn Officers To Continue Making Low-Level Drug Arrests DA Has Stated He Won't Prosecute
Re:
This happens everyday, in every DA's office, in the entire country. I can't really believe you are naive enough to think it doesn't.
For example, when was the last time anyone was prosecuted for having sex in a position other than missionary in places where those laws still exist? You can't believe that knowledge of this "crime" hasn't been brought to the DA's or an ADA's attention a time or two.
What really needs to happen is that the state needs to turn low level drug offenses into a "ticket" crime, like a jaywalking ticket. The officer writes up the ticket, confiscates the weed, and calls it a day. If the offender really wants to fight the ticket, they can do so in court.
That's pretty much the way it was before the "war on drugs", mandatory sentencing and the ever increasing criminalization of recreational drug use. Personally, I think legalization, regulation and taxation is the way to go with marijuana. Treat it like alcohol. We learned nothing from the mistakes of prohibition.
On the post: France Passes Anti-Amazon Law Eliminating Free Shipping; Amazon Responds With 0.01 Euro Shipping Fees
Re: Re: Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
You have anything to back up assertion with? When you look at the employment to population ratios for the US from 1948 to present they hold fairly steady between 55% and 65%. There was an increase from the 70's to the 90's which, I assume, was more women entering the work force and a dip with the latest recession of course.
If what you state is true and you consider *all* technological disruptions since '48 that number should be dropping like a rock. It's not. Overall, jobs do not get *lost*, they change.
On the post: Patent System Encouraging People To Try To Reinvent The Wheel
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Keep it coming
Wow dude. You are creating absolutes where none are required.
Just because someone says the *current* system doesn't make economic sense doesn't automatically mean they are saying any and all systems don't make sense.
You seem to be implying that it is a all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave-it situation when it's not. We can *improve* our current system and fix some of the issues that curtail innovation without scrapping the whole thing.
I, for one, feel that the protection that patents give the garage inventor against large corporations just swooping and taking their invention is important. I also feel that patent trolls looking for easy money by suing everything that remotely resembles some obscure patent they purchased is hurting us too. The system does need some fixing, in my opinion.
On the post: Patent System Encouraging People To Try To Reinvent The Wheel
Re: Re: Re: Re: Keep it coming
I didn't read that as Mike is against "bad patents", I read it as Mike is against a patent system that is bad. Like what we currently have.
On the post: Patent System Encouraging People To Try To Reinvent The Wheel
Re: Re: Re: Re: Keep it coming
Incorrect reading of the Constitution, in my opinion.
The actual wording is:
Nothing in there is a requirement, per se. It's just an enumerated power the Constitution gives Congress. Congress does actually have ability to reverse, revise and/or revoke patent and copyright laws, if they wish. Of course, that may run afoul of various international treaties and whatnot, but not the Constitution itself.
On the post: Fair Use Continues To Pay The Price For YouTube's Direct Takedown Deal With Universal Music Group
Re: Sue UMG under anti-hacking laws.
Does that involve forcing them to purchase overpriced copiers and printers?
On the post: MPAA Stretches DMCA To Breaking Point With Questionable Take Down Request For Popcorn Time Repositories
Or anonymous git hosting like the one on I2P. Looks like the Popcorn guys anticipated this move since their code appears to mirrored there also:
http://git.repo.i2p/w/Popcorn-app.git
On the post: France Passes Anti-Amazon Law Eliminating Free Shipping; Amazon Responds With 0.01 Euro Shipping Fees
Re: Re: Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
I never said it was trivial or that it wouldn't bother me. Please don't put words into my mouth. But, you are talking to someone who started a career as a manual draftsman in the early 80's that evolved into CADD and then was eliminated because engineers can now produce the drawings themselves. I now design and sell signs.
When I say jobs are going away and not being replaced, what did you think that means? It means that the people displaced DON'T find jobs doing other things, because there are no jobs to find.
I think your are wrong. You have fallen into the zero-sum fallacy. Jobs are changing, sure. People may not want to do jobs below what they believe worth to be, but the jobs are there nevertheless. Take my personal example - many draftsmen lost jobs, but plenty of jobs were created making CAD software and hardware.
If the answer to this is that I need to pay more for shipping, and the FAA disallows Amazon from using drones - but tens of thousands of UPS drivers keep their livings - well, it's worth talking about the value proposition there.
And the inverse of that would be that drone manufacturers would be hiring people to keep up with demand. A loss in one place would create jobs in other places.
On the post: France Passes Anti-Amazon Law Eliminating Free Shipping; Amazon Responds With 0.01 Euro Shipping Fees
Re: Efficiency isn't always the most valuable thing in the world
Employment is not a zero sum game. Even if those jobs "aren't replaced anywhere else in the economy" the majority of those displaced will find jobs doing other things.
If my job gets eliminated tomorrow, I'm not going to throw my hands up in the air, sit down in the dirt and starve to death. That's silly.
On the post: Warner Brothers Pulls Plug On Viral Greenpeace Ad Utilizing 'The Lego Movie' Theme Song (And Legos)
Re:
Do you even know what that term means? This looks like a pretty clear-cut case of fair use to me.
Care to elaborate as to why think it isn't, instead of tossing around insults like an uninformed moron?
On the post: Blogger Defends Outing Politician Trolling His Comments
Re: Is anyone truly surprised at this?
Actually, there are ways to not leave a trail.
Tor is one example, it routes through other connections and obscures your true IP pretty well. Combine that with Tails, which, via a USB boot-up, uses Tor and assures no traces are left on the host computer.
Add in MAC spoofing and using a no-login public access point and you are pretty much untraceable as long as you aren't stupid enough to login into your everyday email or Facebook account or something like that.
On the post: Blogger Defends Outing Politician Trolling His Comments
Re:
The above comment is mine.
On the post: Ridiculous Lawsuit Filed (And Now Dropped) Against Tor Project Gets Even More Ridiculous: Now Involving Hate Group Leader
Re: Re: Thank you
If that person *is* actually unknown and unable to be served how is there a actually a case in the first place? In this case, a default judgement against some unnamed John Doe isn't going to get the website taken down anyways, so I'm not sure of point of it all.
And just out of curiosity, how do you reconcile the use of Tor with the firm stance the courts have held on allowing anonymity? In SCOTUS's own words:
Wouldn't removing the shield that Tor and similar projects provide undermine the doctrines we have always held concerning anonymity?
When SCOTUS wrote that, I'm sure they had to realize that anonymity does allow some people to do bad things, but they still held that allowing anonymity is more important to our society.
On the post: Aereo: Okay, Fine, If You Say We Look Like A Duck, We'll Quack Like A Duck
Re:
Schrödinger's CATV.
On the post: That Story You've Read About YouTube 'Blocking' Indie Artists... Yeah, That's Not Accurate
Re:
Useless comparison. Apples to oranges.
CD sales are a one time purchase for most all consumers. Pay once, listen forever.
Streaming sales are ongoing forever. You get paid for each play.
To make your comparison even close to accurate you need to calculate the earnings from streaming all of the songs on the CD, on every streaming service, over the average lifetime of a CD, say 10 years or so, not just over one month.
On the post: Prosecutors In 'Sexting' Case Apparently Obtained Search Warrant To Photograph Teen's Penis
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The sentence that spawned a hundred shrinkage jokes....
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