The excuses for all of this surveillance just do not hold water. We are constantly told the government is on top of all of this, and then terrorist attacks and large scale crimes happen all the time. There is still a ton of drug related crime. You're going to tell me they can prevent terror but can't prevent crack cocaine sales. It is fairly obvious the reason there have been so few terrorist attacks in the US is because the number of people willing to carry them out is substantially smaller than the number of people willing to traffic in narcotics.
There are not enough people in the world to effectively keep tabs on all the people in the world.
All this data just serves as a method for convicting someone based on circumstantial evidence after the fact.
It's like all of the arguments in support of torture. In the end, torture is actually detrimental to any military effort as it undercuts the perception of the just cause and also motivates the enemy to fight to the death rather than surrender. The reality of spying on citizens is that it causes the government itself to function as a criminal entity, undermines its authority, and in the end does no real good in terms of preventing the acts it purports to prevent. Rather, it replaces them with an even more pervasive threat of violence from the government itself.
Most of these questions have pretty simple plausible answers. Cashier's checks cost money. If you belong to a small bank or credit union you will not have a branch out of state.
Flying is often more expensive than driving. I could fly to my grandmother's but I tend to make the nearly five hour drive because the plane ticket is more than the gas and I hate airports these days.
Just in general, WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO DO ANYTHING SPECIFIC TO AVOID THE GOVERNMENT STEALING. All of these questions you have ASSUME the people are doing something wrong. We are supposed to be innocent until PROVEN guilty, and no one is to lose life, liberty or property without due process of law.
These laws are patently unconstitutional. The practice needs to come to a screeching halt. The End.
I was randomly stopped and searched for drugs. The dog supposedly gave the go sign. Anyhow, I drive a car my grandmother drove before me, and neither of us do drugs or traffic them. The police found nothing. Lucky me they did not decide to impound the car and take it apart. Possibly some car mechanic left a roach in one of the doors when replacing the window motor...
Anyhow, stories like this infuriate me, and I am glad to see someone reporting on it, but what exactly does this have to do with tech?
Someone does something in support of your claimed issues and you deride them for it?
Cynicism only goes just so far, folks. Rand Paul is not Jesus Christ, but you might at least act like it matters to you when people support your causes. Otherwise you just come across as an anthill to be avoided at all costs.
More and more I am convinced there is a decidedly leftists bent to this blog. It's as if you're lobbying what you perceive to be your home team to come back to you or something.
If your question was, "how long does IP have to exist before it's traditional," I'd say you're about right. However, you seem to be saying it is the same thing as a property right, which is a bald faced lie, and one quite frankly I am sick and tired of hearing bandied about.
The U.S. makes a distinct difference between IP and property rights which has been defined and supported in case law.
Hopefully that will clear up the distinction a little bit for you.
Also, all of these rights you keep saying depend on law depend on another thing - consent of the governed.
You wanna sing and dance for a living? Sing and dance for people willing to pay, or get lost. You want to do research for a living? Accept some sort of decent wage for it and then let the information free so it can be USED.
Everyone paying attention for the last decade and a half knows this is all about corpse-orations and debt-banks owning everything and using government to enslave us all. It has nothing to do with you wanting to protect anyone's rights. It's about you wanting to make slaves of every last one of us.
Porn was mainstreamed above the objections of most in the U.S. The argument was that it is a freedom of expression and free speech issue. Apparently, that only works if you have a method of making tons of money. SAVING people tons of money does not count.
It's sort of like how raw milk is unhealthy despite the fact that almost no one gets sick from it, but raw oysters are fine even though 15 or so people die from eating them every year.
This goes back to concepts of who should be allowed to vote. As much as the "middle class" folks at the forefront of democratic movements in the early modern era supported the death of monarchy, they did NOT support democracy. What they supported was plutocracy, and that is what we have - with a few democratic outlets built in for appearances sake, and yes, to alert our leaders when there is a groundswell of resentment building.
Banking, whether central or not, is a method of centralizing control over the economy. When the government ceases taking payment of taxes in kind or in labor and begins to force us to pay taxes in little paper notes issued by a separate group of private interests, we are in effect being put in the service of these said individuals.
Intellectual property creates a situation where non-physical goods can be commoditized and thus plugged into this same system.
Limited liability ensures the owners cannot be held accountable. Corporate owners enjoy immunity to lawsuits similar to the immunity the government itself enjoys.
The stakeholders are the owners, and have been for pretty much all of human history. We are less, and not more free, than medieval man.
You are attacking only one branch of the system. Seek out the root. The root is the very concept of owning anything that one does not make themselves or else trade for. If you are not attacking rule by ownership, you are not attacking the actual problem. If there is no rule by ownership, then IP becomes immaterial. Rule must be consensus based, truly of by and for the people rather than merely nominally so.
Is that there is not enough pressure being put on politicians to stop supporting this sort of thing. I tried a month or two ago to get some folks interested in taking the Aaron Swartz issue to the streets, and even people here were not responsive.
Web sites are not going to get it done. Even EFF and Demand Progress are not organizing boots on the ground. I went to several Occupy Austin meetings and never got much support either.
At some point you are going to have to leverage your tech savvy into something sustainable that presses forward with reform rather than constantly fighting a rear guard retreat against what looks more and more like the inevitable.
Then they should not be able to simply reference them. Obviously, regulations need to be openly available. There is no sense having laws no one is allowed to read.
For once, it seems a reactionary self-important artist is getting exactly what he wants - a growing lack of relevance.
I like Calvin and Hobbes as well, but Mr. Watterson fails to recognize that when art goes out into the world, it becomes part of the larger community, and to attempt to shut that down is to kill the interactions that eventually grow to make a body of work transcendent - the kind of work that bears repeated viewing, and stands the test of time.
I've made two abortive attempts in my life to drive a cab, and it is amazingly corrupt. A handful of people control the licensing, and rent for your cab in Austin, TX for example is $90.00/day or $60.00/12-hour-shift for a car they most likely bought wholesale from a wrecking yard and repaired - hardly the purpose of having these laws that require cabs to be late model cars.
Imagine what nice cars would be cruising around cabbing if not for the monopoly on licenses. $2700.00/month will buy a mighty fine ride.
Re: Re: It's what you get when capitalists control a market...
I'm all about free markets, but "capitalism" presumes capital, itself a construct of governments and corporate entities pretty much from its inception in northern Italy.
Capitalism and Socialism are the same thing, basically. The real problem right now is largely "centralism", but ultimately things break down into good, old fashioned greed on the one hand and apathy on the other.
Neither your insurance company nor your doctor will tell you jack diddly about what processes they use to decide whether or not you will suffer, live, or die. All these patients bills of rights - they just ignore.
Don't even think about any "rights" in the VA, and heaven help everyone when the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act fully takes hold.
I'm sorry, but I am sick and tired of hearing about how important it is to brain drain the rest of the world while refusing to educate citizens of this country.
I am not impressed with the "need" to keep smart people from everywhere else. The countries where these folks come from will benefit from their being there, and America needs to quit treating its citizens like chaff to be burned.
On the post: Former NSA Head Says You Can Avoid Government Spying By Using This One Simple Trick
Annoying
There are not enough people in the world to effectively keep tabs on all the people in the world.
All this data just serves as a method for convicting someone based on circumstantial evidence after the fact.
It's like all of the arguments in support of torture. In the end, torture is actually detrimental to any military effort as it undercuts the perception of the just cause and also motivates the enemy to fight to the death rather than surrender. The reality of spying on citizens is that it causes the government itself to function as a criminal entity, undermines its authority, and in the end does no real good in terms of preventing the acts it purports to prevent. Rather, it replaces them with an even more pervasive threat of violence from the government itself.
On the post: Iowan 'Drug Interdiction' Officers Legally Steal $100K From Poker Players Passing Through Their State
Re: Something seems fishy to me also
Flying is often more expensive than driving. I could fly to my grandmother's but I tend to make the nearly five hour drive because the plane ticket is more than the gas and I hate airports these days.
Just in general, WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO DO ANYTHING SPECIFIC TO AVOID THE GOVERNMENT STEALING. All of these questions you have ASSUME the people are doing something wrong. We are supposed to be innocent until PROVEN guilty, and no one is to lose life, liberty or property without due process of law.
These laws are patently unconstitutional. The practice needs to come to a screeching halt. The End.
That's my two cents.
On the post: Iowan 'Drug Interdiction' Officers Legally Steal $100K From Poker Players Passing Through Their State
How is this tech?
Anyhow, stories like this infuriate me, and I am glad to see someone reporting on it, but what exactly does this have to do with tech?
On the post: Senator Rand Paul Wants A Class Action Lawsuit Against NSA Surveillance
Weird....
Cynicism only goes just so far, folks. Rand Paul is not Jesus Christ, but you might at least act like it matters to you when people support your causes. Otherwise you just come across as an anthill to be avoided at all costs.
More and more I am convinced there is a decidedly leftists bent to this blog. It's as if you're lobbying what you perceive to be your home team to come back to you or something.
Sheesh.
On the post: Copyright Lobby: The Public Has 'No Place In Policy Discussions'
Tyop
A little too late it seems, since the tread is already quite lively. Or maybe I am wrong...
On the post: Rejection Of The Pirate Bay Founders' Appeal Sets Dangerous Precedent On Liability & Free Expression
Prime Example of the Evil if IP supporters
The U.S. makes a distinct difference between IP and property rights which has been defined and supported in case law.
Hopefully that will clear up the distinction a little bit for you.
Also, all of these rights you keep saying depend on law depend on another thing - consent of the governed.
You wanna sing and dance for a living? Sing and dance for people willing to pay, or get lost. You want to do research for a living? Accept some sort of decent wage for it and then let the information free so it can be USED.
Everyone paying attention for the last decade and a half knows this is all about corpse-orations and debt-banks owning everything and using government to enslave us all. It has nothing to do with you wanting to protect anyone's rights. It's about you wanting to make slaves of every last one of us.
On the post: Rejection Of The Pirate Bay Founders' Appeal Sets Dangerous Precedent On Liability & Free Expression
Then why is porn legal
It's sort of like how raw milk is unhealthy despite the fact that almost no one gets sick from it, but raw oysters are fine even though 15 or so people die from eating them every year.
Guess which side of each debate has the money?
On the post: Artists Sampled Without Permission In 'Harlem Shake' Song Demand To Get Paid
I saw....
On the post: Copyright Maximalism Never Rests: TPP Talks Continue In Singapore
Stakeholders
Banking, whether central or not, is a method of centralizing control over the economy. When the government ceases taking payment of taxes in kind or in labor and begins to force us to pay taxes in little paper notes issued by a separate group of private interests, we are in effect being put in the service of these said individuals.
Intellectual property creates a situation where non-physical goods can be commoditized and thus plugged into this same system.
Limited liability ensures the owners cannot be held accountable. Corporate owners enjoy immunity to lawsuits similar to the immunity the government itself enjoys.
The stakeholders are the owners, and have been for pretty much all of human history. We are less, and not more free, than medieval man.
You are attacking only one branch of the system. Seek out the root. The root is the very concept of owning anything that one does not make themselves or else trade for. If you are not attacking rule by ownership, you are not attacking the actual problem. If there is no rule by ownership, then IP becomes immaterial. Rule must be consensus based, truly of by and for the people rather than merely nominally so.
On the post: Copyright Maximalism Never Rests: TPP Talks Continue In Singapore
What this means
Web sites are not going to get it done. Even EFF and Demand Progress are not organizing boots on the ground. I went to several Occupy Austin meetings and never got much support either.
At some point you are going to have to leverage your tech savvy into something sustainable that presses forward with reform rather than constantly fighting a rear guard retreat against what looks more and more like the inevitable.
On the post: Sheet Metal And Air Conditioning Contractors Use Bogus Copyright Takedown To Block Publication Of Federally Mandated Standards
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Copyright Strikes Again: 'Real Calvin And Hobbes' Shut Down By Copyright Claim
Evil gets it Just Deserts
I like Calvin and Hobbes as well, but Mr. Watterson fails to recognize that when art goes out into the world, it becomes part of the larger community, and to attempt to shut that down is to kill the interactions that eventually grow to make a body of work transcendent - the kind of work that bears repeated viewing, and stands the test of time.
On the post: A Merger Challenge Not Worth Rating: The DOJ's Misguided Suit Against A Paltry Software Merger
Re:
On the post: A Merger Challenge Not Worth Rating: The DOJ's Misguided Suit Against A Paltry Software Merger
Re: WTF?
On the post: Uber's CEO: Innovators Shouldn't Have To Ask For Permission Or Forgiveness
Cab Driving
Imagine what nice cars would be cruising around cabbing if not for the monopoly on licenses. $2700.00/month will buy a mighty fine ride.
On the post: Early Lessons From New Zealand's 'Three Strikes' Punishments
Real Pirates
I wonder when the silicon sniffing dogs will make the scene?
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
Amen
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
Re: Re: It's what you get when capitalists control a market...
Capitalism and Socialism are the same thing, basically. The real problem right now is largely "centralism", but ultimately things break down into good, old fashioned greed on the one hand and apathy on the other.
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
No transparency
Don't even think about any "rights" in the VA, and heaven help everyone when the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act fully takes hold.
It's utter nonsense.
On the post: Yet Another Example Of Our Bad Immigrations Laws Hurting Innovation And Jobs
Because American Students Couldn't POSSIBLY
I am not impressed with the "need" to keep smart people from everywhere else. The countries where these folks come from will benefit from their being there, and America needs to quit treating its citizens like chaff to be burned.
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