IIRC, when the guys did this when I was a kid, it was about the fun of managing to do it properly yourself.
Of course there was also the bit about having enough of the manhood-substitute horsepower to do it. But the point remains: it was something the guys did to show off. With this, what's to show off? "Look folks! I can push a button!"
Correction. What they actually were saying was "It's okay for us to do it, but not you."
Corporate "surveillance" is as dangerous to freedom as government surveillance is. If not in exactly the same way.
For one very simple example, remember that it was recently revealed AT&T simply sells your information to the government, voluntarily, for a few million dollars annually. How different is that from the government getting it some other way?
"And, the beautiful thing is, the cowards keep the politicians in power because they can blame the politicians for their problems instead of facing them."
I would agree except that I really think politicians are the cause of many of the problems, not just scapegoats.
For the simple reason that nobody has made "science for fun" profitable anymore. Remember: monopolistic corporations would rather pay to maintain the status quo.
"And yes, it is constitutional in that it regulates corporations."
Um, no.
The Federal government has legal authority to regulate interstate trade. (And the amount to which it has "interpreted" the word "regulate" would have our founders rolling over in their graves.)
Most insurance companies only operated in-state. So theoretically, they should not be subject to Federal regulation.
The problem is, the Federal government has insinuated it into the State businesses via things like Medicaid, leaving them vulnerable to further regulation from the Feds via more regulation.
It's a typical Fed government trick: regulate something, do a shitty job of it, then use the failing system as an excuse to further regulate. It's insidious, and they've done it hundreds of times.
"Since neither act directly violated any provision in the constitution, the whole constitutional question is moot."
No, it isn't. Sheesh.
To use one of your own examples: it is very much arguable that SOPA would have infringed on the First and possibly even the Fourth Amendment.
Reminder: this whole thread was in response to a comment to the effect of: "it isn't just a matter of signing a treaty" to get it into law. It's more complicated than that. It has to be ratified by 2/3 of the Senate, and it may not violate the Constitution. (The latter according to your own sources.)
SOPA is a great case in point: it should not take a huge uprising from the American people to resist possible dismantling of our Constitutional rights, as was the case with SOPA. That's what our government representatives were elected to do. If they aren't doing it, then they aren't doing their jobs and need to be replaced. But more to the point: as Thomas Jefferson famously said (paraphrase): "Any extra-constitutional 'law' is not law. It is of no force, null, and void."
NO, it isn't. You've taken this out of the context of my original statement, then included part of my original statement. WTF?
Point (3) was MY point, and THAT is why "It's not so simple." You can't just sign a treaty, you have to get it ratified by 2/3 of the Senate. And THEN it's still not law if it violates the Constitution, ratified or not.
Look... here's my point: as your own source (Tenth Amendment Center) says, there are some suggestions in history that Congress could, in a few select ways, use their power to grab authority that the Constitution does not explicitly give. However, the one example they give of that -- a treaty with the Netherlands -- runs afoul of the First Amendment, which the same source says it may not do.
So the one example they give is actually a contradiction of what they claimed earlier... that a treaty cannot override the first 8 Amendments.
Further, it must be noted that the Constitution itself overrides the Articles of Confederation, under which that treaty was made.
The real telling thing here is that the Supreme Court itself said that the Necessary and Proper clause (again, quoting your own source) restricts Federal action to things that are both "(1) subordinate to powers listed expressly and (2) connected to them by custom or reasonable necessity."
That's hardly the point.
The constitution mentions nothing about unlocking cell phones or copyright length.
Those are merely provisions in US LAW.
Treaties can and DO override US Law all the time.
Yes, that WAS my point. One of them, anyway. In order to override ANY U.S. law, it first has to be ratified by the Senate.
In spite of the 10th amendment, it is clear that the founders intended the Federal Government to acquire additional powers under the Treaty power, and specifically mentioned in "The Necessary and Proper Clause" of Article 1.
Absolute BS. The "Necessary and Proper" clause only says that the Federal government can pass such laws as are necessary for it to implement and enforce the Constitution itself. It does NOT give the Federal government to enact laws that are not "necessary and proper" (and necessary is very much a key word) to other parts of the Constitution. That's a complete misinterpretation of what it means.
If anything is "clear" from history it is that nothing that is not within the enumerated powers is within the purview of the Federal government, except those things that are "necessary and proper" to enforce the other enumerated powers.
"Treaties do have major implications under U.S. domestic law. "
And where did you got the idea that I thought they didn't? That isn't what I wrote at all.
"In Missouri v. Holland, the Supreme Court ruled that the power to make treaties under the U.S. Constitution is a power separate from the other enumerated powers of the federal government, and hence the federal government can use treaties to legislate in areas which would otherwise fall within the exclusive authority of the states."
This still doesn't contradict anything I wrote earlier. I have to wonder who you're arguing with.
But since you brought it up, the Supreme Court ruled recently that corporations have First Amendment rights. Are you really going to quote them as some kind of Constitutional authority? Especially in recent years?
And he called the people to him and said to them, âoeHear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.â -- Matthew 15:10-11.
Or maybe that's saying that you have to swallow, not spit. The Bible can be cryptic sometimes.
But that's my whole point. The Bible doesn't say words like "mount" are offensive. PEOPLE decide that. And most commonly, people who preach from pulpits.
"The TPP is horrible in a number of ways. It creates so-called free trade between the countries in a number of areas, including automobiles. Unfortunately, if you know anything about the markets you know that even while the Japanese may not place tariffs on automotive products from the US, their market is absolutely closed to US product through a number of other legal but fairly immoral actions."
That's the essence of the problem. These "free trade" treaties haven't really implemented "free" trade at all. It there has been anything "free" about them it is the "free" subsidies that some companies get for their products.
Further, we know by now that offshoring is damaging to the economy of the country doing it, if it is "free", i.e., no exchange rate on labor. This is one of the biggest lies that have been pulled in recent years.
"This is how things work these days: if you can't get a law passed in your country, you convince other governments to make it part of a treaty, then blame them when the treaty is passed."
It's not quite that simple. In the U.S., it still has to be ratified by the Senate, AND even if they do, it is not law if it conflicts with the Constitution.
(IANAL, but MANY legal experts and court decisions say that a treaty does not have authority to trump the Constitution.)
I was actually defending some of their methods: e.g. if you have long chains likely to be broken in places, you can often get better statistical results from studying shorter segments.
Yes, what you say is all true but apparently (from what I understand of the situation) they were able to only obtain very small isolated samples at all. When it's in an area that was almost certainly contaminated with other DNA it's pretty hard to demonstrate much of anything.
I wasn't trying to claim that they're wrong. I was simply pointing out some of the problems they face in trying to show something significant.
Not everybody is a movie aficionado. So he missed the movie reference. So what? His reply was actually on-topic and probably correct. Unlike the person to whom he was responding.
"You think it's likely that people refer to you as a gal?"
You think it's likely that people refer to you as anything but Anonymous and Coward?
But yes... since you mention it, most people who bothered to look actually have referred to me as a gal. Only one person, who has committed many documented cases of sockpuppetry, has seemed to have had any issue with this. And although HE claims to be a man, there is a HUGE amount of evidence that he is in fact the original model for the idea of "anonymous coward".
"A first year grad student would have a bachelor's degree."
Haha. Well, YOU might think I'm serving fries (you'd be wrong), but aside from all the movie referneces, I've studied more U.S. history than most people with a bachelor's degree in that subject. I won't tell you what my degree is in... it's irrelevant to this discussion.
There have been A LOT of very worrisome events since Obama took office. But even just listing documented FEMA arms purchases here is likely to get me labeled "gal with a tinfoil hat".
"Adam Smith? Oh boy.....
You're a first year grad student."
100% wrong. I am a very long-time student of economics and history. YOU'RE the tyro.
(I give you the benefit of the doubt: this could be just satire. It's hard to tell. You could have been serious, but trying to put a funny spin on it. Either way, you got it backward.)
This might be funny, and I'd be mortified, if it had any basis in truth.
Do you like apples? Because I'm the one walking away with it.
Slashdot Mirror
More to the point, I think: where's the fun?
IIRC, when the guys did this when I was a kid, it was about the fun of managing to do it properly yourself.
Of course there was also the bit about having enough of the manhood-substitute horsepower to do it. But the point remains: it was something the guys did to show off. With this, what's to show off? "Look folks! I can push a button!"
Meh.
"thank you for standing up"
Correction. What they actually were saying was "It's okay for us to do it, but not you."
Corporate "surveillance" is as dangerous to freedom as government surveillance is. If not in exactly the same way.
For one very simple example, remember that it was recently revealed AT&T simply sells your information to the government, voluntarily, for a few million dollars annually. How different is that from the government getting it some other way?
"And, the beautiful thing is, the cowards keep the politicians in power because they can blame the politicians for their problems instead of facing them."
I would agree except that I really think politicians are the cause of many of the problems, not just scapegoats.
"Nobody *does science* for fun anymore."
For the simple reason that nobody has made "science for fun" profitable anymore. Remember: monopolistic corporations would rather pay to maintain the status quo.
"And yes, it is constitutional in that it regulates corporations."
Um, no.
The Federal government has legal authority to regulate interstate trade. (And the amount to which it has "interpreted" the word "regulate" would have our founders rolling over in their graves.)
Most insurance companies only operated in-state. So theoretically, they should not be subject to Federal regulation.
The problem is, the Federal government has insinuated it into the State businesses via things like Medicaid, leaving them vulnerable to further regulation from the Feds via more regulation.
It's a typical Fed government trick: regulate something, do a shitty job of it, then use the failing system as an excuse to further regulate. It's insidious, and they've done it hundreds of times.
"Since neither act directly violated any provision in the constitution, the whole constitutional question is moot."
No, it isn't. Sheesh.
To use one of your own examples: it is very much arguable that SOPA would have infringed on the First and possibly even the Fourth Amendment.
Reminder: this whole thread was in response to a comment to the effect of: "it isn't just a matter of signing a treaty" to get it into law. It's more complicated than that. It has to be ratified by 2/3 of the Senate, and it may not violate the Constitution. (The latter according to your own sources.)
SOPA is a great case in point: it should not take a huge uprising from the American people to resist possible dismantling of our Constitutional rights, as was the case with SOPA. That's what our government representatives were elected to do. If they aren't doing it, then they aren't doing their jobs and need to be replaced. But more to the point: as Thomas Jefferson famously said (paraphrase): "Any extra-constitutional 'law' is not law. It is of no force, null, and void."
"But it is EXACTLY that simple."
NO, it isn't. You've taken this out of the context of my original statement, then included part of my original statement. WTF?
Point (3) was MY point, and THAT is why "It's not so simple." You can't just sign a treaty, you have to get it ratified by 2/3 of the Senate. And THEN it's still not law if it violates the Constitution, ratified or not.
Look... here's my point: as your own source (Tenth Amendment Center) says, there are some suggestions in history that Congress could, in a few select ways, use their power to grab authority that the Constitution does not explicitly give. However, the one example they give of that -- a treaty with the Netherlands -- runs afoul of the First Amendment, which the same source says it may not do.
So the one example they give is actually a contradiction of what they claimed earlier... that a treaty cannot override the first 8 Amendments.
Further, it must be noted that the Constitution itself overrides the Articles of Confederation, under which that treaty was made.
The real telling thing here is that the Supreme Court itself said that the Necessary and Proper clause (again, quoting your own source) restricts Federal action to things that are both "(1) subordinate to powers listed expressly and (2) connected to them by custom or reasonable necessity."
That's hardly the point. The constitution mentions nothing about unlocking cell phones or copyright length. Those are merely provisions in US LAW. Treaties can and DO override US Law all the time.
Yes, that WAS my point. One of them, anyway. In order to override ANY U.S. law, it first has to be ratified by the Senate.
In spite of the 10th amendment, it is clear that the founders intended the Federal Government to acquire additional powers under the Treaty power, and specifically mentioned in "The Necessary and Proper Clause" of Article 1.
Absolute BS. The "Necessary and Proper" clause only says that the Federal government can pass such laws as are necessary for it to implement and enforce the Constitution itself. It does NOT give the Federal government to enact laws that are not "necessary and proper" (and necessary is very much a key word) to other parts of the Constitution. That's a complete misinterpretation of what it means.
If anything is "clear" from history it is that nothing that is not within the enumerated powers is within the purview of the Federal government, except those things that are "necessary and proper" to enforce the other enumerated powers.
"Treaties do have major implications under U.S. domestic law. "
And where did you got the idea that I thought they didn't? That isn't what I wrote at all.
"In Missouri v. Holland, the Supreme Court ruled that the power to make treaties under the U.S. Constitution is a power separate from the other enumerated powers of the federal government, and hence the federal government can use treaties to legislate in areas which would otherwise fall within the exclusive authority of the states."
This still doesn't contradict anything I wrote earlier. I have to wonder who you're arguing with.
But since you brought it up, the Supreme Court ruled recently that corporations have First Amendment rights. Are you really going to quote them as some kind of Constitutional authority? Especially in recent years?
And he called the people to him and said to them, âoeHear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.â -- Matthew 15:10-11.
Or maybe that's saying that you have to swallow, not spit. The Bible can be cryptic sometimes.
But that's my whole point. The Bible doesn't say words like "mount" are offensive. PEOPLE decide that. And most commonly, people who preach from pulpits.
"The TPP is horrible in a number of ways. It creates so-called free trade between the countries in a number of areas, including automobiles. Unfortunately, if you know anything about the markets you know that even while the Japanese may not place tariffs on automotive products from the US, their market is absolutely closed to US product through a number of other legal but fairly immoral actions."
That's the essence of the problem. These "free trade" treaties haven't really implemented "free" trade at all. It there has been anything "free" about them it is the "free" subsidies that some companies get for their products.
Further, we know by now that offshoring is damaging to the economy of the country doing it, if it is "free", i.e., no exchange rate on labor. This is one of the biggest lies that have been pulled in recent years.
"This is how things work these days: if you can't get a law passed in your country, you convince other governments to make it part of a treaty, then blame them when the treaty is passed."
It's not quite that simple. In the U.S., it still has to be ratified by the Senate, AND even if they do, it is not law if it conflicts with the Constitution.
(IANAL, but MANY legal experts and court decisions say that a treaty does not have authority to trump the Constitution.)
You know, I really wasn't trolling but I suppose it was inevitable that someone would try to mark it "damn you".
Taking offense to words like "mount" has nothing to do with the Bible. Those are CHURCH teachings. There is a difference.
I was actually defending some of their methods: e.g. if you have long chains likely to be broken in places, you can often get better statistical results from studying shorter segments.
The Rat7 is one of the finest products Ontario Knife has ever made.
Seems like a pretty harsh solution for a broken mouse, though. Dispatching a suffering moose is probably a more appropriate use for it.
Yes, what you say is all true but apparently (from what I understand of the situation) they were able to only obtain very small isolated samples at all. When it's in an area that was almost certainly contaminated with other DNA it's pretty hard to demonstrate much of anything.
I wasn't trying to claim that they're wrong. I was simply pointing out some of the problems they face in trying to show something significant.
Not everybody is a movie aficionado. So he missed the movie reference. So what? His reply was actually on-topic and probably correct. Unlike the person to whom he was responding.
"You think it's likely that people refer to you as a gal?"
You think it's likely that people refer to you as anything but Anonymous and Coward?
But yes... since you mention it, most people who bothered to look actually have referred to me as a gal. Only one person, who has committed many documented cases of sockpuppetry, has seemed to have had any issue with this. And although HE claims to be a man, there is a HUGE amount of evidence that he is in fact the original model for the idea of "anonymous coward".
"They probably like money. It's a very common condition."
Nah. I think that's a myth. If Microsoft liked money they never would have released Windows RT or Windows 8.
"A first year grad student would have a bachelor's degree."
Haha. Well, YOU might think I'm serving fries (you'd be wrong), but aside from all the movie referneces, I've studied more U.S. history than most people with a bachelor's degree in that subject. I won't tell you what my degree is in... it's irrelevant to this discussion.
Don't get me wrong. In my opinion, Bush was really over the limit. But unlike Bush, Obama has me wanting to reinforce the wallboards.
There have been A LOT of very worrisome events since Obama took office. But even just listing documented FEMA arms purchases here is likely to get me labeled "gal with a tinfoil hat".
But maybe "whoosh" was overly harsh. I'm not disagreeing with you, per se -- and you don't seem to be disagreeing with me.
Your statements appear to be valid, but I was making more specific points.
"Adam Smith? Oh boy..... You're a first year grad student."
100% wrong. I am a very long-time student of economics and history. YOU'RE the tyro.
(I give you the benefit of the doubt: this could be just satire. It's hard to tell. You could have been serious, but trying to put a funny spin on it. Either way, you got it backward.)
This might be funny, and I'd be mortified, if it had any basis in truth.
Do you like apples? Because I'm the one walking away with it.