As the other poster stated: there is no such thing as "reasonable cause".
There is "probable cause", but there doesn't appear to be real probable cause in this case.
Or rather: there may have been probably cause to take down some sites or investigate some users. But shut down the whole domain? Hell no. Unless the majority of users were committing crimes there COULD NOT BE "reasonable cause".
Actually, she too has grounds to prosecute under 18 USC 242. To say that her rights were violated (and not even in a "reasonable" way) is pretty much an understatement. She was effectively kidnapped at gunpoint.
You missed the whole point of my post. Yes, abuses happen. But when they do, it is not only the right but the duty of the victim to sue and/or prosecute if they can. If they do not, they do everyone else a disservice.
242 is a good law, and unlike most others of its kind it has teeth.
You need to look at 18 USC 242. It applies to anybody, including Congress and the President.
If their rights were violated, they have grounds. Period. But actually prosecuting is another matter of course. Even so, 242 is used every year, and the conviction rate is very high. Much higher than most kinds of criminal prosecution.
It was my understanding that in the United States, law enforcement (of any kind) is obligated to use the "least intrusive means" they reasonably can to effect an arrest or seizure.
In cases like this, blocking the domain name is so obviously the opposite of "least intrusive", I wonder if they have grounds to prosecute under 18 US 242. I know I would consider it, if this were done to me or my company.
The U.S. hasn't ratified it, either! That puts in in exactly the SAME position as Bulgaria: signed, but not ratified. So it has no force within the USA.
I don't know how or why people have kept missing this, but the United States has not ratified ACTA either, and there is about zero chance it is going to.
A U.S. representative signed it, but it was never ratified.
"I suppose that they do not realize that the Native Americans also crossbred their crops, thus genetically modifying their food. "
That has to be the king of all straw-man arguments!
Monsanto has not just been "cross-pollinating" crops. They have been mixing in genes from animals, not just plants, some of them genetically modified themselves. That is NOT something that normally happens in nature.
Monsanto, and certain other corporations, want to rule your food supply. It is as simple as that. And there is no way in Hell they should be allowed to do that.
(In fact just about every Communist country, where patents and copyrights were illegal.)
It's a pretty big list. And when most of them were in full swing, they hardly innovated at all. What they did, was like what China does now: steal ideas from those who really did innovate.
Instead other countries like Chine and the rest of asia has been growing fast and steadily with much more weaker IP laws.
China has been growing because the government supports the stealing of ideas from other people, and manufacturing those products with cheap labor. The whole reason they DIDN'T prosper until recently was because they did not let anybody own "intellectual property". Technically, they still don't, but they have been lightening up in that precisely because they have discovered that ALLOWING people to own and profit from "intellectual property" is good for business.
If you look at the goods manufactured in China even today, you will find that the vast majority of them were DESIGNED elsewhere. Mainly the United States and Europe.
That has been changing in recent decades for the Eastern countries, of course, as more of them have gone at least superficially "capitalist" and now allow private business and ownership.
History is full of it, man. At one time you could point to just about any Eastern Bloc country and see an economy that was going bust, and very little innovation of any kind, and not just in technology, but INCLUDING in writing and music.
"The reason Hollywood today is the movie capital of the world is because the moviemakers fled from the patents over movie making that existed in New York. "
That's a rather extraordinary claim, since patents and copyrights in this country have always been nationwide. A patent or copyright owned in New York is just as valid in Hollywood, and it has always been that way.
Your logic is great, except that things have never actually worked that way in the real world. Pick up a history book and learn.
"Yes, it's a new generation of programmers. And they are clueless because they are history-less. They don't know why things were done certain ways..."
You said it. But something that really amazes me is how many of them know no history simply because they simply never bothered to learn it. It's not like they didn't have the opportunity. But they don't understand that many of the things they're trying to do today were already done 30 years ago, and discarded because they just don't work worth a damn.
What really bothers me is that the generations before them at least made an effort to learn from the engineers who came before them. But this new generation is just going to repeat all their mistakes, because they don't seem to have made that effort. Or seem to even have a desire to.
A recent usability test (I'm trying to remember who did it... TechCrunch? Gizmodo? Someone else?) involving both new and experienced users, with Unity, Gnome, and KDE, had a clear winner with both new and experienced users. That winner was KDE.
Both Gnome and Unity have been throwing out decades of tried-and-true, very solid engineering in order to try their "new" ideas. They seem to forget -- or perhaps never knew? -- that many of those ideas have been tried already, and discarded... for good reasons.
My money is on KDE. It is based on solid human interface engineering, it was around before Ubuntu, and I think it will be around for a long time to come. Even if Ubuntu were to go away.
"... a system where it's A-OK for the legislature to create new categories of patents (explicitly create software or business method patents, though I am skeptical about the validity of the sceond under any terms)..." [sic]
The second? It is software patents that are the problem, not process patents in general. Where (to use the example already given) someone has a patented process to produce a certain chemical, let's say, it doesn't tend to cause problems. Software patents have caused problems from Day 1, and it was recognized that they would do if allowed, as far back as 100 years ago.
"There's that, and then there's the bit that the whole patent system is a gov't granted monopoly hack intended to skew the workings of the free market. "
Absolute nonsense. It is intended to ensure that there even IS a market.
Let's be clear on this: historically, countries that have not allowed inventors to profit from their own inventions (yes, I mean exclusively, but for a limited time... that's a "patent"), have not innovated. They just haven't. They have, almost without exception, fallen behind the rest of the world in that area, and stayed there as long as such policies were in place.
And you just don't allow Google Analytics. And similar scripts.
And of course, it also means you don't use Google+ (which they have already stated is an "identity service", and any social networking benefits are just "bait"... I'm just quoting Google themselves).
Or Gmail, which is also scanned for content. Or...
Basically it means that if you don't want everything available you scanned and analyzed, you just don't use Google's services. Period. Heck, I don't even use Google search except through an open router.
Most safeguarding of your information is ridiculously easy, if you simply don't use the services of those who would exploit it. Relying on their "de-personalization" of the data is foolish: we have already seen by intentional (and otherwise) data dumps, just how much "personal" information can be derived from this "depersonalized" data. Lots of things you don't want other people to know. AND... things which are none of Law Enforcement's business, even if... especially if... you are innocent.
"And again, the government isn't here to help you. Figure that out and this all makes a lot more sense. The laws written to govern these industries, were written by the industries themselves."
I am aware of this. That was part of my point.
But actually the government *IS* here to help me. That is the reason for its existence. It has increasingly been failing to do so, granted. But that is what it's for: national defense, etc. Things that are difficult for me to do on my own.
That's the problem with these "regulations" these days. Who benefited?
First, the corporations get fined a lot less than they cost other people... which isn't the way that's supposed to work. They're supposed to be fined enough to prevent them from doing it again. In general, that means MORE than whatever they cost other people.
Second... they don't have to admit any wrongdoing. What's the point then?
Third, who gets the money? The people Intel harmed? Hell, no! The government gets the money.
It's all a crock of sh*t. This needs to change. I mean it really, really needs to change.
"Worse they now like to pass laws where the actions are decided by groups not yet formed thereby circumventing the action, penalty, and enforcement, parts of many laws."
Yes, that is one of the many potentially fatal diseases Congress has given itself.
The Constitution never gave them authority to delegate their law-making (read: "rule-making") ability to anyone else. "Regulations" made by Federal bureaucracies are a Constitutional fraud.
"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in... the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing itâ(TM)s noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one....when all government... in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, 3rd US President, 1821
The old adage is about how you might not want to know how sausages and laws are made; it has nothing to do with making them in public. In fact, that's rather contrary to the premise of the rest of the post.
As unpleasant as it may be to watch the process, laws and sausages are precisely the kinds of things you DO want to be made in public, so you can see just exactly what goes into them.
They can probably keep them powered while they fly. MY concern would be that some glitch (or an EMP from solar storm, or something) would cause them to fail, in which case the only real backup is... a paper chart. Which would mean they have to buy charts anyway, and won't actually save any money.
Maybe they think having 2-3 of them on board at a time constitutes "backup". Who knows? All I know is that I'd want a paper chart to be there. Just in case.
If you are going to rebut my comment, then do so. Show me where ANYONE with any scientific credibility has predicted 6 to 7 degrees within the next 100 years.
I'd be interested to see it, if it exists. Because so far, I haven't.
"SCOTUS has the power to tell Congress that the CTEA and URAA were unconstitutional, but they refused to do so."
Yes, which is part of my point. By doing things like that, they have been "voting" the Federal government ever more power, and thus indirectly themselves. Considering that they are, after all, a branch of that same Government.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? The U.S. is "moving toward ratification"??? If so, this is the first I've heard about it, and I have been trying to keep track.
As the other poster stated: there is no such thing as "reasonable cause".
There is "probable cause", but there doesn't appear to be real probable cause in this case.
Or rather: there may have been probably cause to take down some sites or investigate some users. But shut down the whole domain? Hell no. Unless the majority of users were committing crimes there COULD NOT BE "reasonable cause".
Actually, she too has grounds to prosecute under 18 USC 242. To say that her rights were violated (and not even in a "reasonable" way) is pretty much an understatement. She was effectively kidnapped at gunpoint.
You missed the whole point of my post. Yes, abuses happen. But when they do, it is not only the right but the duty of the victim to sue and/or prosecute if they can. If they do not, they do everyone else a disservice.
242 is a good law, and unlike most others of its kind it has teeth.
You need to look at 18 USC 242. It applies to anybody, including Congress and the President.
If their rights were violated, they have grounds. Period. But actually prosecuting is another matter of course. Even so, 242 is used every year, and the conviction rate is very high. Much higher than most kinds of criminal prosecution.
It was my understanding that in the United States, law enforcement (of any kind) is obligated to use the "least intrusive means" they reasonably can to effect an arrest or seizure.
In cases like this, blocking the domain name is so obviously the opposite of "least intrusive", I wonder if they have grounds to prosecute under 18 US 242. I know I would consider it, if this were done to me or my company.
The U.S. hasn't ratified it, either! That puts in in exactly the SAME position as Bulgaria: signed, but not ratified. So it has no force within the USA.
I don't know how or why people have kept missing this, but the United States has not ratified ACTA either, and there is about zero chance it is going to.
A U.S. representative signed it, but it was never ratified.
Pull your heads out, folks.
"I suppose that they do not realize that the Native Americans also crossbred their crops, thus genetically modifying their food. "
That has to be the king of all straw-man arguments!
Monsanto has not just been "cross-pollinating" crops. They have been mixing in genes from animals, not just plants, some of them genetically modified themselves. That is NOT something that normally happens in nature.
Monsanto, and certain other corporations, want to rule your food supply. It is as simple as that. And there is no way in Hell they should be allowed to do that.
I hope they lose their shirts.
"Thats not true."
Really? It's not? How about some examples?
Soviet Russia
Communist China
(In fact just about every Communist country, where patents and copyrights were illegal.)
It's a pretty big list. And when most of them were in full swing, they hardly innovated at all. What they did, was like what China does now: steal ideas from those who really did innovate.
Instead other countries like Chine and the rest of asia has been growing fast and steadily with much more weaker IP laws.
China has been growing because the government supports the stealing of ideas from other people, and manufacturing those products with cheap labor. The whole reason they DIDN'T prosper until recently was because they did not let anybody own "intellectual property". Technically, they still don't, but they have been lightening up in that precisely because they have discovered that ALLOWING people to own and profit from "intellectual property" is good for business.
If you look at the goods manufactured in China even today, you will find that the vast majority of them were DESIGNED elsewhere. Mainly the United States and Europe.
That has been changing in recent decades for the Eastern countries, of course, as more of them have gone at least superficially "capitalist" and now allow private business and ownership.
History is full of it, man. At one time you could point to just about any Eastern Bloc country and see an economy that was going bust, and very little innovation of any kind, and not just in technology, but INCLUDING in writing and music.
"The reason Hollywood today is the movie capital of the world is because the moviemakers fled from the patents over movie making that existed in New York. "
That's a rather extraordinary claim, since patents and copyrights in this country have always been nationwide. A patent or copyright owned in New York is just as valid in Hollywood, and it has always been that way.
Your logic is great, except that things have never actually worked that way in the real world. Pick up a history book and learn.
"Yes, it's a new generation of programmers. And they are clueless because they are history-less. They don't know why things were done certain ways..."
You said it. But something that really amazes me is how many of them know no history simply because they simply never bothered to learn it. It's not like they didn't have the opportunity. But they don't understand that many of the things they're trying to do today were already done 30 years ago, and discarded because they just don't work worth a damn.
What really bothers me is that the generations before them at least made an effort to learn from the engineers who came before them. But this new generation is just going to repeat all their mistakes, because they don't seem to have made that effort. Or seem to even have a desire to.
A recent usability test (I'm trying to remember who did it... TechCrunch? Gizmodo? Someone else?) involving both new and experienced users, with Unity, Gnome, and KDE, had a clear winner with both new and experienced users. That winner was KDE.
Both Gnome and Unity have been throwing out decades of tried-and-true, very solid engineering in order to try their "new" ideas. They seem to forget -- or perhaps never knew? -- that many of those ideas have been tried already, and discarded... for good reasons.
My money is on KDE. It is based on solid human interface engineering, it was around before Ubuntu, and I think it will be around for a long time to come. Even if Ubuntu were to go away.
"... a system where it's A-OK for the legislature to create new categories of patents (explicitly create software or business method patents, though I am skeptical about the validity of the sceond under any terms)..." [sic]
The second? It is software patents that are the problem, not process patents in general. Where (to use the example already given) someone has a patented process to produce a certain chemical, let's say, it doesn't tend to cause problems. Software patents have caused problems from Day 1, and it was recognized that they would do if allowed, as far back as 100 years ago.
"There's that, and then there's the bit that the whole patent system is a gov't granted monopoly hack intended to skew the workings of the free market. "
Absolute nonsense. It is intended to ensure that there even IS a market.
Let's be clear on this: historically, countries that have not allowed inventors to profit from their own inventions (yes, I mean exclusively, but for a limited time... that's a "patent"), have not innovated. They just haven't. They have, almost without exception, fallen behind the rest of the world in that area, and stayed there as long as such policies were in place.
Haha. Okay. I see we aren't on the same channel here.
What I mean was: there is no need to lug 70 pounds. You just take the 1 or two charts for whatever areas you will be covering on foot.
And you just don't allow Google Analytics. And similar scripts.
And of course, it also means you don't use Google+ (which they have already stated is an "identity service", and any social networking benefits are just "bait"... I'm just quoting Google themselves).
Or Gmail, which is also scanned for content. Or...
Basically it means that if you don't want everything available you scanned and analyzed, you just don't use Google's services. Period. Heck, I don't even use Google search except through an open router.
Most safeguarding of your information is ridiculously easy, if you simply don't use the services of those who would exploit it. Relying on their "de-personalization" of the data is foolish: we have already seen by intentional (and otherwise) data dumps, just how much "personal" information can be derived from this "depersonalized" data. Lots of things you don't want other people to know. AND... things which are none of Law Enforcement's business, even if... especially if... you are innocent.
"And again, the government isn't here to help you. Figure that out and this all makes a lot more sense. The laws written to govern these industries, were written by the industries themselves."
I am aware of this. That was part of my point.
But actually the government *IS* here to help me. That is the reason for its existence. It has increasingly been failing to do so, granted. But that is what it's for: national defense, etc. Things that are difficult for me to do on my own.
That's the problem with these "regulations" these days. Who benefited?
First, the corporations get fined a lot less than they cost other people... which isn't the way that's supposed to work. They're supposed to be fined enough to prevent them from doing it again. In general, that means MORE than whatever they cost other people.
Second... they don't have to admit any wrongdoing. What's the point then?
Third, who gets the money? The people Intel harmed? Hell, no! The government gets the money.
It's all a crock of sh*t. This needs to change. I mean it really, really needs to change.
Okay... but why in the world would you want to carry it with you if you were shot down?
"Worse they now like to pass laws where the actions are decided by groups not yet formed thereby circumventing the action, penalty, and enforcement, parts of many laws."
Yes, that is one of the many potentially fatal diseases Congress has given itself.
The Constitution never gave them authority to delegate their law-making (read: "rule-making") ability to anyone else. "Regulations" made by Federal bureaucracies are a Constitutional fraud.
"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in ... the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing itâ(TM)s noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. ...when all government... in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, 3rd US President, 1821
On a trip of over 1000 miles in a small plane, the paper charts weighed less than half a pound, not 70 pounds.
70 pounds might cover a good part of the world. But you wouldn't need that for any 300 km trip.
The old adage is about how you might not want to know how sausages and laws are made; it has nothing to do with making them in public. In fact, that's rather contrary to the premise of the rest of the post.
As unpleasant as it may be to watch the process, laws and sausages are precisely the kinds of things you DO want to be made in public, so you can see just exactly what goes into them.
They can probably keep them powered while they fly. MY concern would be that some glitch (or an EMP from solar storm, or something) would cause them to fail, in which case the only real backup is... a paper chart. Which would mean they have to buy charts anyway, and won't actually save any money.
Maybe they think having 2-3 of them on board at a time constitutes "backup". Who knows? All I know is that I'd want a paper chart to be there. Just in case.
Who said anything about 2001?
If you are going to rebut my comment, then do so. Show me where ANYONE with any scientific credibility has predicted 6 to 7 degrees within the next 100 years.
I'd be interested to see it, if it exists. Because so far, I haven't.
What "responsible" party has been predicting 6 or 7 degrees within 100 years? Nobody I know, including the IPCC.
The most extreme predictions I have seen from reputable sources have been 2 to 3 degrees within 100 years.
"SCOTUS has the power to tell Congress that the CTEA and URAA were unconstitutional, but they refused to do so."
Yes, which is part of my point. By doing things like that, they have been "voting" the Federal government ever more power, and thus indirectly themselves. Considering that they are, after all, a branch of that same Government.