Then change the law. Don't legislate from the bench.
I've heard this phrase, but it doesn't really parse for me. The job of judges is to interpret law. That's not "legislating from the bench"; that's their job. Also it's one of those pesky checks and balances on the legislative branch for when a law is too vague(even though it wasn't actually vague in this case).
FWIW, I agree there should be consequences. I don't know warrant law, so I don't know what consequences for failing to acquire a warrant there are now.
Also I apologize for calling you a troll. It would be easy to assume the worst with these kinds of laws, especially given the headline and the types of laws and rulings that usually make their way to/. My mistake was assuming you had known about the other recent article.
In America, though, nothing stopped the state legislators from passing a law explicitly saying that police may not surreptitiously place a tracker on a car before getting a warrant. They could have done that long before any police officer got it in their head to overstep their boundary.
But of course, they were---especially in Massachusetts---too busy taxing and spending their constituent's money to devote any time to protecting their fundamental rights. But make no mistake. It is not the system that has failed, it's the legislators that the people of Massachusetts elected that have failed.
Nice troll. The law does specificallyrequire a warrant. I'm rather upset that the police thought they could get away with it and wanted to test it. Just get the damn warrant! If your suspicions are sound you should be able to get it!
The ability of judges to relatively freely interpret laws as written is one of the checks and and balances in the system that has always amazed me. On one hand, it protects the people against bad laws. On the other it opens another avenue for abuse. I think it's better overall, but you end up with a very muddled law system.
This may be a bit out there, but I feel like the judiciary is a bit "unfinished". I think there needs to be better way for the judicial branch to recommend removal of and changes to laws to the legislative branch. Not force those recommendations mind you, just improve the process of refining laws.
If you continue to read the article you linked past the first sentence and onto the second and third sentence it says:
In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider âoemodificationsâ to the act in order to protect civil liberties.
âoeThe administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities,â Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, (.pdf) whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.
The article is saying the same thing as the summary with different spin. Where TFS is focusing on the fact that congress is modifying the act to focus on terrorist activities instead of drug enforcement, YFA is focusing on the fact that the administration wants to renew the act with modifications.
If the administration doesn't accept the modifications the congress made then I would say your comment is justified.
In making standards tougher for the government in secret requests to a special foreign surveillance court, the bill would require that the records sought be relevant to an investigation. At a minimum, the records must be linked to a suspected agent of a foreign power.
That's actually somewhat smart as it would eliminate most of that "65% of requests for Drug Enforcement" business without subverting the core of the bill. I don't think that the core is needed anyway, but it at least narrows the scope substantially.
The article you link doesn't say what you're saying. In fact it says the administration has the same stance as the summary. They're planning on renewing all three provisions, but including more protections for civil liberties.
I'd much rather they simply let all three expire, but your implied assertions that the Obama administration is opposed to adding civil liberty protections to the bill and is at odds with congress are both unsupported.
That's fine, the problem which the judge is rightly pointing out is when pollen from GE self terminating sugarbeet plants pollinates a "warty disease filled" heirloom crop of sugar beets, thereby destroying that farmers heirloom strain while he's getting sued by Monsanto for having a 95% match rate in his crops DNA with the patented GE crop.
Don't worry, we can manufacture all the controversy we need with this story. In truth, it's the perfect/. article. It references Massachusetts in a negative light so someone can make a snide comment about the MIT student who walked into the airport with a circuit board on her chest, or the Mooninite advertising stunt, or even that NDA/tech company comparison between California and Massachusetts article from a couple of weeks ago. Then someone else can link the actual articles and, boom, 6 plus five insightful/informative comments right there.
It talks about police and wiretapping so we'll get plenty of paranoid theories and the resulting jokes. Plus we're guaranteed a mangled Ben Franklin quote.
It directly mentions the constitution so we might even get the lingering Ron Paul supporter! I've missed those guys.
I see why this story was tagged "GUI". I thought this was going to be using the same predictive model as adwords and the google news page to put related articles in a one click bar. That seems like the most natural extension of google news to me, anyway. Instead it's just a scaled down picture of the main page.
While I agree they needed the warrant in the first place, proponents would argue that they wouldn't have known about these guys without the program.
Given that these guys were arrested in the U.K. I don't know if the N.S.A. tipped off U.K. authorities, or if the program was entirely useless in this scenario.
Regardless, the real question is was this worth the liberties lost?
In general I'd say your point is valid, but in this case I think the author's conclusion is still valid as well. I went to a state school and stayed in the same dorm as a lot of the student-athletes for my school. Most of these students had a computer(usually a laptop) and were surfing the web and IMing each other more than I was. Anecdotal evidence sure, but I think percentage of out-of-class writing has increased substantially.
Unfortunately, because we don't know how reality works in advance, we cannot determine if a given group is accounting for every possible variable and source of uncertainty. So your statement is not necessarily true.
That's circular logic. Because we don't know how reality works in advance there will always be uncertainity, ergo we won't know how reality works in advance. This is where the concept of peer review and consensus comes in. A consensus is not formed of a "given group"; it is multiple groups reviewing the experimental evidence and trying to find and measure uncertainties. A scientific consensus implies that this has been done and the findings are still valid.
That a model "fits the data" does not imply a connection to reality. That is correlation vs. causation. A connection to reality would require predictive value, and for it to be considered science, would ultimately have to lead to the development of underlying concepts.
Maybe I was over-simplifying, but no less than you. Of course the model is predictive, that's how you get experimental data to begin with.
This is a classic example of where "correlation does not equal causation" does not apply, at least in any reasonable sense. You can argue pedantically that we can never be absolutely certain of a scientific theory and there is no direct connection of a model to reality, but as long as there is correlation it does indeed imply a connection to reality.
it is now a conclusive scientific consensus that it is happening and that human action is contributing to it
Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality.
As long as the group of people comprising the consensus are following the scientific method, consensus does imply a connection to reality. That's the whole point. That doesn't mean a particular theory is flawless, just that the current model fits the current data.
Even if you don't think "information wants to be free" or think that DRM isn't all that bad, can we at least all agree that it's a ridiculously large loophole to suppress speech you don't like? Not only that but you're obligated to report copyright violations so you're being a good citizen by doing it; talk about doublethink.
How did this get modded insightful? I'm not a big fan of GreenPeace, but this is simply not true. GreenPeace lists small scale Hydroelectric power as one of the "solutions to the energy problem" http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change/solutions/hydroelectric . They're against "large scale hydro electric" which can "destroy ecosystems". A pretty reasonable statement assuming you agree with their stated goal of living sustainably within our environment.
There are groups and individuals that propose anti-consumerist policy primarily, but that is not the case for GreenPeace.
"[A]n authoritarian group usurping natural ownership" and imposing rules contrary to the original frame of organization is a flaw of every philosophy of organization from anarchy to socialism including democracy. The People must be ever vigilant.
I'd still rather have the societal freedom and market regulation of the "liberal" philosophy over an unregulated market and/or social conformity of other philosophies. The fact that we have no philosophy of organization that is immune to the flaws of people is not "insightful" to me.
The first, a moral argument that at the moment I don't have the patience to flesh out: Why do you _have_ to live from your job? Why is your probably-not-all-that-useful sort-of-contribution to society rewarded while theirs should not be?
That sounds like your supporting his position rather than contradicting it. Why do photographers get favored rewards over sculptors or painters?
The second, a practical one: many forms of modern art are simply too labor- and time-intensive to be done for free. Do you really think Half-Life 2 will be made "as a hobby in [somebody's] free time"? While some programming works can be done for free to the end user, they aren't free to the people making it.
Maybe single player games and movies are a special case. RMS avoided the question at the last talk I heard which leads me to believe he doesn't have a good answer.
On the other hand people will still want to see movies and play games and be willing to pay for those games even copyright were changed so drastically. In the case of video games look at ToadyOne and DwarfFortress. He manages to develop DF full time off of donations. If the donations were instead considered to be "investment in finishing the game" then you could see a smaller studio would be able to develop a game, even as grand as HL2, assuming they were "able to stand on the shoulders" of those who came before.
Linux would not exist as is if there weren't millions of dollars being funneled into it, and the methods of recouping that investment exist that don't involve direct sales of a product. Such doesn't exist for a lot of other methods that people find very valuable.
The fact that there are millions of dollars being funneled into a "Free as in Speech" product and that other methods than proprietary software sales are used to "recoup costs" sounds to me like you're supporting his point again rather than contradicting it.
I couldn't get through the page fest to check if they made the one parallel that really matters: movie execs would love to "lease content" to you the way MMO's do. That's what they want to be the future.
First of all, the proposal you suggest ignores traffic shaping for QoS which is essential to maintaining a healthy system. Second, ISP's could all ready act as "Internet Police", but they don't want to take on that responsibility. The above bill would at least make a vigilante action that affects lawful traffic unlawful itself, and therefore prosecutable. That's a step better than the legal gray area now, IMO.
Internet service providers will not be able to 'block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade' access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device
I'll have to read the bill, but if this is like the last ones, I have my same complaints -- spam is legal under CAN-SPAM (so long as it meets certain requirements), and this will make it illegal for ISPs to block it unless it's 'illegal'.
If we have to allow some undesirable aspects of free speech to continue in order to have free speech, and so far this has always been the case, then I would have no problem writing my representative to sign this bill.
First, there's nothing to suggest either (a) net-neutrality will present a higher marginal cost or (b) net-neutrality will present a lower marginal cost on the same.
Net neutrality represents a higher cost by limiting the methods a cable company can "generate revenue". If Company A is net neutral while Company B is not, then Company B can go make a deal with Disney to give their content higher priority at some cost. Company B can then turn around and offer (temporarily)lower prices to the consumer than Company A can.
Slashdot Mirror
Then change the law. Don't legislate from the bench.
I've heard this phrase, but it doesn't really parse for me. The job of judges is to interpret law. That's not "legislating from the bench"; that's their job. Also it's one of those pesky checks and balances on the legislative branch for when a law is too vague(even though it wasn't actually vague in this case).
FWIW, I agree there should be consequences. I don't know warrant law, so I don't know what consequences for failing to acquire a warrant there are now.
/. My mistake was assuming you had known about the other recent article.
Also I apologize for calling you a troll. It would be easy to assume the worst with these kinds of laws, especially given the headline and the types of laws and rulings that usually make their way to
Agreed, this is covered by existing law and it doesn't need it's own. I'm not against the law itself, but it is redundant.
In America, though, nothing stopped the state legislators from passing a law explicitly saying that police may not surreptitiously place a tracker on a car before getting a warrant. They could have done that long before any police officer got it in their head to overstep their boundary.
But of course, they were---especially in Massachusetts---too busy taxing and spending their constituent's money to devote any time to protecting their fundamental rights. But make no mistake. It is not the system that has failed, it's the legislators that the people of Massachusetts elected that have failed.
Nice troll. The law does specifically require a warrant. I'm rather upset that the police thought they could get away with it and wanted to test it. Just get the damn warrant! If your suspicions are sound you should be able to get it!
The ability of judges to relatively freely interpret laws as written is one of the checks and and balances in the system that has always amazed me. On one hand, it protects the people against bad laws. On the other it opens another avenue for abuse. I think it's better overall, but you end up with a very muddled law system.
This may be a bit out there, but I feel like the judiciary is a bit "unfinished". I think there needs to be better way for the judicial branch to recommend removal of and changes to laws to the legislative branch. Not force those recommendations mind you, just improve the process of refining laws.
How much fun would that be to have the freedom to pit a cylon army against storm troopers in a full movie?
I don't think I'd want to watch a full movie of two armies that constantly and consistently miss each other.
It has to pass or these provisions of the PATRIOT act will expire. You should be hoping it doesn't pass.
If you continue to read the article you linked past the first sentence and onto the second and third sentence it says:
In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider âoemodificationsâ to the act in order to protect civil liberties.
âoeThe administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities,â Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, (.pdf) whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.
The article is saying the same thing as the summary with different spin. Where TFS is focusing on the fact that congress is modifying the act to focus on terrorist activities instead of drug enforcement, YFA is focusing on the fact that the administration wants to renew the act with modifications.
If the administration doesn't accept the modifications the congress made then I would say your comment is justified.
That's actually somewhat smart as it would eliminate most of that "65% of requests for Drug Enforcement" business without subverting the core of the bill. I don't think that the core is needed anyway, but it at least narrows the scope substantially.
The article you link doesn't say what you're saying. In fact it says the administration has the same stance as the summary. They're planning on renewing all three provisions, but including more protections for civil liberties.
I'd much rather they simply let all three expire, but your implied assertions that the Obama administration is opposed to adding civil liberty protections to the bill and is at odds with congress are both unsupported.
That's fine, the problem which the judge is rightly pointing out is when pollen from GE self terminating sugarbeet plants pollinates a "warty disease filled" heirloom crop of sugar beets, thereby destroying that farmers heirloom strain while he's getting sued by Monsanto for having a 95% match rate in his crops DNA with the patented GE crop.
Don't worry, we can manufacture all the controversy we need with this story. In truth, it's the perfect /. article. It references Massachusetts in a negative light so someone can make a snide comment about the MIT student who walked into the airport with a circuit board on her chest, or the Mooninite advertising stunt, or even that NDA/tech company comparison between California and Massachusetts article from a couple of weeks ago. Then someone else can link the actual articles and, boom, 6 plus five insightful/informative comments right there.
It talks about police and wiretapping so we'll get plenty of paranoid theories and the resulting jokes. Plus we're guaranteed a mangled Ben Franklin quote.
It directly mentions the constitution so we might even get the lingering Ron Paul supporter! I've missed those guys.
I see why this story was tagged "GUI". I thought this was going to be using the same predictive model as adwords and the google news page to put related articles in a one click bar. That seems like the most natural extension of google news to me, anyway. Instead it's just a scaled down picture of the main page.
While I agree they needed the warrant in the first place, proponents would argue that they wouldn't have known about these guys without the program. Given that these guys were arrested in the U.K. I don't know if the N.S.A. tipped off U.K. authorities, or if the program was entirely useless in this scenario. Regardless, the real question is was this worth the liberties lost?
of course, she is pregnant
...
In general I'd say your point is valid, but in this case I think the author's conclusion is still valid as well. I went to a state school and stayed in the same dorm as a lot of the student-athletes for my school. Most of these students had a computer(usually a laptop) and were surfing the web and IMing each other more than I was. Anecdotal evidence sure, but I think percentage of out-of-class writing has increased substantially.
Unfortunately, because we don't know how reality works in advance, we cannot determine if a given group is accounting for every possible variable and source of uncertainty. So your statement is not necessarily true.
That's circular logic. Because we don't know how reality works in advance there will always be uncertainity, ergo we won't know how reality works in advance. This is where the concept of peer review and consensus comes in. A consensus is not formed of a "given group"; it is multiple groups reviewing the experimental evidence and trying to find and measure uncertainties. A scientific consensus implies that this has been done and the findings are still valid.
That a model "fits the data" does not imply a connection to reality. That is correlation vs. causation. A connection to reality would require predictive value, and for it to be considered science, would ultimately have to lead to the development of underlying concepts.
Maybe I was over-simplifying, but no less than you. Of course the model is predictive, that's how you get experimental data to begin with.
This is a classic example of where "correlation does not equal causation" does not apply, at least in any reasonable sense. You can argue pedantically that we can never be absolutely certain of a scientific theory and there is no direct connection of a model to reality, but as long as there is correlation it does indeed imply a connection to reality.
it is now a conclusive scientific consensus that it is happening and that human action is contributing to it
Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality.
As long as the group of people comprising the consensus are following the scientific method, consensus does imply a connection to reality. That's the whole point. That doesn't mean a particular theory is flawless, just that the current model fits the current data.
This. This. This. This.
Even if you don't think "information wants to be free" or think that DRM isn't all that bad, can we at least all agree that it's a ridiculously large loophole to suppress speech you don't like? Not only that but you're obligated to report copyright violations so you're being a good citizen by doing it; talk about doublethink.
How did this get modded insightful? I'm not a big fan of GreenPeace, but this is simply not true. GreenPeace lists small scale Hydroelectric power as one of the "solutions to the energy problem" http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change/solutions/hydroelectric . They're against "large scale hydro electric" which can "destroy ecosystems". A pretty reasonable statement assuming you agree with their stated goal of living sustainably within our environment.
There are groups and individuals that propose anti-consumerist policy primarily, but that is not the case for GreenPeace.
"[A]n authoritarian group usurping natural ownership" and imposing rules contrary to the original frame of organization is a flaw of every philosophy of organization from anarchy to socialism including democracy. The People must be ever vigilant.
I'd still rather have the societal freedom and market regulation of the "liberal" philosophy over an unregulated market and/or social conformity of other philosophies. The fact that we have no philosophy of organization that is immune to the flaws of people is not "insightful" to me.
The first, a moral argument that at the moment I don't have the patience to flesh out: Why do you _have_ to live from your job? Why is your probably-not-all-that-useful sort-of-contribution to society rewarded while theirs should not be?
That sounds like your supporting his position rather than contradicting it. Why do photographers get favored rewards over sculptors or painters?
The second, a practical one: many forms of modern art are simply too labor- and time-intensive to be done for free. Do you really think Half-Life 2 will be made "as a hobby in [somebody's] free time"? While some programming works can be done for free to the end user, they aren't free to the people making it.
Maybe single player games and movies are a special case. RMS avoided the question at the last talk I heard which leads me to believe he doesn't have a good answer.
On the other hand people will still want to see movies and play games and be willing to pay for those games even copyright were changed so drastically. In the case of video games look at ToadyOne and DwarfFortress. He manages to develop DF full time off of donations. If the donations were instead considered to be "investment in finishing the game" then you could see a smaller studio would be able to develop a game, even as grand as HL2, assuming they were "able to stand on the shoulders" of those who came before.
Linux would not exist as is if there weren't millions of dollars being funneled into it, and the methods of recouping that investment exist that don't involve direct sales of a product. Such doesn't exist for a lot of other methods that people find very valuable.
The fact that there are millions of dollars being funneled into a "Free as in Speech" product and that other methods than proprietary software sales are used to "recoup costs" sounds to me like you're supporting his point again rather than contradicting it.
I couldn't get through the page fest to check if they made the one parallel that really matters: movie execs would love to "lease content" to you the way MMO's do. That's what they want to be the future.
First of all, the proposal you suggest ignores traffic shaping for QoS which is essential to maintaining a healthy system. Second, ISP's could all ready act as "Internet Police", but they don't want to take on that responsibility. The above bill would at least make a vigilante action that affects lawful traffic unlawful itself, and therefore prosecutable. That's a step better than the legal gray area now, IMO.
I'll have to read the bill, but if this is like the last ones, I have my same complaints -- spam is legal under CAN-SPAM (so long as it meets certain requirements), and this will make it illegal for ISPs to block it unless it's 'illegal'.
If we have to allow some undesirable aspects of free speech to continue in order to have free speech, and so far this has always been the case, then I would have no problem writing my representative to sign this bill.
First, there's nothing to suggest either (a) net-neutrality will present a higher marginal cost or (b) net-neutrality will present a lower marginal cost on the same.
Net neutrality represents a higher cost by limiting the methods a cable company can "generate revenue". If Company A is net neutral while Company B is not, then Company B can go make a deal with Disney to give their content higher priority at some cost. Company B can then turn around and offer (temporarily)lower prices to the consumer than Company A can.