] SB 500, the bill to require all electronic voting
] machines in Georgia to produce a permanent paper record,
] has passed out of the committee! To gain passage of
] SB-500 in this 2004 session, the bill now requires
] immediate action by the Senate Rules committee, the body
] responsible for putting legislation on the debate
] calendar for the Senate floor. Again, your calls and
] emails can tip the balance.

While this is exciting, I also have my misgivings. Clearly the electronic elections systems have security problems. We still aren't addressing them. We still aren't talking about auditing our policies and practices.

What we are doing instead is attaching a second system on to the side which offers paper ballots as a check.

I'm worried that what we've hatched here is a worst of both worlds solution where a logistically difficult, inaccurate, and insecure paper ballot system is tacked onto an insecure and failure prone electronic system which still has no transparency.

Security isn't about technology so much as its about how that technology is used. We're not even talking about addressing that.

This is a product of the fact that elections administrators have been almost totally unwilling to engage in a constructive dialog about these problems, preferring instead to play political spin zone with it and thereby eliminating any credibility they might have had.

While this is a political victory for those who are concerned about this problem, if you think its an ideal solution you've drunk the koolaid.

Blog for Democracy: SB-500 Update

inignoct wrote:
] [ Total and complete bullshit. If she agrees to the surgery
] and she dies as a result, did she commit suicide? What if
] something goes wrong with the surgery and both fetuses die?
] Double homicide? Absurd. -k]

I don't think this case is remotely as cut and dry as you guys are making it out to be. Your basing your perspective on an abstract concept of at what point children gain rights that is based upon your perspective on abortion. Essentially you are arguing that before they are naturally born children have absolutely no legal protection and absolutely no behavior on the part of the mother or anyone else is questionable regardless of how malicious it is.

Deaths from natural birth complications are one in 10,000, whereas deaths from C-Sections are one in 2,500. Its clearly a more risky procedure, and women ought to be able to forgo it.

However, this isn't a case where a bunch of bibled up nut cases are going after someone because she refused a C-Section because she was afraid of the increased risks involved. She refused a C-Section because she didn't want a scar. "Rowland told a hospital nurse that she would rather "lose one of the babies" than be scarred by the Caesarean section, which requires a surgical incision to the abdomen." Furthermore, this wasn't a case where there were questions about whether or not the baby would survive. She had obtained several different opinions from several different hospitals who clearly told her that she needed a C-section to save the life of the baby.

She literally made a pre-meditated decision that she would rather one of the children die then have a scar on her abdomen. Thats what we are talking about here. Expecting someone who would make such a choice before birth to have the absolute respect for the health and well being of the child that we require after birth is absolutely ridiculous. Something is obviously wrong here.

I think that its a bad idea to create a legal president that allows bibled up nut cases to go after any woman who chooses natural child birth in reasonable cases. I think that reacting to that possibility by proclaiming that we support any degree of maliciousness prior to childbirth is equally radical and equally unwise.

RE: Eschaton - The War on Women

inignoct wrote:
] ] "Space commercials could embrace huge areas and a
] ] colossal number of consumers," he said. "This would
] ] literally be intercontinental coverage."
] ] ...
] ] "People would be able to see writing in the skies from
] ] the Earth no worse than they see the stars," he said.
]
] [ Um, actually, they'd probably see the writing *better* since
] you'll be BLOCKING said stars. ]

Pepsi tried to do it a few years ago and got shot down. Honestly, I'd like to see it done once. Just once. Just to see it. And then never again. Never ever again. But I can't have my cake and eat it too...

I think its inevitable. In 100 years the moon will be covered with settlements. On dark nights you'll look up a see a sphere covered with a glowing spider web of cities and roads. We take the night moon for granted, hanging there naked and pristine as nature created her. Future generations will not know that moon, and the last to know her will mourn her loss. I think someone will probably buy enough land up there to make a sign visible from earth. Land will be cheap at first as the place is inhospitable. And there will be nothing you can do about it really. What people on the moon do with their land is definately out of the jurisdiction of some country on earth.

RE: Yahoo! News - Russian Inventor Patents Space-Ads Device

ryan is the supernicety wrote:
] Ryan-- The key, as we were discussing last night, is the
] "sweat of the brow" doctrine which was overruled by the US
] Supremes in the most famous database/copyright decision, Feist
] Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340. In
] that case, Plaintiff published a telephone book. Defendant
] copied it. Plaintiff knew he did because they had placed
] false listings in it.
]
] I don't widely advocate using copyright law to accomplish
] this, but I think that databases probably should be protected
] in some form or another.

I think there is some substance to the sweat of the brow argument, but the devil is in the details.

This proposal has no expiration date. No copyright has expired during my lifetime, and so I see copyright as eternal by matter of fact, but of course there are laws which claim that some copyrights will expire at some time eventually. No matter how unrealistic those laws might be, in this case there would be no such laws at all. In many ways this fits the rules with the reality, but I think this is wrong in both circumstances.

The scope of this law is incredibly unclear. It obviously could apply to search engines which take facts out of your website and reindex them on it's website. It might apply to Google News. It might apply to MemeStreams. It could prevent people from republishing stock quotes and sports scores unless they obtained them first hand. Any kind of software (such as the "Sherlock" program in MacOS) which finds information published on the internet and recontextualizes it might be illegal unless these rights were specifically given up by the publishers (and who does that?). Bioinformatics software which uses the bioperl modules to make applied use of data in the Blast database of genomes would be illegal if the results were republished on a website. If you wanted royalty free access to a genome you'd have to sequence it yourself. Pricewatch/Froogle systems would almost certainly be a thing of the past.

Furthermore, given the course that intellectual property law has taken in recent years I think it is naive to assume that the scope of this will be limited. Even if it is limited at first, it will expand over time.

Clearly this will have the effect of removing information from the public domain or making it more difficult and/or more expensive for the public to access. Industries which take raw data and recombine it at a second or third level would impacted. This is being done because it is believed that it will increase the incentives that information compilers have to compile that information in the first place.

Basically, we're saying that we want more tier one databases and less tier two and tier three applied re-use of that data going on in our society. Is this a desirable social outcome? Are there databases that we would like to see that aren't available right now because no one will compile them due to the fact that others will simply steal the contents? I can't think of a single example.

No, this, much like copyright extension, is a social policy which literally makes our society dumber, that thereby weaker and poorer, for the direct short term financial benefit of a very small number of people. Its a crime.

Now, how about crafting a law which provides a reasonable, clear distinction between "stealing" sweat of the brow data and republishing it in another tier one database, versus using sweat of the brow data to create recontextualized, value add tier two INFORMATION, and which requires royalties of the first activity (selling photocopies of the phonebook) but not the second (Google News), and you might find me supporting it.

But of course, thats not going to happen, because thats not really what these people are interested in.

RE: Wired News: Hands Off! That Fact Is Mine

The authors analyze trends in and the implications of shifting demographic patterns, the pace of technological change, and the path of economic globalization.

If you are presently underemployed or deeply interested, it is worth spending the time to read the full 304 page report. You can also check out the research brief on the same topic; here's the abstract for the brief:

Trends in workforce size and composition and in the pace of technological change and economic globalization will have implications for the future of work. Employees will work in more decentralized, specialized firms; slower labor growth will encourage employers to recruit groups with relatively low labor force participation; greater emphasis will be placed on retraining and lifelong learning; and future productivity growth will support higher wages and may affect the wage distribution. Given this, some policies may need to be reexamined.

I recommend reading the summary, which consists of approximately 30 pages at the beginning of the full report.

The 21st Century at Work

Population; Resource Management; Technology; Knowledge; Economic Integration; Conflict; Governance.

Seven Revolutions

] We should recognise what a major transition this is.
] 'Coupling' and 'uncoupling' provide a more
] accurate description of the arena of personal life now
] than do 'marriage and the family'. A more
] important question for us than 'are you married?' is 'how
] good is your relationship?'

Some readings about globalization today eventually lead me to this short essay, which talks about the dynamic nature of the concept of marriage. It puts all the recent debate about gay marriage in an overall context. I found it interesting for other reasons as well as I've been sort of grappling uncomfortably with the realization that a lot of people my age are now married and I'm not a kid anymore.

An interesting discussion of the state of Marriage...

] Even so, Atlanta is "the most dangerous city in America,"
] and the positive momentum is "fragile," according to the
] summary. Atlanta's violent crime is 463 percent higher
] than the average city's, and its homicide rate is 520
] percent higher than the national average, Linder &
] Associates found.

I was downtown with some friends year before last and our group got assaulted by a couple of coke heads. One person's nose was broken, the perps brandished a firearm, and they were literally driving around with their headlights off looking for us. It took Atlanta Police ***2 hours*** to respond to the incident, and when they arrived we got this lazy ass beaurocrat who had a very "whatever" attitude about the whole thing and wouldn't even bother to get out of her car to talk to us... we're trying to explain what was going on while bending down to talk to her through her car window while she sat there for another hour filling out paperwork and saying things like "ya'll playing a little game of hide and seek." They didn't do shit. It was a waste of time to call them.

Get up, get, get, get down. 911 is joking your town.

Atlanta is the most dangerous city in America

] There is a grain of truth in the backlash stereotype of
] liberalism. Certain kinds of leftists really do vacation
] in Europe and drive Volvos and drink lattes. (Hell,
] almost everyone drinks lattes now.) And there is a small
] but very vocal part of the left that has nothing but
] contempt for the working class. Should you ever attend a
] meeting of a local animal rights organisation, or wander
] through the campus of an elite university, you will
] notice that certain kinds of left politics are indeed
] activities reserved for members of the educated upper-
] middle-class, for people who regard politics more as a
] personal therapeutic exercise than an effort to build a
] movement. For them, the left is a form of mildly soothing
] spirituality, a way of getting in touch with the deep
] authenticity of the downtrodden and of showing you care.
] Buttons and stickers desperately announce the liberal’s
] goodness to the world, as do his or her choice in
] consumer products. Leftist magazines treat protesting as
] a glamour activity, running photos of last month’s demo
] the way society magazines print pictures from the charity
] ball. There is even a brand of cologne called Activist.

Most leftist don't understand that the right is poor.

The America will vote for Bush

] This uncontrollable unraveling of reversibility is the
] true victory of terrorism. It is a victory visible in the
] underground and extensive ramifications of the event -
] not only in direct, economic, political, market and
] financial recessions for the whole system, and in the
] moral and psychological regression that follows; but also
] in the regression of the value system, of all the
] ideology of freedom and free movement etc... that the
] Western world is so proud of, and that legitimates in its
] eyes its power over the rest of the world.
]
] Already, the idea of freedom, a new and recent (sic)
] idea, is being erased from everyday lives and
] consciousness, and liberal globalization is being
] realized as its exact reverse: a 'Law and Order'
] globalization, a total control, a policing terror.
] Deregulation ends in maximal constraints and
] restrictions, equal to those in a fundamentalist society.

Baudrillard is perhaps living proof that the opposite of art is politics. I don't find myself standing with him in his world, but I find an honesty in his observations that perhaps those who stand with me are afraid to exhibit. There is an artistic purity to this essay. Like that feeling you get staring at a Rothko, or reading Hakim Bey. He makes a stark observation upon the radicalization that terrorism births, and the inevitable hypocrisy of attempting to secure the world while claiming to stand for freedom.

He also offers a unique cultural answer that I haven't seen yet, but which he feels is impossible in this case. Consumption. Assimilation. As one who strove for years to surf the edge of culture, and one who feels exasperatingly suffocated in recent years as I've found myself sliding back from it, I know the process well, as do many others on this system. Culture consumes; from Sex Pistols to Blink 182... from Nine Inch Nails to Janet Jackson... from the Computer Underground to Hackers: The Movie... There used to be a revolution on Haight street. Now there is a Gap and a Ben and Jerry's. Culture consumes everything... Nothing can escape it... The reason liberal culture is so successful is because it is like the borg. Died haired spiky metal leather jacket fuck you is boiled down and put in church with the rest of the sheep. Only the symbols remain... The style shucked from it's meaning. Again and again and again...

Baudrillard is wrong. We'll do it to fundamentalist Islam too... Those left wing kids that keep flying over there to act as human shields are actually our little cultural ambassadors, much to their chagrin. They are the first wave.

The Spirit of Terrorism -- Jean Baudrillard