Ye New Galactic Bar & Grill & Phong's Head Cantina - After Hours

[CNCRaymond]

I was reading the news at http://msn.com.com/2100-1107-949331.html and came acrossed this story. My take on this is that it scares the hell out of me. Read it and see for your self. I especially love the part where they simply don’t care. Perhaps if we took away some of their rights, then maybe they would care.

WASHINGTON--There's a lot for a politically aware geek to be alarmed about nowadays.

Big companies are wielding copyright threats to stifle legitimate security research. Hollywood is itching to hack your PC. Your privacy is vanishing as fast as Al Gore's 2004 presidential hopes. And the merry band of technophobes in Congress is just getting started.

Too often, though, programmers, system administrators, and other IT pros become understandably outraged by the latest attempts to restrict technology--and react by doing precisely the wrong thing. They set up irate web sites, launch Online petition drives, and tell all their friends to write their congressional representatives.

Here's the bitter truth: These efforts are mostly a waste of time. Sure, they may make you feel better, but they're not the way to win.

Take the widely reviled Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Even though Slashdotters have spent years buzzing around in circles over DMCA lawsuits brought by the Justice Department against Dmitry Sklyarov and the big movie studios against 2600 magazine, Congress simply doesn't care.

Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on intellectual property, says the law is "performing the way we hoped." No bill has been introduced in Congress to rescind the DMCA for one simple reason: Official Washington loves the law precisely as much as hackers and programmers despise it. Some of Washington's most powerful insiders even gathered in May to toast the DMCA with raised glasses of champagne.
Things aren't getting better. The House of Representatives voted 385-3 Last month to approve life prison sentences for malicious computer hackers. The Senate approved the USA Patriot Act, which expanded police ability to perform Internet surveillance without a court order, by a 98-1 vote Last fall.

Trust me, a few--even a few thousand--peeved e-mail Messages won't change vote totals that lopsided. (Did you know the Senate approved the DMCA unanimously?) Washington's political class is used to ignoring frenzied yowls from far more organized and well-funded Groups than geektivists can hope to emulate anytime soon.
Instead, technologists should be doing what comes naturally: inventing technology that outpaces the law and could even make new laws irrelevant.

"They're much better off doing what they do best, writing code," says Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank in San Francisco. "That's where their competitive advantage lies."
Put another way, who made a bigger difference: Yet another letter-scribbling activist or Phil Zimmermann, who wrote the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software? How about Sean Fanning, who created Napster? Or the veterans of the Internet Engineering Task Force, which oversees the fundamental protocols of the Internet?
It's true that such an approach isn't for everyone. Tech companies, of course, need to take a defensive stance. "There's a difference between geeks and the technology industry," Arrison says. "I wouldn't say it's wise for the technology industry to ignore government. But individual tech people are probably better off spending their energy writing code than being part of the political process."

Adam Back, an encryption researcher living in Canada, says that he tries to ignore day-to-day developments in the news. "What's the point?" Back asks. "You know whatever they are working on will be pretty much exclusively damaging to Net freedoms and personal liberty. New laws are almost exclusively damaging to personal freedoms these days."

"By participating in the lobby process, you're effectively giving money to the political system," Back says. "It's effectively a favor-trading system where the politician wins and the geek loses...You're better of spending time writing code and influencing Internet protocols to work towards making the politicians irrelevant in the future."
That's the motto of the Cypherpunks, a group of programmers-turned-activists who first met in Silicon Valley a decade ago and graced the second cover of Wired magazine. They recognized that technology is a more effective tool than the political process to stop governments from overreaching. (An example: Unlike Supreme Court justices who may change their views on privacy, the algorithms embedded in encryption software won't stop working because of political pressure.)
Lance Cottrell is a former Cypherpunk who founded Anonymizer.com, a San Diego company that announced an improved fee-based anonymous browsing service Last week.

"I'm of two minds," Cottrell says. "On one hand, I think it's important that the (technologist) perspective be aired. But I think that rather few geeks are temperamentally suited for lobbying. I think there's a cultural tendency toward bluntness and directness, which is not the bread and butter of politics."

Before starting his company, Cottrell wrote the free mixmaster software that allows Users to send e-mail anonymously." People can sit around saying, 'Is it a good idea to have anonymity or not?'" Cottrell said. "But if you actually implement it, you can say, 'How do you want to deal with this reality?' It's not that my writing the code created the reality. The possibility was always there. But my writing the code made it impossible to ignore."
Declan McCullagh is the Washington correspondent for CNET News.com, chronicling the ever-busier intersection between technology and politics. Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News, Time magazine and HotWired.

When they passes these new laws, that will be the time that I log off the net for good. No reason to have the internet if it is a free ticket to snoop and spy on me. Hell I get that enough already from the god damned IRS.

[ August 14, 2002, 02:48: Message edited by: CNCRaymond ]

[CNCRaymond]

I just finished reading most of the Posts in the Star Trek Races thread. I agree with him, Atrocities sets suck! J/k

Personally I like the work you have done. I love knowning that I can play as one of 2o or more Trek races and not be bothered with ugly ships that seem ugly. I hope you finish the Last ship set up and release it soon. The Nelix one.

(Nelix the cat, he was a big fat cat)

Any ways on to bigger and better things. BARTENDER!!!! A pint of your worst if you please!

[Taz-in-Space]

Taz??? where is that hairy oaf when you need to chastise him?

...Now wait Boss, you never said NOT to serve ra...Ahh Tribble wings. And I did solve our rat problem. (all but the two leg variety!)
Besides I figgered that OUR customers would never know the difference!

So if COWS Nuggets are called Rocky Mountain Osters

See what I mean??

...well I better get back to work now...

BARTENDER!!!! A pint of your worst if you please!

Here you go sir, an Iron City Coors Lite! (half Iron City - a Pittsburgh brew - and half Coors Lite!) We serve only the finest of the worst

hopes that taz hasn't been cooking tribles or that health inspector maybe squeamish

ME harm a loveable real tribble?
NEVER!!

[Ragnarok]

*Ragnarok walks into the cantina, looks around at the half drunk folks in the room and says, "Hey, bartender, give me a shot of something, make it strong, I've had a long day, I'll be in the corner booth when it's ready." Walks over to booth and looks at the feet on his table, grabs them and shoves them off, sits down and lays back, starts to doze off.*

[Taz-in-Space]

Hey, bartender, give me a shot of something, make it strong, I've had a long day, I'll be in the corner booth when it's ready.

...Taz quickly prepares a shot of 151 Rum, adds a dash MORE alcohol, and gives it to a FBW to serve...

Strong enough?

[Saxon]

Some things need to face the public light of truth and Tigga's false claims shall melt like a vampire in the dawn.

One can not read your racial specs as one has not yet met your flea infested race. However, what you list is clearly propaganda. Zero gravity breasts demonstrate chests so flat that gravity can find nothing to effect, leggy blondes indicate that your empire is so organics poor that it can not feed its people and latin love goddesses always turn into old Italian widows wearing black and needing a shave. You may trust that the Fluffy Bunnie Empire will ensure that you have a nation of war widows.

-----Original Message-----
From: Growltigga
Subject: RE: [SEIV PBW] News for game: The Galactic Bash

in your dreams, read the racial specs for the Growltigga Alliance, our woman
are latin lovegoddesses or leggy blondes with zero gravity breasts

there is nothing a hairy candian moose kissing person like you can teach us
about top totty

[Growltigga]

Taz, oh Taz, I have just been into the kitchen and we now we seem to have a cockroach problem. Please solve it

Guys, I should not touch the Thai spiced crunchy coated satay prawn canapes if I were you from now on.

Guys, dont worry about the health inspector, the T-Rex may be off his stride after he was assaulted by Scoffo, but I am happy to say that my latest elite squad of killer mongoose are trained, raring to go and have only been fed 1 yoghurt each per day...

M Inspecteur de Santé, au revoir mon ami, un endroit agréable vous attend

[ August 14, 2002, 10:44: Message edited by: Growltigga ]

[Growltigga]

Originally posted by Saxon:
Zero gravity breasts demonstrate chests so flat that gravity can find nothing to effect, leggy blondes indicate that your empire is so organics poor that it can not feed its people and latin love goddesses always turn into old Italian widows wearing black and needing a shave.

There speaketh a man desparetely in need of female company.

Saxon, in case you have forgotten,ZGB are those large ones that seem to stand up pertly on their own with no visible support, "leggy" as in having rather nice long legs and "latin" refers in the modern parlance to more south american than italian.. no wonder you are a sad lonely old man resorting to abusing animals if this is your understanding of the female form

[Saxon]

Some of the cartoon attacks around here have crept onto my computer and SEIV refused to run Last night. This has made all my concerns about getting the new patch moot, I have to get it and the new one, as I will be re-installing the game on another computer. A big thank you to Dogscoff for teaching me about multi-disk scanning, which will let me get around my eveil IT man. As a thank you to Dogscof, I will be sending a nude photo of my favorite moose to Tigga.

[Growltigga]

Saxon, that is so sad, I will just send you a picture of a beautiful lady