"That said... can someone explain to me how this is not a police state? 'Cuz, save the concentration camps, I fail to see what's missing..."
I hate to tell you this, but those have already been built. And no, it's not "conspiracy theory". DHS has built internment camps around the country. I've seen them on television, not just "crazy" internet sites. They're real.
"I wouldnt call this a "right", but a "privilege"."
Absolutely not. If you think it through, it is unworkable.
The Supreme Court itself has ruled that anonymous speech is a right, because without it freedom of speech could not exist.
Think about it:
(A) The majority of personal communication now takes place either by telephone or the internet. By far the majority of public speech is on the internet. Therefore it is in general an essential public forum.
(B) If any anonymous speech that could be interpreted as political (i.e., literally anything) could be censored or removed at will, all you are left with is speech attached to your own name. Therefore:
(C) For the intolerable presumption of speaking out against Candidate X, you can be tracked down and beaten, or discriminated against, or targeted for police raids (hey, it's happened), and so on, all because you could not say it anonymously. That is how dictatorships get started.
No, public forums MUST be allowed to carry anonymous speech. It is not a "privilege". It is essential to your freedom and mine.
But those are more "classical liberals". Modern "liberals" bear little resemblance to the classical liberals of old. Classical liberals were also not in favor of big government, by the way.
"That is why something like this will almost never be appealed. "
Granted, you did say "almost" never. But a winner can sometimes appeal if they have legitimate grounds to feel the judgment was not fair or in accordance with the law.
Sure. I know of a case more locally, where someone was shot by a policeman. The internal "investigation" claimed he did nothing wrong. So the prosecutor would not prosecute him. But... there were some telling discrepancies in his statements. The family filed a civil suit and the judge agreed that there was enough cause to go to trial.
Personally, I think the officer screwed up. Maybe a misjudgment, or maybe he stumbled, or a slip of the finger... whatever. But he was where he shouldn't have been in the first place (on private property, under questionable circumstances at best, without telling anyone he was there). I think he then lied to cover his mistake.
But they wouldn't put up with that from a common citizen... why should we put up with it from the police? Sure, the police sometimes have to shoot and kill people, as part of their jobs. But part of that responsibility includes NOT shooting people who shouldn't be getting shot.
"If the attacker is already within arm's reach then you have to be very strong and agile; otherwise he will simply deflect your arm with the zapper, or grab your wrist and shove the zapper into your own neck."
Not easy to do. Seriously, you should see one in action. All you have to do is touch them with it. That's all it takes. You aren't taking one away from somebody. Easier to take away a gun.
"Learning itself should be the incentive. If that's not incentive enough for these people, then I suspect they're merely ignorant buffoons to begin with."
I don't disagree that learning itself should be good incentive, but "should be" and "are" can often be 2 different things.
I have to disagree, however, about the ignorant buffoon bit. Most people have limited resources, so they want to spend their time productively. The online aren't getting the kind of students they want because while the courses may be good, they aren't perceived as being "productive", i.e. something that will bring some sort of practical return.
Whether we like it or not, most people don't go to school just for an education. They go so they can get a better job and better pay.
"I'm not sure how many hours/day you'd need the light, but with this and a pair of these, I can get 80 hours of light without a recharge. You may not be able to find those exact batteries, but there are many available with the same specs."
Okay, but those are not even close to the mass-market products I was referring to.
In general, give me a rechargeable flashlight, and a similar flashlight with disposable lithium batteries, and I'll get much better performance with the disposables, especially in cold weather. They are also lighter in weight. AND they have a 10-year shelf life, so I can put a flashlight in my glove box and know it will work 2 years later.
They are not as environment-friendly, but I do save my batteries for recycling.
"That is pre-meditated murder. If she could have left to get her gun, she could have left without incident."
I don't disagree; I am not intimately familiar with this case. I was just referring to the law in general. Some people appeared to be saying the law should require people to run away. I disagree. It is not that way in most states, and from what others wrote here I presume it's no longer that way in Florida.
If what you say is true, it sounds like murder to me.
"IMO, the only advantage you can get out of having a non-lethal weapon is to tell the judge that you were prepared to defend yourself non-lethally, but had to go for the lethal method when the other method failed, or couldn't be effective."
The advantage of using that particular non-lethal weapon (a good stun gun) is that THEY WORK. It drops them like a sack of potatoes, because it short-circuits the nervous system. And unlike shooting somebody, drugs don't interfere, because there's nothing voluntary about it. The muscles simply stop working. (Technically the reverse is true: they contract against each other and seize up completely.) This isn't a Taser with tiny little wires and shitty skin contact. This is up-close and personal. If you've ever been zapped by one you'll know what I mean.
If you zap them for more than about 10 seconds, usually it will take them a little while to recover, due to lactic acid buildup in the muscles. If you zap somebody for 30 seconds they may not be able to get up and walk for 5 minutes or even longer.
This is all assuming you have a well-built, high-voltage unit with good batteries, of course. I wouldn't touch those rechargeable things with a 10-foot pole. Replaceable lithium batteries is the way to go.
"Using a Taser at a longer distance might work, but you'd better be ready to follow up with a firearm. This means that you hold the Taser in the other hand. "
You missed my point completely. I was referring to those circumstances in which the attacker is already too close (within punching or grappling distance). My whole point was that you DON'T want somebody to be that close. But if they are, there are alternatives you can use. And as I wrote, often just zapping them in the air will keep someone away, if they have any brains and aren't drug-addled.
Remember that most citizens aren't police. And good luck finding a jury that will listen to a 21-foot rule. Unless the other person has a weapon pulling a firearm, in most states anyway, puts you at legal risk.
Because at a glance (just off-the-cuff estimating, I make no claim to any kind of thorough analysis), if ONE RIG can make $50 million profit in a day (the word "make" was used), then multiply that by the number of rigs, and you start to get pretty huge numbers.
What I was trying to say is that based on my (admittedly lacking some data) estimate, this would have to lead to prices that are far higher than what a free market would set.
But that's all pretty theoretical, since I don't have all the numbers, and it's not a free market. And as I mentioned, if that's actually revenue rather than profit, the numbers change quite a bit.
"When I really want to learn something, I'm plenty motivated - I eat, breath and shit the subject."
Okay, but you have identified exactly the problem with most of the online courses. Since they don't offer anything for completion -- most don't even offer much in the way of a "certification of completion" yet, much less actual credits -- they will continue to get lots of students who AREN'T really motivated to study. They're just taking the course for shits and giggles.
When people put in the work, they want to get something tangible out of it: college credits, or at lease some kind of official piece of paper saying they completed a difficult course that should help them in their careers.
In other words, the incentive isn't there. Put the incentive back in, and they will start keeping students.
It doesn't have to be random, if it's a long string of even dictionary words. This point was made in XKCD a long time ago.
Unlike some encryption schemes, with WPA length does matter. And "FricasseedCumquat" is not going to be a word in any dictionary. (Although I do recommend the use of non-alpha characters.)
Dictionary words work just fine if your passphrase is long enough, especially if you use non-alpha characters, too.
With WPA2, the difficulty of brute force is pretty much directly proportional to the length of your passphrase, to the power of the character set used. So if you force them to try to brute-force a 30-character passphrase, using upper- and lower-case alpha plus "special" keyboard characters, your brute-force domain is (on my keyboard) 30^84, or about 1.2 x 10^124.
Good luck with that. (My own passphrase is even longer.)
I can't speak for Florida laws, but most state laws say that you are not required to retreat if attacked. (Often the wording is something like, you are assumed to be a person of "reasonable courage". That has usually been interpreted to mean that you need not retreat.) That works for them. If it doesn't work for Florida, then I'd say that seems to be a problem with Florida.
A requirement that somebody must retreat from an attack does nothing but encourage attackers, and make victims of attacks also victims of the law.
If somebody breaks down my door, I'm not going to look for a window to jump out of, I'm going to stand there and shoot the bastard. If somebody attacks me on the street, I'm not going to run away... at least not until I make sure they regret their actions. I'm very often armed. Not always with something deadly but with at least something. And yes, I've had the living shit beat out of me on the street because I would not run away. But if it happened again tomorrow, I still wouldn't run away. (I would, however, be a little better prepared.)
"It's very valuable to have a non-lethal (legally, at least) at-a-distance self-defense option."
Failing that: a non-lethal, close-range weapon.
Stun guns work, and they are not classified as "weapons" in most states. The only problem of course is that you have to be closer than you want to be to use them. But if they get close to you anyway, it makes for good defense.
Sometimes, even seeing one of them ZZZZAAAP in the air will make people back off.
"Fights make deadly turns very fast. Someone punching me is enough for me to pull my weapon at the very least."
See, there's your problem. Overreaction. If somebody punches you and you pull a gun, chances are YOU are the one who will be arrested.
YOUR attitude doesn't matter. What matters -- 100% -- is theirs. Do they have deadly intent? Do they want to do more than just punch you in order to maybe cause you a fat lip or bloody nose? Then you might be justified. Maybe.
You can end the threat quickly. Break their fingers. Kick them in the knee or groin. Poke them in the eye. It might cause injury, but nobody could reasonably argue that you were threatening them with death.
Laws vary among states. But in general: if they don't have a weapon, you should not pull one either, if you want to stay out of jail. There are a few exceptions but not many.
That is precisely the problem with police over-use of Tasers in recent years. Tasers are NOT "non-lethal". They are "less-lethal". The original intent was for law enforcement to use a Taser only in lieu of deadly force. In other words, only if their only other option is to shoot you. But instead, some police have used them to get old ladies out of cars during traffic stops. That's bad news. It demonstrates that many police are lazy and would rather torture people than face the possibility of even the slightest physical confrontation. In other words, cowards.
"How would you go about working out what a reasonable figure is?"
That's a very good question. Normally, I'd say let the free market sort it out. But oil and gas are fraught with such an enormous hodgepodge of government regulation, taxation, and subsidies that it is pretty hard to claim anything like a "free market" even exists for those things.
I'm not even going to respond to this mishmash of illogic, except to say that you really need to read your history, and maybe study up on some REAL statistics. Your own government is a very good source. Check it out.
Slashdot Mirror
"That said... can someone explain to me how this is not a police state? 'Cuz, save the concentration camps, I fail to see what's missing..."
I hate to tell you this, but those have already been built. And no, it's not "conspiracy theory". DHS has built internment camps around the country. I've seen them on television, not just "crazy" internet sites. They're real.
"I wouldnt call this a "right", but a "privilege"."
Absolutely not. If you think it through, it is unworkable.
The Supreme Court itself has ruled that anonymous speech is a right, because without it freedom of speech could not exist.
Think about it:
(A) The majority of personal communication now takes place either by telephone or the internet. By far the majority of public speech is on the internet. Therefore it is in general an essential public forum.
(B) If any anonymous speech that could be interpreted as political (i.e., literally anything) could be censored or removed at will, all you are left with is speech attached to your own name. Therefore:
(C) For the intolerable presumption of speaking out against Candidate X, you can be tracked down and beaten, or discriminated against, or targeted for police raids (hey, it's happened), and so on, all because you could not say it anonymously. That is how dictatorships get started.
No, public forums MUST be allowed to carry anonymous speech. It is not a "privilege". It is essential to your freedom and mine.
" Liberals from the line of Locke, et al"
But those are more "classical liberals". Modern "liberals" bear little resemblance to the classical liberals of old. Classical liberals were also not in favor of big government, by the way.
"That is why something like this will almost never be appealed. "
Granted, you did say "almost" never. But a winner can sometimes appeal if they have legitimate grounds to feel the judgment was not fair or in accordance with the law.
"... about studies of traditional, for-college-credit, online college courses. "
Not very relevant, since I clearly wrote "most online courses," which are not "traditional" or for credit.
Granted, it may not apply directly to TFA, it was a generalization. Are you asserting there is something wrong with that?
Sure. I know of a case more locally, where someone was shot by a policeman. The internal "investigation" claimed he did nothing wrong. So the prosecutor would not prosecute him. But... there were some telling discrepancies in his statements. The family filed a civil suit and the judge agreed that there was enough cause to go to trial.
Personally, I think the officer screwed up. Maybe a misjudgment, or maybe he stumbled, or a slip of the finger... whatever. But he was where he shouldn't have been in the first place (on private property, under questionable circumstances at best, without telling anyone he was there). I think he then lied to cover his mistake.
But they wouldn't put up with that from a common citizen... why should we put up with it from the police? Sure, the police sometimes have to shoot and kill people, as part of their jobs. But part of that responsibility includes NOT shooting people who shouldn't be getting shot.
"If the attacker is already within arm's reach then you have to be very strong and agile; otherwise he will simply deflect your arm with the zapper, or grab your wrist and shove the zapper into your own neck."
Not easy to do. Seriously, you should see one in action. All you have to do is touch them with it. That's all it takes. You aren't taking one away from somebody. Easier to take away a gun.
"Learning itself should be the incentive. If that's not incentive enough for these people, then I suspect they're merely ignorant buffoons to begin with."
I don't disagree that learning itself should be good incentive, but "should be" and "are" can often be 2 different things.
I have to disagree, however, about the ignorant buffoon bit. Most people have limited resources, so they want to spend their time productively. The online aren't getting the kind of students they want because while the courses may be good, they aren't perceived as being "productive", i.e. something that will bring some sort of practical return.
Whether we like it or not, most people don't go to school just for an education. They go so they can get a better job and better pay.
"I'm not sure how many hours/day you'd need the light, but with this and a pair of these, I can get 80 hours of light without a recharge. You may not be able to find those exact batteries, but there are many available with the same specs."
Okay, but those are not even close to the mass-market products I was referring to.
In general, give me a rechargeable flashlight, and a similar flashlight with disposable lithium batteries, and I'll get much better performance with the disposables, especially in cold weather. They are also lighter in weight. AND they have a 10-year shelf life, so I can put a flashlight in my glove box and know it will work 2 years later.
They are not as environment-friendly, but I do save my batteries for recycling.
To clarify what I meant: if I accept your description of what happened, then she did not just fail to retreat, she actually attacked.
"That is pre-meditated murder. If she could have left to get her gun, she could have left without incident."
I don't disagree; I am not intimately familiar with this case. I was just referring to the law in general. Some people appeared to be saying the law should require people to run away. I disagree. It is not that way in most states, and from what others wrote here I presume it's no longer that way in Florida.
If what you say is true, it sounds like murder to me.
"IMO, the only advantage you can get out of having a non-lethal weapon is to tell the judge that you were prepared to defend yourself non-lethally, but had to go for the lethal method when the other method failed, or couldn't be effective."
The advantage of using that particular non-lethal weapon (a good stun gun) is that THEY WORK. It drops them like a sack of potatoes, because it short-circuits the nervous system. And unlike shooting somebody, drugs don't interfere, because there's nothing voluntary about it. The muscles simply stop working. (Technically the reverse is true: they contract against each other and seize up completely.) This isn't a Taser with tiny little wires and shitty skin contact. This is up-close and personal. If you've ever been zapped by one you'll know what I mean.
If you zap them for more than about 10 seconds, usually it will take them a little while to recover, due to lactic acid buildup in the muscles. If you zap somebody for 30 seconds they may not be able to get up and walk for 5 minutes or even longer.
This is all assuming you have a well-built, high-voltage unit with good batteries, of course. I wouldn't touch those rechargeable things with a 10-foot pole. Replaceable lithium batteries is the way to go.
"Using a Taser at a longer distance might work, but you'd better be ready to follow up with a firearm. This means that you hold the Taser in the other hand. "
You missed my point completely. I was referring to those circumstances in which the attacker is already too close (within punching or grappling distance). My whole point was that you DON'T want somebody to be that close. But if they are, there are alternatives you can use. And as I wrote, often just zapping them in the air will keep someone away, if they have any brains and aren't drug-addled.
Remember that most citizens aren't police. And good luck finding a jury that will listen to a 21-foot rule. Unless the other person has a weapon pulling a firearm, in most states anyway, puts you at legal risk.
"Inflicting injury with a gun is so much more assured."
Yes, but also so much more likely to get you put in prison. That was my point.
I wasn't trying to claim it was easy. I'm just saying that usually there are LEGAL (and recommended) alternatives to deadly force.
Because at a glance (just off-the-cuff estimating, I make no claim to any kind of thorough analysis), if ONE RIG can make $50 million profit in a day (the word "make" was used), then multiply that by the number of rigs, and you start to get pretty huge numbers.
What I was trying to say is that based on my (admittedly lacking some data) estimate, this would have to lead to prices that are far higher than what a free market would set.
But that's all pretty theoretical, since I don't have all the numbers, and it's not a free market. And as I mentioned, if that's actually revenue rather than profit, the numbers change quite a bit.
"When I really want to learn something, I'm plenty motivated - I eat, breath and shit the subject."
Okay, but you have identified exactly the problem with most of the online courses. Since they don't offer anything for completion -- most don't even offer much in the way of a "certification of completion" yet, much less actual credits -- they will continue to get lots of students who AREN'T really motivated to study. They're just taking the course for shits and giggles.
When people put in the work, they want to get something tangible out of it: college credits, or at lease some kind of official piece of paper saying they completed a difficult course that should help them in their careers.
In other words, the incentive isn't there. Put the incentive back in, and they will start keeping students.
"... wpa2-vulnerability-found"
Did you also miss the part where it said "WPA2 Enterprise"? Most consumer devices use WPA2 Personal, which is a different encryption scheme.
My router does give me the option of using Enterprise, if I want to take the trouble of setting up a RADIUS server.
It doesn't have to be random, if it's a long string of even dictionary words. This point was made in XKCD a long time ago.
Unlike some encryption schemes, with WPA length does matter. And "FricasseedCumquat" is not going to be a word in any dictionary. (Although I do recommend the use of non-alpha characters.)
Dictionary words work just fine if your passphrase is long enough, especially if you use non-alpha characters, too.
With WPA2, the difficulty of brute force is pretty much directly proportional to the length of your passphrase, to the power of the character set used. So if you force them to try to brute-force a 30-character passphrase, using upper- and lower-case alpha plus "special" keyboard characters, your brute-force domain is (on my keyboard) 30^84, or about 1.2 x 10^124.
Good luck with that. (My own passphrase is even longer.)
I can't speak for Florida laws, but most state laws say that you are not required to retreat if attacked. (Often the wording is something like, you are assumed to be a person of "reasonable courage". That has usually been interpreted to mean that you need not retreat.) That works for them. If it doesn't work for Florida, then I'd say that seems to be a problem with Florida.
A requirement that somebody must retreat from an attack does nothing but encourage attackers, and make victims of attacks also victims of the law.
If somebody breaks down my door, I'm not going to look for a window to jump out of, I'm going to stand there and shoot the bastard. If somebody attacks me on the street, I'm not going to run away... at least not until I make sure they regret their actions. I'm very often armed. Not always with something deadly but with at least something. And yes, I've had the living shit beat out of me on the street because I would not run away. But if it happened again tomorrow, I still wouldn't run away. (I would, however, be a little better prepared.)
"Better to be judged by 12 then carried by 6"
Even better to figure out whether you ARE really in danger, and thus stay out of the courtroom altogether.
"It's very valuable to have a non-lethal (legally, at least) at-a-distance self-defense option."
Failing that: a non-lethal, close-range weapon.
Stun guns work, and they are not classified as "weapons" in most states. The only problem of course is that you have to be closer than you want to be to use them. But if they get close to you anyway, it makes for good defense.
Sometimes, even seeing one of them ZZZZAAAP in the air will make people back off.
"Fights make deadly turns very fast. Someone punching me is enough for me to pull my weapon at the very least."
See, there's your problem. Overreaction. If somebody punches you and you pull a gun, chances are YOU are the one who will be arrested.
YOUR attitude doesn't matter. What matters -- 100% -- is theirs. Do they have deadly intent? Do they want to do more than just punch you in order to maybe cause you a fat lip or bloody nose? Then you might be justified. Maybe.
You can end the threat quickly. Break their fingers. Kick them in the knee or groin. Poke them in the eye. It might cause injury, but nobody could reasonably argue that you were threatening them with death.
Laws vary among states. But in general: if they don't have a weapon, you should not pull one either, if you want to stay out of jail. There are a few exceptions but not many.
That is precisely the problem with police over-use of Tasers in recent years. Tasers are NOT "non-lethal". They are "less-lethal". The original intent was for law enforcement to use a Taser only in lieu of deadly force. In other words, only if their only other option is to shoot you. But instead, some police have used them to get old ladies out of cars during traffic stops. That's bad news. It demonstrates that many police are lazy and would rather torture people than face the possibility of even the slightest physical confrontation. In other words, cowards.
A cowardly cop is a dangerous cop.
"How would you go about working out what a reasonable figure is?"
That's a very good question. Normally, I'd say let the free market sort it out. But oil and gas are fraught with such an enormous hodgepodge of government regulation, taxation, and subsidies that it is pretty hard to claim anything like a "free market" even exists for those things.
I'm not even going to respond to this mishmash of illogic, except to say that you really need to read your history, and maybe study up on some REAL statistics. Your own government is a very good source. Check it out.