Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis (Score 1) 419

billions of people the world over not only believe in them, but murder the holy living shit out of each other because of said belief.

I seriously doubt there's "billions" of murders on the planet, let alone potential murders, regardless of the reason. Many participants in wars have been religious, and will preach their beliefs in the course of doing so, but of course this is statistically to be expected, do not confuse correlation with causation. In contrast, communism is directly responsible for somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million deaths (by execution as an enemy of the state, starvation due to artificial shortage, etc; WW2 by contrast is likely 2/3rds this number, including disease, fatigue, and diversion of resources and labor away from home).

Submission + - NSA Caused Syria's 2012 Internet Outage

diamondmagic writes: Wired's new profile of Edward Snowden reveals that the 2012 outage of Syria's Internet, in an attempt to spy on communications in the midst of a civil war, was caused when the NSA tried to remotely install an exploit onto a core router. The article continues: "But something went wrong, and the router was bricked instead—rendered totally inoperable. The failure of this router caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection to the Internet—although the public didn’t know that the US government was responsible."

Comment Re:Passwords don't need to be killed (Score 1) 383

Minor problem: What if the master key is compromised? What if you want to change the identity you want to present to a website - just one website? You're screwed, and out of luck (respectively).

The proposal also assumes that the authority component of the URI (the hostname, usually) is the party you want to identify to - it doesn't.

It's not good enough for Web standards to work for 95% or 99% of people - they have to work for everyone, hence all of the back-and-forth of the standards development process.

I would point out WebID doesn't have these shortcomings.

Comment Re:Simplified algorithm (Score 1) 177

You don't own a newspaper to deliver your opinion to the front steps of millions of people... Oh well?

That doesn't mean we can go around neutering newspapers. Now, I never said "money = speech", but that doesn't make the First Amendment implications any less relevant. You cannot enforce a law that has the effect of chilling speech. Period full stop.

Everything for Obamacare/PPACA, including the "penalty" tax and tax on medical devices, was introduced in the Senate. They could only pass the Senate version because it was the only version passed on either side of the Rotunda before Democrats lost their "super majority" in the Senate -- the House had to pass it second.

Again, you can't uphold a law that's unconstitutional. This means due process, and equal protection of the law. People have rights, and every time someone is allowed to exercise those rights in a way you don't like, you want to blame the Court. No thank you.

We also sent millions of Japanese Americans to detention centers, and continue to lock up people in Federal prison for completely consensual, non-violent "crimes", in the name of "the public good". When you have a completely subjective, flexible, term as "public good" you get the TSA, Homeland Security, USA PATRIOT Act, DEA, NSA, and you can protest it as much as you want but no court is going to agree with you on how their idea of public good is wrong, and your idea of public good is right. No thank you. We have rights that are above even every last person on Earth going to a poll station and checking the right box.

Comment Re:Simplified algorithm (Score 1) 177

The Court's first responsibility is to uphold the law -- not the law as they or anyone else wants it. This includes the Constitution, the "supreme law of the land" - they can't uphold a law that Congress has no authority to pass in the first place.

From this viewpoint, let's take a look at those decisions:

Bad decision: Calling the ACA a "tax". The ACA originated in the Senate, even though the Constitution requires that new taxes originate in the House. Furthermore, you can't compel people to buy something, and you can't compel a company to sell something - that's outright slavery, if it was ever recently legalized.

Good decision: Upholding the free speech of individuals, whether representing a corporation or themselves. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." No exemptions are listed. (And the Constitution, mind you, has numerous exemptions to various things - not in this amendment, though.) You might say "But money isn't speech!" which is technically, literally true, but doesn't make the First Amendment implications any less relevant. It costs money to publish speech, and this applies to newspapers, websites, and bloggers; in addition to advertisers. Additionally, the Federal government doesn't have the power to legislate intrastate exchange; it only has some power over interstate trade, the power to regulate (which does not include prohibition).

It sounds like all you want to do is force some people to behave the way you want them to behave, without considering that they might have a right to do so even when you disagree with them on the matter.

Comment Re:And the FCC will do... (Score 1) 316

Um, remember the Broadcast Flag? The FCC claiming “ancillary” authority under the 1996 Tellecommunications Act to Regulate the Internet?

The FCC only exists to allocate RF spectrum and limit interference in it -- THE FCC IS NOT YOUR FRIEND (nor do you want them to be). They do not exist to make Internet providers do your bidding - if they're violating a contract (i.e. "unlimited" Internet), that's the proper role of the courts to enforce.

Comment Missing the headline (Score 0) 250

Why would you have to have city council approval to start a new ISP? How dare they kill competition, stifle innovat... Oh, it was going to be a taxpayer funded, government run ISP?

My local DMV can't even keep their computers running for more than a few hours at a time. Seriously, good riddance!

Comment Re:bad for standards (Score 1) 194

Code implementing software patents can still be Free/Open Source Software. I mean, isn't that what x264 and VLC is? The un-FOSS-like restriction is one enforced by the government and patent trolls, not the software project.

Just because one country makes it illegal means you should, or even have to, spread it all around the world.

Mozilla isn't even offering people the option to enable h.264 in some alternative fashion (maybe a user could provide it themselves, maybe Firefox searches the OS or hardware for an h.264 implementation) - which they could legally do - no, they're just saying "Haha, screw you".

Slashdot Top Deals

Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.

Working...