"Rosa Parks didn't flee from the bus when the police came for her; She sat right there and waited."
Holy crap. Rosa Parks? Really? I count that as a weird modification of Godwin's Law.
Rosa Parks wasn't facing life in solitary in Federal prison. At most she faced a night in jail... she had not even actually broken a law. There's a pretty fucking big difference.
Snowden, on the other hand, could not have revealed this information he did to the American public without breaking some serious laws. The fact that he was tattling on far vaster breach of the law nothwithstanding.
"Snowden stole a lot of classified materials from his employer, and then fled the country. And then he released all of it."
NO, he did not. He release SOME of it, to journalists who were entrusted to sift through it and determine what was proper to release. He has not released "all of it", even to those journalists, much less to everybody else.
"If I'm going to denounce my government's actions, I want the police to come. I want to be arrested, charged, and put on trial."
And given the current state of government in the U.S., you'd be tried as a "foreign combatant", tortured in Guantanamo, and NEVER SEE A PUBLIC TRIAL. Good luck with that. You're living in the dreamworld that the U.S. used to be.
Snowden got vital information out to the American public in the only way he reasonably could. Berating him for that is not just unrealistic, it's asinine.
"I think you may have missed a small detail in GP's argument"
Thanks, but no, I didn't miss anything. "Universal" stops (also known as "roadblocks") are illegal here. And, for that matter, in every state AROUND here.
This state, and surrounding states, recognize the right of drivers to go about their business "unmolested" by authorities, without probable cause. The ONLY lawful reason for a stop is probable cause. No randoms, no roadblocks.
"As long as a vehicular stop is non-discriminatory (i.e., everyone has to pass through the checkpoint), it's a legal stop and all rules about plain sight apply."
Even that is only in a relatively few states, IMHO. It is not true in any of the states around here.
Here -- and in other states around here -- random stops and roadblocks are illegal. Drivers have a recognized right to travel in peace "unmolested" by authorities, even if that molestation is non-discriminatory.
Police can only pull people over for probable cause. No exceptions.
Yes, worse than "anyone else". In psychology studies, not only were the police "trained observers" sigificantly WORSE at describing simulated crime scenes than the average college student, those were situations in which they only witnesses, and not personally involved.
Get them "personally involved", and the bias just goes up from there.
But more to the point: even if their abilities as witnesses are no better or worse than anyone else (and that's a pretty big, and probably false assumption), would a court convict someone of drunk driving based on the say so of "anyone else"?
"It does not matter if it is a traffic stop or some sort of checkpoint (papers please), probable cause and 4th amendment rights are gone because you agreed when you signed your drivers licence."
But "implied consent" is just a legally controversial excuse used by the states. In reality you have a right to use "common modes of transportation", from common law (predating the Constitution), and it has even been acknowledged by the Supreme Court.
Even further, SCOTUS wrote that not only does the right exist, but the only reason it wasn't in the Constitution was that at the time it was considered to be too obvious to even mention.
Correction: while roadblocks, random stops, and "street" breathalyzers are illegal in my state and all those surrounding, one state that is "adjacent" to those states (i.e., 2 states away from here) MIGHT be an exception. I am not sure about that one.
Not in my state, either, and I am very far from Texas.
Nor is it the law in any of the states surrounding mine, or for that matter any of the states that are adjacent to those.
In none of those states are the police allowed to do "random" roadblocks or pullovers, nor is it law that drivers must submit to a breathalyzer if stopped.
There is a penalty if they are brought in for probable cause, and refuse to take a breathalyzer at the station. But it isn't a "conviction" for drunk driving.
"They are putting molecules into the public space, so it's public."
Gathering information about people, in public or not, can still be considered an invasion of privacy. Laws in my state make that perfectly clear.
In the case of "non contact" breathalyzers, they cannot even pretend to be measuring blood alcohol concentration. They are going to read differently whether you just had one drink 5 minutes ago and are sober, or had several drinks an hour ago and are drunk. Hell, even official, calibrated police breathalyzers are controversial. These things are a disaster waiting to happen.
"Jesus christ you're an idiot. Yes, they use intimidation. No, it's not "terrorism". Grow the fuck up."
This is an interesting assertion. Please explain how police intimidation -- i.e., the threat of force to coerce a desired behavior out of people -- is different from "terrorism", which is the threat of force to coerce a desired behavior out of people.
Next you'll say that officer testimony that "I smelled alcohol on his breath" should be inadmissible in court.
I suggest you don't try to predict what I'll say, because most of the time you'll be wrong.
I do think it should be admissible in court. I do NOT, however, think it should be accepted as gospel. It's just one person's word against another, and it matters not one damned bit if that other person is a police officer. They make notoriously bad witnesses.
"Personally, I think that agreeing to this type of "surreptitious search" should be a requirement for renewing your drivers' license."
You are entitled to your opinion. I do not share it, for a number of very good reasons.
Among those reasons is that breathalyzers do not accurately reflect blood alcohol. If you just had one drink and are leaving the bar, it's going to set the thing off. There is VAST potential for abuse here.
"I was under the impression that it is quite common for anyone convicted of tech crimes to be barred from using computers. Chances are, if you're committing tech crimes you are mostly skilled in tech jobs, and being unable to use a computer deprives you of that work."
That's CRIMES. The subject under discussion is not a crime. Two very different things.
"Hell, even that would be a huge improvement over what we've got."
No, it wouldn't, because in effect that's what we already have. I get the impression you don't like what we already have. My point was that it isn't supposed to be that way.
"... the purpose of obtaining the patent (or copyright for that matter) isn't to put things out on the market & make profits. Instead, it's about locking up the ideas to stifle the progress of others. "
I think we agree that, too, is not the way it's supposed to be. But "first to market" doesn't solve that problem, it just hides it. So... you market your idea. To two people. One buys. What does that accomplish? Granted, that's a ridiculous example but what we have now is ridiculous, so I don't think it's unrealistic.
I think the whole point here is to prevent patent trolling. TFA says universities are against this, but so what? Why should universities be granted patents in the first place? They're taxpayer-funded institutions. Their inventions should therefore not be "protected" from the public.
The law that allowed corporate-university partnerships to patent innovations was a mistake. It hasn't done the public any good, and again, I think we agree that the whole idea of the patent system is "the public good".
But on the same note: getting rid of the incentives of patents would also not be in the public good. We need to find a balance.
That was YOUR point. My point was something else entirely. You are attempting to have a discussion about a different subject than what was being discussed.
According to news reports of the stops in Texas, peoples' breath was being sampled by officer-worn "non contact" breathalyzers before they were notified and without consent.
A surreptitious search is still a search. There SHOULD BE lawsuits over this.
According to the news story I read, a lot of people in Texas "bought" that, because they were under the impression they had no choice. One woman, in an interview, said she was intimidated by the police questions and thought she had to comply.
That news story (apologies, I don't have a link) also claimed that their breath was being sampled by an experimental "non contact" breathalyzer device without being notified in advance and without their consent.
"Engelbart only filed for a patent for his wheel mouse in 1967."
But a key thing here many seem to have forgotten is funding.
Without funding, or some kind of financial backer, you're not going to have a reasonable opportunity to patent your invention in a short amount of time. While the big boys with lots of funding can. That's one of the bit problems we're currently going through in the area of patents... the huge advantage that has been given corporations, versus the little guy who, actually most of the time, actually invents something.
So it shouldn't be any great surprise that Engelbart in his little group did not patent in those years but Telefunken did.
Patents are supposed to be about invention, not about who can get to market first.
I should also add, for the sake of thoroughness, that TFA itself refers to studies involving high doses of vitamins, not the amounts commonly found in daily supplements:
"Third, Lamas and associates (4) assessed the potential benefits of a high-dose, 28-component multivitamin supplement in 1708 men and women...
Evidence involving tens of thousands of people randomly assigned in many clinical trials shows that Î-carotene, vitamin E, and possibly high doses of Vitamin A supplements increase mortality..."
So... we're talking here about high-dose supplements that have produced "evidence" of harm. NOT generally vitamins in doses that are in common multivitamins.
And as for the latter part of the above quote, I can only say "No shit, Sherlock", as we have known for over 100 years that excesses of vitamin A can be toxic.
"There is some evidence that taking vitamins causes several health problems, including increasing risk of cancer in certain cases."
[Emphasis mine.]
Yes. And the vast majority of the evidence you refer to applies to taking LARGE DOSES of vitamins, not the amounts in the daily supplements being discussed here, jerk.
Did YOU think much about YOUR argument? Do you know what a straw-man is? Because that's what you did.
"Asset forfeiture isn't justified in any case in which it is applied"
I happen to agree with you but I did not want to get into that.
My point was simply that asset forfeiture (whether right or wrong) applies to criminal cases only. Copyright infringement (for personal use) is not a crime.
Pardon me. I didn't read that as closely as I should have. That might actually be part of it.
But I don't really think so. Those are statutory protections against creditors. What I am talking about is limits to court awards. Close to the same thing, but not quite.
While I agree that it varies from state to state, if I am not mistaken courts will generally allow you to also keep one automobile, and your primary means of making a living.
"The laws (called homestead exemptions) vary state-by-state. I remember hearing about Florida having laws like you describe, but I think that's not the case in most states."
Not even close. The laws I refer to are an attempt to avoid creating what amounts to debtor's prisons.
No purpose of society is served, if a court were to fine a person everything they have, including their means of making a living (or, for that matter, a place to live).
Slashdot Mirror
"Rosa Parks didn't flee from the bus when the police came for her; She sat right there and waited."
Holy crap. Rosa Parks? Really? I count that as a weird modification of Godwin's Law.
Rosa Parks wasn't facing life in solitary in Federal prison. At most she faced a night in jail... she had not even actually broken a law. There's a pretty fucking big difference.
Snowden, on the other hand, could not have revealed this information he did to the American public without breaking some serious laws. The fact that he was tattling on far vaster breach of the law nothwithstanding.
"Snowden stole a lot of classified materials from his employer, and then fled the country. And then he released all of it."
NO, he did not. He release SOME of it, to journalists who were entrusted to sift through it and determine what was proper to release. He has not released "all of it", even to those journalists, much less to everybody else.
"If I'm going to denounce my government's actions, I want the police to come. I want to be arrested, charged, and put on trial."
And given the current state of government in the U.S., you'd be tried as a "foreign combatant", tortured in Guantanamo, and NEVER SEE A PUBLIC TRIAL. Good luck with that. You're living in the dreamworld that the U.S. used to be.
Snowden got vital information out to the American public in the only way he reasonably could. Berating him for that is not just unrealistic, it's asinine.
"I think you may have missed a small detail in GP's argument"
Thanks, but no, I didn't miss anything. "Universal" stops (also known as "roadblocks") are illegal here. And, for that matter, in every state AROUND here.
This state, and surrounding states, recognize the right of drivers to go about their business "unmolested" by authorities, without probable cause. The ONLY lawful reason for a stop is probable cause. No randoms, no roadblocks.
"He knows exactly what you would say and so do most other regular /. posters."
Except for one thing.
If you read what was written above, you can clearly see that he was wrong. Which means you are, too.
AND, if you're a "regular poster", why are you parading around as Anonymous Coward? No balls?
"Ouch, my brain!!"
Ouch! My brain, my pocketbook, AND my ethics!
Lots of pain going around right now.
"As long as a vehicular stop is non-discriminatory (i.e., everyone has to pass through the checkpoint), it's a legal stop and all rules about plain sight apply."
Even that is only in a relatively few states, IMHO. It is not true in any of the states around here.
Here -- and in other states around here -- random stops and roadblocks are illegal. Drivers have a recognized right to travel in peace "unmolested" by authorities, even if that molestation is non-discriminatory.
Police can only pull people over for probable cause. No exceptions.
"If the police are pulling you over without probable cause, then it isn't public space."
This is a very good point.
"... no more or less than any one else."
Yes, worse than "anyone else". In psychology studies, not only were the police "trained observers" sigificantly WORSE at describing simulated crime scenes than the average college student, those were situations in which they only witnesses, and not personally involved.
Get them "personally involved", and the bias just goes up from there.
But more to the point: even if their abilities as witnesses are no better or worse than anyone else (and that's a pretty big, and probably false assumption), would a court convict someone of drunk driving based on the say so of "anyone else"?
Not very damned likely.
"It does not matter if it is a traffic stop or some sort of checkpoint (papers please), probable cause and 4th amendment rights are gone because you agreed when you signed your drivers licence."
But "implied consent" is just a legally controversial excuse used by the states. In reality you have a right to use "common modes of transportation", from common law (predating the Constitution), and it has even been acknowledged by the Supreme Court.
Even further, SCOTUS wrote that not only does the right exist, but the only reason it wasn't in the Constitution was that at the time it was considered to be too obvious to even mention.
Correction: while roadblocks, random stops, and "street" breathalyzers are illegal in my state and all those surrounding, one state that is "adjacent" to those states (i.e., 2 states away from here) MIGHT be an exception. I am not sure about that one.
"Is your state TX?"
Not in my state, either, and I am very far from Texas.
Nor is it the law in any of the states surrounding mine, or for that matter any of the states that are adjacent to those.
In none of those states are the police allowed to do "random" roadblocks or pullovers, nor is it law that drivers must submit to a breathalyzer if stopped.
There is a penalty if they are brought in for probable cause, and refuse to take a breathalyzer at the station. But it isn't a "conviction" for drunk driving.
And random stops and roadblocks are illegal.
"They are putting molecules into the public space, so it's public."
Gathering information about people, in public or not, can still be considered an invasion of privacy. Laws in my state make that perfectly clear.
In the case of "non contact" breathalyzers, they cannot even pretend to be measuring blood alcohol concentration. They are going to read differently whether you just had one drink 5 minutes ago and are sober, or had several drinks an hour ago and are drunk. Hell, even official, calibrated police breathalyzers are controversial. These things are a disaster waiting to happen.
"Jesus christ you're an idiot. Yes, they use intimidation. No, it's not "terrorism". Grow the fuck up."
This is an interesting assertion. Please explain how police intimidation -- i.e., the threat of force to coerce a desired behavior out of people -- is different from "terrorism", which is the threat of force to coerce a desired behavior out of people.
Next you'll say that officer testimony that "I smelled alcohol on his breath" should be inadmissible in court.
I suggest you don't try to predict what I'll say, because most of the time you'll be wrong.
I do think it should be admissible in court. I do NOT, however, think it should be accepted as gospel. It's just one person's word against another, and it matters not one damned bit if that other person is a police officer. They make notoriously bad witnesses.
"Personally, I think that agreeing to this type of "surreptitious search" should be a requirement for renewing your drivers' license."
You are entitled to your opinion. I do not share it, for a number of very good reasons.
Among those reasons is that breathalyzers do not accurately reflect blood alcohol. If you just had one drink and are leaving the bar, it's going to set the thing off. There is VAST potential for abuse here.
"I was under the impression that it is quite common for anyone convicted of tech crimes to be barred from using computers. Chances are, if you're committing tech crimes you are mostly skilled in tech jobs, and being unable to use a computer deprives you of that work."
That's CRIMES. The subject under discussion is not a crime. Two very different things.
"Hell, even that would be a huge improvement over what we've got."
No, it wouldn't, because in effect that's what we already have. I get the impression you don't like what we already have. My point was that it isn't supposed to be that way.
"... the purpose of obtaining the patent (or copyright for that matter) isn't to put things out on the market & make profits. Instead, it's about locking up the ideas to stifle the progress of others. "
I think we agree that, too, is not the way it's supposed to be. But "first to market" doesn't solve that problem, it just hides it. So... you market your idea. To two people. One buys. What does that accomplish? Granted, that's a ridiculous example but what we have now is ridiculous, so I don't think it's unrealistic.
I think the whole point here is to prevent patent trolling. TFA says universities are against this, but so what? Why should universities be granted patents in the first place? They're taxpayer-funded institutions. Their inventions should therefore not be "protected" from the public.
The law that allowed corporate-university partnerships to patent innovations was a mistake. It hasn't done the public any good, and again, I think we agree that the whole idea of the patent system is "the public good".
But on the same note: getting rid of the incentives of patents would also not be in the public good. We need to find a balance.
That was YOUR point. My point was something else entirely. You are attempting to have a discussion about a different subject than what was being discussed.
"No, I do not consent to any search."
Insufficient.
According to news reports of the stops in Texas, peoples' breath was being sampled by officer-worn "non contact" breathalyzers before they were notified and without consent.
A surreptitious search is still a search. There SHOULD BE lawsuits over this.
"Who'd really buy into that? "
According to the news story I read, a lot of people in Texas "bought" that, because they were under the impression they had no choice. One woman, in an interview, said she was intimidated by the police questions and thought she had to comply.
That news story (apologies, I don't have a link) also claimed that their breath was being sampled by an experimental "non contact" breathalyzer device without being notified in advance and without their consent.
"Engelbart only filed for a patent for his wheel mouse in 1967."
But a key thing here many seem to have forgotten is funding.
Without funding, or some kind of financial backer, you're not going to have a reasonable opportunity to patent your invention in a short amount of time. While the big boys with lots of funding can. That's one of the bit problems we're currently going through in the area of patents... the huge advantage that has been given corporations, versus the little guy who, actually most of the time, actually invents something.
So it shouldn't be any great surprise that Engelbart in his little group did not patent in those years but Telefunken did.
Patents are supposed to be about invention, not about who can get to market first.
In other words, the world we're living in, except for that bit about "amplified intelligence".
Yeah, we seem to be in an area of "amplified market idiocy" instead.
"Third, Lamas and associates (4) assessed the potential benefits of a high-dose, 28-component multivitamin supplement in 1708 men and women...
..."
Evidence involving tens of thousands of people randomly assigned in many clinical trials shows that Î-carotene, vitamin E, and possibly high doses of Vitamin A supplements increase mortality
So... we're talking here about high-dose supplements that have produced "evidence" of harm. NOT generally vitamins in doses that are in common multivitamins.
And as for the latter part of the above quote, I can only say "No shit, Sherlock", as we have known for over 100 years that excesses of vitamin A can be toxic.
"There is some evidence that taking vitamins causes several health problems, including increasing risk of cancer in certain cases."
[Emphasis mine.]
Yes. And the vast majority of the evidence you refer to applies to taking LARGE DOSES of vitamins, not the amounts in the daily supplements being discussed here, jerk.
Did YOU think much about YOUR argument? Do you know what a straw-man is? Because that's what you did.
"Asset forfeiture isn't justified in any case in which it is applied"
I happen to agree with you but I did not want to get into that.
My point was simply that asset forfeiture (whether right or wrong) applies to criminal cases only. Copyright infringement (for personal use) is not a crime.
Pardon me. I didn't read that as closely as I should have. That might actually be part of it.
But I don't really think so. Those are statutory protections against creditors. What I am talking about is limits to court awards. Close to the same thing, but not quite.
While I agree that it varies from state to state, if I am not mistaken courts will generally allow you to also keep one automobile, and your primary means of making a living.
"The laws (called homestead exemptions) vary state-by-state. I remember hearing about Florida having laws like you describe, but I think that's not the case in most states."
Not even close. The laws I refer to are an attempt to avoid creating what amounts to debtor's prisons.
No purpose of society is served, if a court were to fine a person everything they have, including their means of making a living (or, for that matter, a place to live).