Re: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
X-Loop: openpgp.net From: "Gil Hamilton" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark, don't worry, the real programmers among us aren't afraid to compete (actually, right now, there's plenty of work for everyone who is competent so there's little need for real competetition). Fortunately, these losers are unlikely to be successful in their organizational and lobbying efforts. Thanks. I hope so... Free access to the US market has already enabled me to switch from $100 / month to $500 / month while in Romania, and to $3,500 / month here in Atlanta. [Yeah, I'm still far from Bill Gates, but it's still 35 times more than I made two years ago g] Mark
Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
would not affect my position one bit. These people have the right for their information to be put into the public forum. One small correction Kevin, they have the right to put their information into their own public forum. I don't have to allow them to put their information in my newspaper or allow their bits to travel across sections of the Internet that I own. I don't have to make it easy for them to spread their nonsense.
Re: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
X-Loop: openpgp.net From: "Trei, Peter" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Imagine if the software business were like this - that the programmers of the late 40's had formed an American Programmers Association, and it was unlawful for anyone without APA certification to write code for money. Some people are trying to do this. See for example http://www.colosseumbuilders.com/american.htm [I especially find the "no foreign competition" (aka "no H1-B") disgusting. Tim May notwithstanding, we DO compete with the americans - and a lot of us are better.] Mark
Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
At 11:59 -0400 9/19/00, Matt Elliott wrote: would not affect my position one bit. These people have the right for their information to be put into the public forum. One small correction Kevin, they have the right to put their information into their own public forum. I don't have to allow them to put their information in my newspaper or allow their bits to travel across sections of the Internet that I own. I don't have to make it easy for them to spread their nonsense. Oh yeah, now things get interesting. The issue of allowing such things in your newspaper is a problem you have with your newspaper, not them. If you don't like what your newspaper publishes complain to it, not to NAMBLA. The ISP issue is similar. I don't have a problem with an organization controlling the material it carries, BUT I have a serious problem with organizations- A. Not making the fact they do such things VERY clear in their user agreement, etc. OR B. Changing said agreement depending on which way the wind blows. Their is also a legal issue here that is worth mentioning. An ISP deciding to censor/filter traffic based on content potentially opens that ISP to serious legal risk. As long as an ISP acts as a simple bit shuffler their liability for user activity is tiny. They enjoy the same status as the telephone company (that of a common carrier) and thus have no responsibility for the traffic they carry. The moment the step over that line and begin to monitor said traffic they can no longer claim to be a common carrier. I believe their was an interesting case several years ago where an ISP in the Eastern US was held liable for pornographic material stored on one of there news servers, specifically because they had taken action in the past to remove such material. Regardless however, all such activities to restrict traffic ought to be done by contacting the individuals and/or organizations responsible (either carriers or originators), not by running to big momma government and whining about how such talk disturbs you. Using the government and specifically the judiciary as a big cudgel to beat people who's opinion you disagree with into submission is morally reprehensible. People who abuse government in such a way ought to be shunned with the same venom typically reserved for pedophiles and persons of similar ilk. -- Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ#23758827 ___ "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas
Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
At 10:38 AM 9/18/00 -0400, petro wrote: I'm not saying that only stupid people join these kinds of groups, but that of the people who join these groups, the stupid ones will wind up in the "bullet stopper" positions. "Cannon fodder" is the more common historic term.. Maxim's maxim: machineguns beat rifles.
RE: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
Tim May[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: Jeesh. (From a practical standpoint, here in the Bay Area there is a growing oversupply of lawyers. According to the newspapers, modulo their biases and inaccuracies, many lawyer larvae are accepting "paralegal" positions. As with past "shortages of doctors" and "shortages of teachers," the boom-bust cycle continues. [...] Doctors, lawyers, teachers... All three groups share a certain property: They have effective control over who may practice their profession. In their own self-interest, they act to stifle competition. There are, of course weasel words to justify this: 'maintaining standards' being the most common ones. Teacher's unions rail against merit pay and vouchers, which would provide some notion of a competitive market in education. The unions insist on a seniority system. They even attempt to ban volunteer part-time teachers on 'quality' grounds, so you can't go in and give a computer class if you wanted to, since you don't have a teaching degree. Similar points can be made about doctors, and the use of IANAL indicates the fevered grip the bar associations have on legal advice and representation. Howver, the teaching and medical professions can't act to increase their feedstock - uneducated-as-yet children and ailing people respectively. Idle tort lawyers can, and do, dream up new ways to sue and generally make the world a nastier place as they enrich themselves. Only rulers are worse. Imagine if the software business were like this - that the programmers of the late 40's had formed an American Programmers Association, and it was unlawful for anyone without APA certification to write code for money. Ditto for using software not blessed by the APA. Entrance to the hallowed membership would, of course, require a four year electrical engineering degree followed by a post graduate degree from an accredited computer school. I'll leave it to others to imagine the world with an APA. I think it would be a much poorer place. Peter Trei Disclaimer: the above represents my opinion only. IANAL.
RE: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Trei, Peter wrote: Entrance to the hallowed membership would, of course, require a four year electrical engineering degree followed by a post graduate degree from an accredited computer school. I'll leave it to others to imagine the world with an APA. I think it would be a much poorer place. Dude, do you read _Communications of the ACM_ ? Professional licensing of "software engineers" is a fact in Texas. Not an issue goes by without someone piping up about how great it would be if every state followed that lead. Some discussion and context from licensing of other kinds of engineers is at http://www.construx.com/stevemcc/gr-badges.htm An "American Programmer's Association" may be closer than you think. -David
RE: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
At 02:42 PM 9/18/00 -0400, dmolnar wrote:
Here's another link on licensing of software engineers, this time from the
ACM:
http://www.acm.org/serving/se_policy/report.html
it seems that cryptographic/security software, if we ever get the
liability structure whose lack is often pointed out by Schneier ("we don't
have good security because we don't have to"), may be a prime target for
such licensing.
-david
To one extent, this has already happened. Under 15 CFR Part 740.13, in
order to distribute public domain / open source cryptographic software
without the classic restrictions under ITAR, you have to register yourself
by sending an email to the NSA (well, the BXA address whose office happens
to be in Ft. Meade.)
So we already have mandatory registration for open source crypto developers.
If key escrow legislation finally passes, they've got the list of
individuals and companies to lean on, and imagine thats where licensing
will come in.
RE: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Kerry L. Bonin wrote: To one extent, this has already happened. Under 15 CFR Part 740.13, in order to distribute public domain / open source cryptographic software without the classic restrictions under ITAR, you have to register yourself by sending an email to the NSA (well, the BXA address whose office happens to be in Ft. Meade.) So we already have mandatory registration for open source crypto developers. Hm. That's true, but it's not in the spirit of what I meant. I was thinking more along the lines of something tied to legal liability for defects. That is, the registration/licensing comes about more "organically" instead of being called into being straight by regulation. If key escrow legislation finally passes, they've got the list of individuals and companies to lean on, and imagine thats where licensing will come in. Yup, any such list is dangerous - although the pressure may not come from key escrow per se, but from businesses who become fed up with security being "not the vendor's problem." As in "show us that all your crypto engineers and subcontractors are properly licensed." Maybe you can think of this as touching on reputation management or credential management, although I expect most Professional Engineer certs are issued to True Names. Schneier has made the point several times that vendors do not provide strong security because they generally aren't liable for the consequences. I tend to agree with him. My worry is what the world will look like after more people agree with him and then try to "fix" things their way. By the way, I am glad to hear from Choate that licensing is not as draconian as I thought down in Texas. My apologies for the scare; I suspect I was reading too much into the ACM reports about "Licensing of Professional Engineers." Thankfully, the ACM seems to be resisting such moves for now (see second link), but who knows about five years down the line. (Bureaucratic inertia is no reason for complacency; I remember reading in WIRED of 1995 or thereabouts of a "Digital Copyright Working Group" about to convene and study the Internet "problem." Then nothing. Five years later, the U.S. has the DMCA.) In fairness, "vendors don't provide security because they don't have to" seems to be a symptom of a larger issue with liability for software, especially software sold to us mass market consumers. I expect markets exist in which software has to be held to an extremely high standard of reliability (e.g. Space Shuttle, financial markets, health software, embedded systems spring to mind). How are liability issues dealt with in those fields, and how did they come to be that way? would the same thing happen with crypto and security software? (how do I ask that question better, because it seems too vague now?) Thanks, -David
RE: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I am saddened to learn of a child murder. I am saddened to learn that NAMBLA lost their website. I am saddened to learn that Jodi Hoffman still can't read very well. Carol Anne Cypherpunk Declan McCullagh wrote: I am not a NAMBLA member, but I believe that the First Amendment applies to them. I knew there was a reason I printed out NAMBLA's website throughout the years. Maybe I should contact this child's parents as well as their attorney. Maybe you should do the same. Maybe you really are a member of NAMBLA. It certainly sounds like it. I wonder if you would tell the parents to their face how important you think it is to preserve the information put out by the people who helped cause their son to be murdered, rather than doing something to help prevent it from happening again. - -- Jodi Hoffman R.A.M.P. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Personal Privacy 6.0 Comment: The ArtCall is over 65% complete. iQA/AwUBOb83EKC5l40tbJY2EQLp8QCg0/LPll9URa3+Rs+KZJSxCJCJS2AAoN1D oaNv96nHKRnvYJP+5NnQi24c =xdCu -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
Tim May wrote: We as a culture have swung far away from "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" toward a culture of lawsuits. And the lawyer lobby supports and embraces this culture, getting laws passed making it easier every day to suppress speech. For my first year of law school I'm taking Contracts, Criminal Law, Legal Writing, and Torts. The books for the first three subjects aren't too bad from a "lawyers are scum" perspective, but both of my torts books had me screaming within twenty pages. In one, the authors argue for greatly increasing the scope of tort offenses and reducing the permissible defenses [1]. As if the US doesn't have enough frivolous and nonsensical lawsuits. In the other, on page 3 yet, the authors argue that if someone is injured such that he can no longer work, _someone_ should be held financially liable because society has lost the first person's wages [2]. That seems just half a step from saying that the people are the property of the state. Maybe I'm reading too much into poorly-phrased paragraphs, but I haven't seen anything in either book to contradict the bad impression. [1] _Understanding Torts_, Diamond, Levine, and Madden, Matthew Bender. [2] _Torts and Compensation_ 3rd ed, Dobbs and Hayden, West Publishing See http://www.overlawyered.com for a jaundiced view of the legal system. The site editor, Walter Olsen, has particular "issues" with plaintiff's lawyers. -- Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel 518-374-4720 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
At 1:19 PM -0400 9/13/00, Steven Furlong wrote: Tim May wrote: We as a culture have swung far away from "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" toward a culture of lawsuits. And the lawyer lobby supports and embraces this culture, getting laws passed making it easier every day to suppress speech. For my first year of law school I'm taking Contracts, Criminal Law, Legal Writing, and Torts. The books for the first three subjects aren't too bad from a "lawyers are scum" perspective, but both of my torts books had me screaming within twenty pages. Why in the name of all that is good and interesting would you train to become a _lawyer_? Jeesh. (From a practical standpoint, here in the Bay Area there is a growing oversupply of lawyers. According to the newspapers, modulo their biases and inaccuracies, many lawyer larvae are accepting "paralegal" positions. As with past "shortages of doctors" and "shortages of teachers," the boom-bust cycle continues. Also, there is a trend toward "corporatization" of these fields, with doctors as not-so-highly-paid-anymore employees of HMOs, for example. If the trend carried over to LMOs (Legal Maintenance Organizations), look out.) In one, the authors argue for greatly increasing the scope of tort offenses and reducing the permissible defenses [1]. As if the US doesn't have enough frivolous and nonsensical lawsuits. In the other, on page 3 yet, the authors argue that if someone is injured such that he can no longer work, _someone_ should be held financially liable because society has lost the first person's wages [2]. That seems just half a step from saying that the people are the property of the state. Maybe I'm reading too much into poorly-phrased paragraphs, but I haven't seen anything in either book to contradict the bad impression. All of this is why I protest so loudly when I hear people saying "But this is a lawsuit, not a government action! It's not speech suppression, just the tort process at work." (And there are some connections, which I won't go into right now, with treating journalists as some kind of special protected class, with "shield laws" and customary (pace Lessig) exemptions from lawsuits which would hit ordinary proles. There should be no such exemptions, and yet far higher standards for successfully suing. My not liking the words of NAMBLA, or Declan McCullagh, or Aryan Nations, should not be enough to get a lawsuit into a court of law.) There have been _practical_ solutions offered. "Loser pays" is the most obvious one. (With no way of avoiding the judgment. Not with bankruptcy, not with poverty. If Sally B. Frivolous files a lawsuit against J. Random Company and _loses_ and is ordered to pay court costs and damages of several million dollars, then let her mop floors for the next 60 years, paying 80% of her earnings just to keep up with the interest payments! Debtor's prisons are a good idea.) --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
Tim May wrote: Why in the name of all that is good and interesting would you train to become a _lawyer_? grin I make my living as a programmer, and plan to continue to do so. I want a law degree to help defend techies and free software projects from big-bucks corps and govts who feel threatened or avaricious over some aspect of the free projects. I'm attempting to help in some prior-restraint-on-crypto cases now, on the tech side, and would have liked to be able to help on the legal side. After I have a year of school under my belt, I'll see if EFF or the like can use some untrained assistance. (From a practical standpoint, here in the Bay Area there is a growing oversupply of lawyers. That's the case all over the US, isn't it? But you're right, the Bay Area seems to have more than its share. Look on the bright side: the lawyers will probably manage to kill the Silicon Valley boom in a few more years, the boom will go elsewhere, and the lawyers will follow. too many lawsuits There have been _practical_ solutions offered. "Loser pays" is the most obvious one. I like "loser pays", too. Interesting that various associations of trial lawyers contribute big bucks to kill loser pays, all the while sanctimoniously declaiming that they're only looking out for the interests of Sally Mae, who was rendered sterile at age 53 by a chemical spill two hundred miles away. See http://www.overlawyered.com/topics/politics.html (not for Sally Mae; I just made that up). Regards, SRF -- Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel 518-374-4720 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
At 05:14 PM 9/13/00 -0400, Tim May wrote: At 4:57 PM -0400 9/13/00, Omri Schwarz wrote: Actually, she got shot at and roughed up by AN members. (AN has a habit of disavowing relations with members once they get in trouble with The Elders of Zion.) This woman and her daughter just "happened" to be far from home, out near the AN compound, and their car, they claim, just "happened" to backfire. I doubt the backfiring theory very much...none of my cars has _ever_ backfired, and I've been driving since 1968. I would bet a lot of money that this woman, a leftie simp-wimp, took a shot at the compound she hated so much. Your internal combustion experience is of little relevence here. The law is wrong for pinning a rabid security force's wrongs on their employer. That is simple deep-pocket mining like the tobacco suits. However, Tim is being unjustifiably condemning of citizens with old cars, methinks. Even having an agenda to provoke the brownshirts by slowly driving by does not justify violence. Again, violence is the responsibility of the perpetrators, not their bosses, or the authors of words they read. Frankly, thinking critically, the backfire defence sounds like straw-grasping, esp. given no firearms found on the victims. One hopes that TM does not discharge his artillery towards misfiring vehicles passing his terrain on public roads. Again: its wrong to bust the smalldicked neonazis for the actions of their 'security force', its wrong of them to assault passers-by for impulsive noises. . 19. Never try to baptize a cat
