Someone needs to pull a James Randi and offer a million dollars to anyone who can detect wifi radiation.
First, build two rooms, about a foot apart. Out of normal sheetrock and plastic siding, and have that witnesses that's all that's in the walls. Put the doors on the side of the buildings that face away.
In their room, put three things. An incandescent light fixture, a window AC or heater, and a water pump that puts water in a water tower in attic. The later two get turned off during the test. In fact, all power to their building will be turned off. If they want the light, it will be run off a battery. (Notice I'm trying to be as accommodating as possible here so no one can claim any funny business. If the light interferes, they can use glowsticks or whatever.)
The water in the tower is to run down a little noisy waterfall inside, which is there to hide any actual noise hints. No cheating and hearing things turn on. Totally mechanical waterfall. (Be sure to use the restroom beforehand.) There's also a mechanical clock, and paper and pencil.
In the other building, have a dozen wifi routers, and cell phones plugged into chargers with no batteries (So you can flip a switch and have them come on.) And, hell, they can pick out anything they want, as long as it doesn't make too much noise and will be turned on with the power coming on. If it does make too much noise, we will install soundproofing.
And power to this building can be entirely turned off, and in fact starts off turned off. Entirely off, except when turned on, so there's no 'background' noise at all. In fact, let's put the switches 200 feet away for both rooms.
They get ten minutes to sit there and have nothing happen. After that, they sit there an hour, wait another ten minutes, and come out and take a break. There will be four tests. Power will be turned on for ten minutes of two of them, on the entire time for one, and off the entire time for another.
And we'll even let write down their observations and turn it in at the end, so in case they think 'The wifi came on now', and then later go 'No, I was wrong before, this is it', it's okay. And we know it might take a minute or two for all the devices to come up, so anywhere in the ten minutes is okay.
Please point them out, and win a million dollars. Or Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
No, they don't 'own' the airwaves, you idiot. They leased the airwaves from the Federal government.
The United States of America recognizes that the electromagnetic frequency is a public resource and that it makes no sense to assert that everyone owns all frequencies stopping exactly at their property line, which would render the entire spectrum useless for anything.
Hence, the US distributes frequencies over larger areas, in accordance with what benefits the public most. Some are for public use, like ham and CB radio and the unlicensed frequencies of wifi and cordless phones, some are for government use, and some get leased by private corporations, like television frequencies and cell phone.
The people of the United States of America own the airwaves in common. Transmitters who have received permission can, indeed, fill the airwaves in other people's houses.
And all this is a goddamn moot point, because it isn't property owners saying 'We don't want people transmitting through us'...it's a city government restricting the placement of cell towers even if the nearby property owners want a tower there. So your point is even stupider.
Hey, moron, no land owners have decided they don't want such towers, and no law is needed to stop people who don't want one on their property from not having one on their property.
You're the 'communist' saying that the state can determine what land is used for what, against the wishes of the property owner.
If you do not want to be bombarded with 'unnatural' radio emissions, you need to live somewhere besides the earth. The other side of the moon would be the closest place.
'Intent to publish' has nothing to do with whether or not it's legal or not.
Most people do not 'intend' that evidence against them that the public stumbles across becomes public. As long as the person was not working with the police, it cannot, under any circumstances, be excluded.
Even evidence discovered under outright commissions of a crime are legal to use. There have been cases where someone unconnected with law enforcement kidnapped and tortured another person to get evidence out of them. While obviously a confession obtained that way won't hold up in court, if the kidnap victim says where, for example, the bodies are buried, and they actually are buried there....the fact they knew that can be used against them in court. (This, of course, doesn't render the kidnap and torture legal in the slightest.)
That said, the idea that 'Turning your front page into a directory listing and having someone click on a link' somehow doesn't 'count' is just idiotic. It's bad enough that idiots have managed t argue in court that putting stuff in a web server directory doesn't isn't 'publishing' when they don't make a link to it, and try to claim they were 'hacked' when people download that stuff...but here, they, or at least, their software, did make a link to it.
What the fuck? Are we supposed to contact them before visiting links they provide us?
I'm all for anti-hacking laws, but the courts need to get off their ass and come up with a clear and unequivocal test along the lines of 'No access of a URL in anyway, either following a link or typing it in, can be illegal. All charges of illegal access of a computer require that someone knowingly put in a username or password or any other information indicated as a identifier that they knew did not belong to them and they were not given permission to use.' Using someone's account with permission might be against policy, but it is not computer hacking per se. (And you'd need some sort of cookie rule, in that if you end up logged in accidentally, it's not hacking, but you must log out immediately when you notice it.)
The policy should be broader than that, things like 'guest' and 'anonymous' logins need to be excluded, but we really need a ruling like that, because this is just damn absurd. You connect to a port, and you can make any request as long as it doesn't include an access token you weren't told to use. Computer services should, by default, be treated as an open door. If someone wants to secure it, they need to close it.
It was downloaded from a publicly accessible web server by following links on their front page!
Granted, those links only existed because there was a DoS and the real front page was taken down, leaving a directory index.
But if someone commits arson against me, burning down a a wall and exposing stolen artwork to the world, I might be able to get it thrown out if the arsonist takes a pictures of it and tries to have me arrested from that, but anyone else who sees it and takes a picture results in perfectly fine testimony.
You don't even need to go anywhere. They sell crank-powered flashlight. I don't know how powerful the bulbs are, but the smallest flashlight bulb is at least two or three watts, and they only requires cranking about 1/4th of the time, with the rest going into a battery which isn't 100% efficient.
So if you can run a 3 watt bulb off fifteen seconds of cranking for 60 seconds, that's at minimum 12 watts, and probably more like 20 watts after you convert to batteries and back. While cranking a small crank, which is not a very efficient way of moving your arm, and legs are a lot better than even 100% efficient arm movement...we're evolved to walk for 12 hours at a time without getting tired (Although most of us are not in good enough shape), and on a bike, it's even less energy.
This doesn't sound like it's for mechanics. It sounds like it's for people who don't know much about cars, but would like to do a single specific thing, with step by step instructions.
It's like a cooking show vs. a cookbook.
I don't actually think it's that great an idea, but it could certainly make a little money. And, frankly, I don't think people are likely to pirate it.
Casual copying (or just making archival copies for youself) of TV in SD is pretty trivial, press play on your DVR and press record on your VCR or DVD recorder.
...at which point you will give the copy to a single other person.
Casual copying of television by physical media is so small as to functionally not exist, statistically speaking.
Casual copying of television by electronic means is, OTOH, so 'difficult' that it's much easier to just tell the other person to download the TV show from some other source. Or download it yourself and give that to the other person. (And by 'difficult', it's not actually that hard. It's just much easier to do it the other way.)
In HD otoh it is indeed a nightmare
Pirating in HD is just as easy as in SD. You just check a different checkbox.
It doesn't matter if component gets 'phased out' or what hardware is illegal in America. The copiers are like two dozen guys, with specialized hardware, and they'll just keep their old, working stuff, or buy from overseas.
Only they need the ability to copy. Everyone else just needs to know how to download a file.
Hitler was not one of the people listed. Hitler was just mentioned as an aside during some xenophobic nonsense about the Iranians, which a) is base slander, veering into 'blood libel' territory, of the Iranians, and b) totally unrelated to war, which is nominally what was being talked about.
I mean, I'm not entirely sure who the poster thinks Iran is at war with, or why them supposedly killing their own children is helping them in this imaginary war, so I just sorta ignored Iran in that list. Regardless, they haven't invaded anyone.
However, it's entirely possible the post meant to include Nazi Germany 'Hey, we could be like Hitler, that turned out well for him', because the poster is, as I pointed out, a total moron with no knowledge of history.
And, amazingly, he is a little libelous towards Nazi Germany! Nazi Germany actually followed the Geneva conventions and did not do the sort of war crimes that are suggested here, with retaliations towards, and deliberate killing off, civilians. Even on the Western front, where they weren't following Geneva, there's little evidence they deliberately killed, for example, Russian civilians as they invaded.
Their interment and later death camps of "undesirables" were, of course, illegal war crimes, but those had bugger all to do with their actual tactics in war...they weren't killing people because they were rebels or to 'Scare revels into following the law', even if sometimes propoganda sometimes put it that way. They were killing people to kill people, they were using forced labor for the labor. And this was mostly keeping it secret from the population at large, and isn't an example of 'terrorize the civilians into line' at all.
Not that we'd want to do it even if the Nazi's had done it, but, surreally, this isn't the first military tactic the far right in this country has suggested that Nazi Germany wouldn't do. (Another example being blatant and open torture. Nazi Germany tortured...but not in any official capacity.)
The gameplay is mostly the same. The hex map gets rid of a lot of silliness, and the entire concept of 'one military unit per hex' makes strategy entirely different. (And much more reasonable.)
Killing anyone who blinked is how Napoleon did it, that's how Ataturk did it (in fact he was a *LOT* worse), that's how the Saudi's did it (they were also a lot worse, if not quite as bad as Ataturk), that's how Saddam did it, and let's not talk about our friends, the Iranians. What hitler did to jews, Iranians did to their *own* children (and worse).
Hey, moron, none of those people actually managed to invade, hold, and democratize another country. In fact, none of those people except Napolean ever successfully invaded another country.
In fact, Ataturk ran a resistance movement against the sort of invasion and conquering army you think is a good idea. Please google 'Greco-Turkish War', and notice it started when a single Turk resistence fighter killed a Greek invader, at which point the Greeks invaders opened fire.
Guess how that worked out. Here's a hint: Is Smyrna currently in Turkey, or Greece?
Christ, you're an idiot.
Any civilian is only protected as long as he can keep both fighting forces away from himself and his house. That means that armies are supposed to declare war, tell eachother where they'll fight, fight at that location, and everyone else surrenders to whomever wins, WITHOUT resistance. Any deviation from that plan allows both sides to kill any civilians
Killing civilians without a military objective is a war crime, period. And it's even a war crime if you could accomplish the military objective without killing them, but that's more subjective...but it's objectively a war crime if you can't point to some military objective and say 'We killed that civilian during our destruction of that road.'.
And, no, terrorizing people isn't a 'military objective'.
Um, yes, if the cop pulls you over for the actual reason of faulty equipment, they'll usually just demand you fix it, and most of the time won't even require you show up at the police station. I've had a broken headlight and got a warning. (I had been loaned a vehicle and didn't even know it, and I was rather pissed when the cop told me.)
What I was discussing was, for lack of a better term, a 'hostile cop', who is not happy you were warning people they were down the road, so pulled you over for flashing your lights.
If you fail to admit that you did it on purpose, if your lights are randomly broken and 'come on by themselves', he can, indeed, write you an actual ticket that requires you to pay an actual fine, regardless of whether or not they work later. There's no requirement you get any warning at all, cops can ticket you for broken equipment, and in some cases keep you from driving the car at all. (Although not, I expect, for broken headlights in the day.)
You're talking about 'actual equipment malfunction', I'm talking about 'asshole cop coming up with a reason to write people tickets for exercising their 1st amendment rights'. And remaining silent, although usually a good idea, let's them write a ticket for bogus reasons that you then have to deal with.
Sometimes it's not a good idea to remain silent with a cop, especially if they're abusing their position and are trying to get you on clearly bogus stuff that you could shoot down in a second. I mean, taken to the extremes, if you're breaking into your own house, and a cop asks what you're doing, don't you think you should state that you live there, even though, legally, you don't have to? They have to prove you don't have the right to be there to actually convict you of trespassing, but they can bring you, right then, on suspicion of trespassing with much less evidence, until they locate the homeowner. Whereas if you do state you live there, and they lock you up without checking, hello, huge lawsuit.
Taking the right to remain silent can't be used to assume guilt, but sometimes guilt, at least enough guilt to get you arrested or ticketed, can be assumed from the situation, either by a cop that actually thinks that, or just one that is an asshole. In those cases, it is reasonable to state information that corrects the cop, to assure the honest cop and let him leave, and to screw up the dishonest cop's justification for charging you.
Saying 'my lawyer can destroy this ticket in court', while true for 'defective equipment', is not very helpful when it means you have to really show up in court.
If you fail to say that you did something on purpose, the police officer has grounds to write you a ticket on the premise that your equipment is defective, which means you have to show up in court.
Now, at that point, you can explain that you flashed on purpose, and the charges will be dismissed, but you'll still end up in court.
If you intend to communicate with another driver on the road with your actions, and your actions are not illegal (And turning on your headlights during the day is not illegal. Some cars have them on to start with.), then you should state that.
Then they not only can't get you into court for a nonsensical 'defective' charge, but the courts will flatly throw them out of their ear for any ticket they do write, and it's possible you could sue them for violating your civil right to free speech.
Normally your approach is best, because stating why you did something is also stating you did it, which is basically a confession.
But with headlights, not flashing them and having them flash anyway is illegal. You can't operate a motor vehicle with defective lights that flash randomly. At some point, to not be charged with that, you're going to have to admit you flashed them on purpose.
And while you don't have to admit why, it would be legal for the police to make it illegal to, for example, 'test' your headlights while driving. Like I said, it's illegal to use them to 'menace' people driving in front of you. (Which is also a speech thing, but obviously threatening people has very limited first amendment protection.)
But we know, thanks to various court cases, that they can't make it illegal to communicate via headlights, so you might as well admit you were doing that. (Which is, after all, the truth.)
Technically, they'd have to prove you were doing something else, like 'testing', and not 'communicating', which is impossible unless there was no one there, but that's the sort of thing it's very easy to fudge in court if no one testifies opposite them, so you're going to end up on the stand anyway.
Communication via headlights is legal. Just say that's what you did. Say it as soon as possible, so the entire ticket is bogus, don't wait until court to prove it. (At least one traffic stop and search has been entirely thrown out because the justification was 'driving flashed headlights' and the driver said he flashed on purpose and didn't have defective lights. The court said there was no justification for that stop.)
You might not want to admit what you were communicating, though. Maybe it was just your version of 'hello'. The court can't ever demand you explain what a communication you made actually means.
Incidentally, whenever this has shown up in court, usually under bogus charges about having 'flashing lights' on your car (Which are referring to possessing lights that flash, not flashing a normal light.), the courts have almost always come down on the side of free speech, especially if the police tried to assert something like 'interfering with the police'. The courts have said that you simply cannot make it illegal to say 'police ahead', period. (They actually tried to do the same thing with CB radios, if people will recall.)
Incidentally, apparently, in Massachusetts, they're pulling people over, asking them menacing if they flashed on purpose, and when the person says 'No', they cite for defective headlights. Don't fall for it. Explain that you flashed your headlights on purpose, to ask oncoming drivers to not speed. Remember, people, first amendment. If you want to go around promoting people following the laws, even if you're only doing that when there are cops around, more power to you.
Do not give an estimation of the speed of the cars on the other side of the road, do not assert they were speeding, and if asked that specifically, point out you have no qualifications to estimate that. If they ask again, say you saw no sign of illegal activity, it was a warning to not start breaking the law. They're trying to get you for some sort of conspiracy or obstruction of justice charge. It is illegal to be an active participate in a crime even if your only part is warning people police are coming. It is not illegal if you have no knowledge of a crime, which you in fact don't, unless you're driving around with a radar gun aimed at the other side of the road or something.
Although note that flashing either way (either brights or off) at night has occasionally resulted in charges upheld in court. Flashing high beams at people at night is usually either flatly illegal, or illegal except for certain situations like they're driving with their headlights off, depending on jurisdiction. Likewise, operating without headlights is illegal, even for a second.
In the same way, a lot of the 'dim headlight' and 'no flashing highbeams' laws are not that specific about time of day, so flashing with your high beams might be illegal during the day, also.
Either check your local laws, or only flash lowbeams and only during the day. (Around here, the cops seem to disappear at night, anyway. I suspect they're not allowed to radar-detect people at night, due to the possibility of getting the wrong car. I've only seen them having pulled people over in town, I suspect for stuff like running red lights and stop signs.)
But there is no law, and no attempt to make a law has even been upheld, and no attempt to use an existing law has been upheld, about turning lowbeam headlights on and off during the day, except for 'threatening behavior', which requires them to be in front of you. (I.e., you're flashing your lights at them because they're going slow.)
Hey, moron, the cops may cost the government in general money, but that has fuck all to do with the fact it's a huge income source for the local police department.
And if you haven't noticed, people are bitching about speedtraps, which are the exact opposite of 'everybody drove the same speed'. They are, in fact, 'everyone dangerously drives at different speeds semi-randomly as some people know about the speed limit change, and some people don't, and the police don't want people to know about the change'.
How are the totals from each run of the "computer can also read the same text to quickly count the votes" going to be tallied?
I don't know what you're talking about, but I think you misunderstood.
The computers would just be for returning quick results. Everything would still be counted by hand, and that count would be actual result.
It should be a national holiday, and people should not be allowed to travel on that day, except on official voting business.
That's just dumb.
Finally, no absentee voting at all whatsoever. If you can not be present at your official polling place on election day, you don't get to vote. End of story. Sorry.
And that's even dumber. It's attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
I went off on him, but I get sick and tired of every time we talk about how horrible electronic voting is, fuckers leap in to defend electronic ballot printing and insist on using the exact same words to describe it as the evil thing.
It's like we're talking about rape, and in every discussion someone has to leap in and say 'Not all rape is evil. Sometimes people rape each other consensually.'. Firstly, shut up you fucktard, that's not actually called 'rape', and secondly, society has started to okay rape, because, after all, 'some rape' is okay. Experts agree! What. The. Fuck.
(Yes, I really just did compare electronic voting to rape, for which I should apologize: Sorry, rapists, I don't mean to imply you're undermining the entire foundation of democracy, thus committing treason too.)
And this isn't just something I invented. Voting is described by what the ballot is. You have paper voting, scantron voting, punchcard voting, mechanical voting (Which is really 'mechnical adding machine' voting, but that's sorta long.), and electronic voting.
If the ballot is paper, regardless of how it gets on paper, it is paper voting.
If people want, we can come up with a new name for it, like we did scantron voting, which is also paper, but a specific kind. 'Printout voting' or something.
Or I like 'OCR voting', as the premise is you'd print OCR-able names and stuff on the paper, and then you could scan it in a computer and read it by hand, and you could even do it long form, like printing 'President: Barrack Obama' on the ballot, so there cannot be any confusion at all. No confusing A, B, or C you have to match up, you print the entire thing. I think 'OCR voting, where a computer prints out a full and detailed ballot that you can read, and another computer can also read the same text to quickly count the votes' would be an easy concept to get across to people.
But it's not, in any conceivably way, 'electronic voting'.
The way to get rid of that is to have a computer print the ballot.
Which is not 'electronic voting'. Do not confuse them. Saying 'electronic voting is okay if we print ballots' means people just hear the first four words, and then get reassured that actual electronic voting is 'safe'.
That is not eletronic voting, anymore than paper voting is called 'pencil voting', or scantron voting is 'pencil voting'. You don't refer to it by what makes the marks, you refer to the ballot.
It's paper voting. The ballot is paper. You can look at it, make sure it says what you want. We can even maintain control over the unprinted paper ballots for security, which is as circletimessquare points out we already have experience with. All we added is a fancy printer so people don't make hard-to-read marks.
With OCRable fonts, we could even run the ballots through a computer to get a quick tally, although they should also be hand counted.
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Someone needs to pull a James Randi and offer a million dollars to anyone who can detect wifi radiation.
First, build two rooms, about a foot apart. Out of normal sheetrock and plastic siding, and have that witnesses that's all that's in the walls. Put the doors on the side of the buildings that face away.
In their room, put three things. An incandescent light fixture, a window AC or heater, and a water pump that puts water in a water tower in attic. The later two get turned off during the test. In fact, all power to their building will be turned off. If they want the light, it will be run off a battery. (Notice I'm trying to be as accommodating as possible here so no one can claim any funny business. If the light interferes, they can use glowsticks or whatever.)
The water in the tower is to run down a little noisy waterfall inside, which is there to hide any actual noise hints. No cheating and hearing things turn on. Totally mechanical waterfall. (Be sure to use the restroom beforehand.) There's also a mechanical clock, and paper and pencil.
In the other building, have a dozen wifi routers, and cell phones plugged into chargers with no batteries (So you can flip a switch and have them come on.) And, hell, they can pick out anything they want, as long as it doesn't make too much noise and will be turned on with the power coming on. If it does make too much noise, we will install soundproofing.
And power to this building can be entirely turned off, and in fact starts off turned off. Entirely off, except when turned on, so there's no 'background' noise at all. In fact, let's put the switches 200 feet away for both rooms.
They get ten minutes to sit there and have nothing happen. After that, they sit there an hour, wait another ten minutes, and come out and take a break. There will be four tests. Power will be turned on for ten minutes of two of them, on the entire time for one, and off the entire time for another.
And we'll even let write down their observations and turn it in at the end, so in case they think 'The wifi came on now', and then later go 'No, I was wrong before, this is it', it's okay. And we know it might take a minute or two for all the devices to come up, so anywhere in the ten minutes is okay.
Please point them out, and win a million dollars. Or Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
No, they don't 'own' the airwaves, you idiot. They leased the airwaves from the Federal government.
The United States of America recognizes that the electromagnetic frequency is a public resource and that it makes no sense to assert that everyone owns all frequencies stopping exactly at their property line, which would render the entire spectrum useless for anything.
Hence, the US distributes frequencies over larger areas, in accordance with what benefits the public most. Some are for public use, like ham and CB radio and the unlicensed frequencies of wifi and cordless phones, some are for government use, and some get leased by private corporations, like television frequencies and cell phone.
The people of the United States of America own the airwaves in common. Transmitters who have received permission can, indeed, fill the airwaves in other people's houses.
And all this is a goddamn moot point, because it isn't property owners saying 'We don't want people transmitting through us'...it's a city government restricting the placement of cell towers even if the nearby property owners want a tower there. So your point is even stupider.
Hey, moron, no land owners have decided they don't want such towers, and no law is needed to stop people who don't want one on their property from not having one on their property.
You're the 'communist' saying that the state can determine what land is used for what, against the wishes of the property owner.
If you do not want to be bombarded with 'unnatural' radio emissions, you need to live somewhere besides the earth. The other side of the moon would be the closest place.
'Intent to publish' has nothing to do with whether or not it's legal or not.
Most people do not 'intend' that evidence against them that the public stumbles across becomes public. As long as the person was not working with the police, it cannot, under any circumstances, be excluded.
Even evidence discovered under outright commissions of a crime are legal to use. There have been cases where someone unconnected with law enforcement kidnapped and tortured another person to get evidence out of them. While obviously a confession obtained that way won't hold up in court, if the kidnap victim says where, for example, the bodies are buried, and they actually are buried there....the fact they knew that can be used against them in court. (This, of course, doesn't render the kidnap and torture legal in the slightest.)
That said, the idea that 'Turning your front page into a directory listing and having someone click on a link' somehow doesn't 'count' is just idiotic. It's bad enough that idiots have managed t argue in court that putting stuff in a web server directory doesn't isn't 'publishing' when they don't make a link to it, and try to claim they were 'hacked' when people download that stuff...but here, they, or at least, their software, did make a link to it.
What the fuck? Are we supposed to contact them before visiting links they provide us?
I'm all for anti-hacking laws, but the courts need to get off their ass and come up with a clear and unequivocal test along the lines of 'No access of a URL in anyway, either following a link or typing it in, can be illegal. All charges of illegal access of a computer require that someone knowingly put in a username or password or any other information indicated as a identifier that they knew did not belong to them and they were not given permission to use.' Using someone's account with permission might be against policy, but it is not computer hacking per se. (And you'd need some sort of cookie rule, in that if you end up logged in accidentally, it's not hacking, but you must log out immediately when you notice it.)
The policy should be broader than that, things like 'guest' and 'anonymous' logins need to be excluded, but we really need a ruling like that, because this is just damn absurd. You connect to a port, and you can make any request as long as it doesn't include an access token you weren't told to use. Computer services should, by default, be treated as an open door. If someone wants to secure it, they need to close it.
How was it obtained illegally?
It was downloaded from a publicly accessible web server by following links on their front page!
Granted, those links only existed because there was a DoS and the real front page was taken down, leaving a directory index.
But if someone commits arson against me, burning down a a wall and exposing stolen artwork to the world, I might be able to get it thrown out if the arsonist takes a pictures of it and tries to have me arrested from that, but anyone else who sees it and takes a picture results in perfectly fine testimony.
The 'social policies' thing takes over most of that.
Yes, those people who've failed to secure their network by having people frame them.
You don't even need to go anywhere. They sell crank-powered flashlight. I don't know how powerful the bulbs are, but the smallest flashlight bulb is at least two or three watts, and they only requires cranking about 1/4th of the time, with the rest going into a battery which isn't 100% efficient.
So if you can run a 3 watt bulb off fifteen seconds of cranking for 60 seconds, that's at minimum 12 watts, and probably more like 20 watts after you convert to batteries and back. While cranking a small crank, which is not a very efficient way of moving your arm, and legs are a lot better than even 100% efficient arm movement...we're evolved to walk for 12 hours at a time without getting tired (Although most of us are not in good enough shape), and on a bike, it's even less energy.
Commercial interests can't drive national security issues, or we will go to war with whoever is pirating the most videos.
Or whoever has the oil! That would be crazy!
This doesn't sound like it's for mechanics. It sounds like it's for people who don't know much about cars, but would like to do a single specific thing, with step by step instructions.
It's like a cooking show vs. a cookbook.
I don't actually think it's that great an idea, but it could certainly make a little money. And, frankly, I don't think people are likely to pirate it.
Casual copying (or just making archival copies for youself) of TV in SD is pretty trivial, press play on your DVR and press record on your VCR or DVD recorder.
Casual copying of television by physical media is so small as to functionally not exist, statistically speaking.
Casual copying of television by electronic means is, OTOH, so 'difficult' that it's much easier to just tell the other person to download the TV show from some other source. Or download it yourself and give that to the other person. (And by 'difficult', it's not actually that hard. It's just much easier to do it the other way.)
In HD otoh it is indeed a nightmare
Pirating in HD is just as easy as in SD. You just check a different checkbox.
It doesn't matter if component gets 'phased out' or what hardware is illegal in America. The copiers are like two dozen guys, with specialized hardware, and they'll just keep their old, working stuff, or buy from overseas.
Only they need the ability to copy. Everyone else just needs to know how to download a file.
Hitler was not one of the people listed. Hitler was just mentioned as an aside during some xenophobic nonsense about the Iranians, which a) is base slander, veering into 'blood libel' territory, of the Iranians, and b) totally unrelated to war, which is nominally what was being talked about.
I mean, I'm not entirely sure who the poster thinks Iran is at war with, or why them supposedly killing their own children is helping them in this imaginary war, so I just sorta ignored Iran in that list. Regardless, they haven't invaded anyone.
However, it's entirely possible the post meant to include Nazi Germany 'Hey, we could be like Hitler, that turned out well for him', because the poster is, as I pointed out, a total moron with no knowledge of history.
And, amazingly, he is a little libelous towards Nazi Germany! Nazi Germany actually followed the Geneva conventions and did not do the sort of war crimes that are suggested here, with retaliations towards, and deliberate killing off, civilians. Even on the Western front, where they weren't following Geneva, there's little evidence they deliberately killed, for example, Russian civilians as they invaded.
Their interment and later death camps of "undesirables" were, of course, illegal war crimes, but those had bugger all to do with their actual tactics in war...they weren't killing people because they were rebels or to 'Scare revels into following the law', even if sometimes propoganda sometimes put it that way. They were killing people to kill people, they were using forced labor for the labor. And this was mostly keeping it secret from the population at large, and isn't an example of 'terrorize the civilians into line' at all.
Not that we'd want to do it even if the Nazi's had done it, but, surreally, this isn't the first military tactic the far right in this country has suggested that Nazi Germany wouldn't do. (Another example being blatant and open torture. Nazi Germany tortured...but not in any official capacity.)
The gameplay is mostly the same. The hex map gets rid of a lot of silliness, and the entire concept of 'one military unit per hex' makes strategy entirely different. (And much more reasonable.)
Killing anyone who blinked is how Napoleon did it, that's how Ataturk did it (in fact he was a *LOT* worse), that's how the Saudi's did it (they were also a lot worse, if not quite as bad as Ataturk), that's how Saddam did it, and let's not talk about our friends, the Iranians. What hitler did to jews, Iranians did to their *own* children (and worse).
Hey, moron, none of those people actually managed to invade, hold, and democratize another country. In fact, none of those people except Napolean ever successfully invaded another country.
In fact, Ataturk ran a resistance movement against the sort of invasion and conquering army you think is a good idea. Please google 'Greco-Turkish War', and notice it started when a single Turk resistence fighter killed a Greek invader, at which point the Greeks invaders opened fire.
Guess how that worked out. Here's a hint: Is Smyrna currently in Turkey, or Greece?
Christ, you're an idiot.
Any civilian is only protected as long as he can keep both fighting forces away from himself and his house. That means that armies are supposed to declare war, tell eachother where they'll fight, fight at that location, and everyone else surrenders to whomever wins, WITHOUT resistance. Any deviation from that plan allows both sides to kill any civilians
Killing civilians without a military objective is a war crime, period. And it's even a war crime if you could accomplish the military objective without killing them, but that's more subjective...but it's objectively a war crime if you can't point to some military objective and say 'We killed that civilian during our destruction of that road.'.
And, no, terrorizing people isn't a 'military objective'.
*whoosh*
Um, yes, if the cop pulls you over for the actual reason of faulty equipment, they'll usually just demand you fix it, and most of the time won't even require you show up at the police station. I've had a broken headlight and got a warning. (I had been loaned a vehicle and didn't even know it, and I was rather pissed when the cop told me.)
What I was discussing was, for lack of a better term, a 'hostile cop', who is not happy you were warning people they were down the road, so pulled you over for flashing your lights.
If you fail to admit that you did it on purpose, if your lights are randomly broken and 'come on by themselves', he can, indeed, write you an actual ticket that requires you to pay an actual fine, regardless of whether or not they work later. There's no requirement you get any warning at all, cops can ticket you for broken equipment, and in some cases keep you from driving the car at all. (Although not, I expect, for broken headlights in the day.)
You're talking about 'actual equipment malfunction', I'm talking about 'asshole cop coming up with a reason to write people tickets for exercising their 1st amendment rights'. And remaining silent, although usually a good idea, let's them write a ticket for bogus reasons that you then have to deal with.
Sometimes it's not a good idea to remain silent with a cop, especially if they're abusing their position and are trying to get you on clearly bogus stuff that you could shoot down in a second. I mean, taken to the extremes, if you're breaking into your own house, and a cop asks what you're doing, don't you think you should state that you live there, even though, legally, you don't have to? They have to prove you don't have the right to be there to actually convict you of trespassing, but they can bring you, right then, on suspicion of trespassing with much less evidence, until they locate the homeowner. Whereas if you do state you live there, and they lock you up without checking, hello, huge lawsuit.
Taking the right to remain silent can't be used to assume guilt, but sometimes guilt, at least enough guilt to get you arrested or ticketed, can be assumed from the situation, either by a cop that actually thinks that, or just one that is an asshole. In those cases, it is reasonable to state information that corrects the cop, to assure the honest cop and let him leave, and to screw up the dishonest cop's justification for charging you.
Saying 'my lawyer can destroy this ticket in court', while true for 'defective equipment', is not very helpful when it means you have to really show up in court.
That's dumb, there's no way we could transfer speech over the bandwidth of 160 character.
Nuh-uh.
If you fail to say that you did something on purpose, the police officer has grounds to write you a ticket on the premise that your equipment is defective, which means you have to show up in court.
Now, at that point, you can explain that you flashed on purpose, and the charges will be dismissed, but you'll still end up in court.
If you intend to communicate with another driver on the road with your actions, and your actions are not illegal (And turning on your headlights during the day is not illegal. Some cars have them on to start with.), then you should state that.
Then they not only can't get you into court for a nonsensical 'defective' charge, but the courts will flatly throw them out of their ear for any ticket they do write, and it's possible you could sue them for violating your civil right to free speech.
Normally your approach is best, because stating why you did something is also stating you did it, which is basically a confession.
But with headlights, not flashing them and having them flash anyway is illegal. You can't operate a motor vehicle with defective lights that flash randomly. At some point, to not be charged with that, you're going to have to admit you flashed them on purpose.
And while you don't have to admit why, it would be legal for the police to make it illegal to, for example, 'test' your headlights while driving. Like I said, it's illegal to use them to 'menace' people driving in front of you. (Which is also a speech thing, but obviously threatening people has very limited first amendment protection.)
But we know, thanks to various court cases, that they can't make it illegal to communicate via headlights, so you might as well admit you were doing that. (Which is, after all, the truth.)
Technically, they'd have to prove you were doing something else, like 'testing', and not 'communicating', which is impossible unless there was no one there, but that's the sort of thing it's very easy to fudge in court if no one testifies opposite them, so you're going to end up on the stand anyway.
Communication via headlights is legal. Just say that's what you did. Say it as soon as possible, so the entire ticket is bogus, don't wait until court to prove it. (At least one traffic stop and search has been entirely thrown out because the justification was 'driving flashed headlights' and the driver said he flashed on purpose and didn't have defective lights. The court said there was no justification for that stop.)
You might not want to admit what you were communicating, though. Maybe it was just your version of 'hello'. The court can't ever demand you explain what a communication you made actually means.
I still do it.
Incidentally, whenever this has shown up in court, usually under bogus charges about having 'flashing lights' on your car (Which are referring to possessing lights that flash, not flashing a normal light.), the courts have almost always come down on the side of free speech, especially if the police tried to assert something like 'interfering with the police'. The courts have said that you simply cannot make it illegal to say 'police ahead', period. (They actually tried to do the same thing with CB radios, if people will recall.)
Incidentally, apparently, in Massachusetts, they're pulling people over, asking them menacing if they flashed on purpose, and when the person says 'No', they cite for defective headlights. Don't fall for it. Explain that you flashed your headlights on purpose, to ask oncoming drivers to not speed. Remember, people, first amendment. If you want to go around promoting people following the laws, even if you're only doing that when there are cops around, more power to you.
Do not give an estimation of the speed of the cars on the other side of the road, do not assert they were speeding, and if asked that specifically, point out you have no qualifications to estimate that. If they ask again, say you saw no sign of illegal activity, it was a warning to not start breaking the law. They're trying to get you for some sort of conspiracy or obstruction of justice charge. It is illegal to be an active participate in a crime even if your only part is warning people police are coming. It is not illegal if you have no knowledge of a crime, which you in fact don't, unless you're driving around with a radar gun aimed at the other side of the road or something.
Although note that flashing either way (either brights or off) at night has occasionally resulted in charges upheld in court. Flashing high beams at people at night is usually either flatly illegal, or illegal except for certain situations like they're driving with their headlights off, depending on jurisdiction. Likewise, operating without headlights is illegal, even for a second.
In the same way, a lot of the 'dim headlight' and 'no flashing highbeams' laws are not that specific about time of day, so flashing with your high beams might be illegal during the day, also.
Either check your local laws, or only flash lowbeams and only during the day. (Around here, the cops seem to disappear at night, anyway. I suspect they're not allowed to radar-detect people at night, due to the possibility of getting the wrong car. I've only seen them having pulled people over in town, I suspect for stuff like running red lights and stop signs.)
But there is no law, and no attempt to make a law has even been upheld, and no attempt to use an existing law has been upheld, about turning lowbeam headlights on and off during the day, except for 'threatening behavior', which requires them to be in front of you. (I.e., you're flashing your lights at them because they're going slow.)
Hey, moron, the cops may cost the government in general money, but that has fuck all to do with the fact it's a huge income source for the local police department.
And if you haven't noticed, people are bitching about speedtraps, which are the exact opposite of 'everybody drove the same speed'. They are, in fact, 'everyone dangerously drives at different speeds semi-randomly as some people know about the speed limit change, and some people don't, and the police don't want people to know about the change'.
How are the totals from each run of the "computer can also read the same text to quickly count the votes" going to be tallied?
I don't know what you're talking about, but I think you misunderstood.
The computers would just be for returning quick results. Everything would still be counted by hand, and that count would be actual result.
It should be a national holiday, and people should not be allowed to travel on that day, except on official voting business.
That's just dumb.
Finally, no absentee voting at all whatsoever. If you can not be present at your official polling place on election day, you don't get to vote. End of story. Sorry.
And that's even dumber. It's attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
I went off on him, but I get sick and tired of every time we talk about how horrible electronic voting is, fuckers leap in to defend electronic ballot printing and insist on using the exact same words to describe it as the evil thing.
It's like we're talking about rape, and in every discussion someone has to leap in and say 'Not all rape is evil. Sometimes people rape each other consensually.'. Firstly, shut up you fucktard, that's not actually called 'rape', and secondly, society has started to okay rape, because, after all, 'some rape' is okay. Experts agree! What. The. Fuck.
(Yes, I really just did compare electronic voting to rape, for which I should apologize: Sorry, rapists, I don't mean to imply you're undermining the entire foundation of democracy, thus committing treason too.)
And this isn't just something I invented. Voting is described by what the ballot is. You have paper voting, scantron voting, punchcard voting, mechanical voting (Which is really 'mechnical adding machine' voting, but that's sorta long.), and electronic voting.
If the ballot is paper, regardless of how it gets on paper, it is paper voting.
If people want, we can come up with a new name for it, like we did scantron voting, which is also paper, but a specific kind. 'Printout voting' or something.
Or I like 'OCR voting', as the premise is you'd print OCR-able names and stuff on the paper, and then you could scan it in a computer and read it by hand, and you could even do it long form, like printing 'President: Barrack Obama' on the ballot, so there cannot be any confusion at all. No confusing A, B, or C you have to match up, you print the entire thing. I think 'OCR voting, where a computer prints out a full and detailed ballot that you can read, and another computer can also read the same text to quickly count the votes' would be an easy concept to get across to people.
But it's not, in any conceivably way, 'electronic voting'.
YOU MIGHT ALREADY BE A WINNER!*
*If you filed your intent to run by the August 10th to your state's election board. No purchase necessary.
The way to get rid of that is to have a computer print the ballot.
Which is not 'electronic voting'. Do not confuse them. Saying 'electronic voting is okay if we print ballots' means people just hear the first four words, and then get reassured that actual electronic voting is 'safe'.
That is not eletronic voting, anymore than paper voting is called 'pencil voting', or scantron voting is 'pencil voting'. You don't refer to it by what makes the marks, you refer to the ballot.
It's paper voting. The ballot is paper. You can look at it, make sure it says what you want. We can even maintain control over the unprinted paper ballots for security, which is as circletimessquare points out we already have experience with. All we added is a fancy printer so people don't make hard-to-read marks.
With OCRable fonts, we could even run the ballots through a computer to get a quick tally, although they should also be hand counted.