Even in a WoT model, most people would not really use it. They'd use the hundred or so big list that came with the browser, consisting of major banks and whatnot. And the first time they went to amazon, the browser would popup a message and say 'According to 100,000 other users, this cert is legitimate. Trust Yes/No?' and they'd say yes.
The current system is so entirely broken it's a good thing we don't actually need need certs in the first place...99.999% of the time, we just need damn encryption. MitM is such an order of magnitude more complicated than sniffing it's crazy we've decided to care about it that much.
Now that we have DNSSEC actually up and running, I wish we'd invent some sort of 'Here is my SSL cert fingerprint' DNS record. Then people could just make their own cert (Which should be easier and not require them to also make a CA.) and stick the fingerprint in their DNS. (This would work without DNSSEC also, but with DNSSEC it's secure.)
I can top that in 'sheer incompetence for no reason'.
Okay, I pull up to a four-way stop, and a car pulls up, at the same time, to the right of me.
That car goes first (obviously), turning left towards me...and almost drives into my fucking front bumper. I mean, I'm behind both the line and the stop sign, and it wasn't a tricky turn, it was perfectly normal residential crossroad with 25mph roads. And I'm driving a damn white car, and it's day time.
But she's talking on their cell phone, so stops, drives left, and almost drive straight into my bumper. The left of her bumper was about a foot away from the middle of bumper. She notices me at the last second, stops, and looks at me for a second like she's expecting me to back up. Um, fuck no. She was so close, she actually has to back up a few feet to get past me.
Seriously....what the hell? This wasn't 'running a stop sign', this was 'stopping at a stop sign and not bothering to notice the other cars also stopping at the same time'. She's lucky I was to the left of her, or we'd probably have collided in the middle of the intersection as I tried to go first.
I don't have a lot of issues when observant people break the law. I mean, if someone wants to just slow down at stop signs when no one else is there, whatever. They should get a ticket, but they aren't endangering people.
But here's someone who's driving around obeying the damn law...and shouldn't be driving.
Well, technically, she'd have been on over the middle line when finishing her turn(If I hadn't been in the way!), but many people do that, at least a little, when turning left, simple because the damn roads are paved and painted by idiots who don't understand turning radius and expect us to make turns at 5 mph apparently. I always thought it would be interesting to drive around the town I live in and not touch the lines with my wheels...I think I could do it, but I'd sure as hell end up pissing everyone off behind me as I slowed to make exactly right-angle turns because the numbnut construction people painted lines like that.(1)
She didn't have much of an excuse, because this was a reasonably intersection, but I wouldn't have complained if she'd turned poorly. But good^Wnon-stupid drivers actually, you know, don't drive into other cars when doing that.
1) The police, about a year ago, pulled me over for 'weaving', aka, 'driving an old car on a known-drug traffic route during the middle of the day', so that whole thing annoys me. I agree that people should stay on their sides of the road when driving around damn curves, especially around here in the mountains, but right now 'weaving' is just a pretext for a search, and damn near impossible to avoid in a lot of places around here thanks to inane road construction, where intersections are apparently made by crossing roads and then erasing all the lines where they physically cross. I.e., the double-yellow and white go up literally to other road, and where the white turns onto the other road at a damn right angle! You can't even not-'weave' turning right.
Incidentally, the reason they're doing this is usually that they're required. See, before they were required to publish that information, we had secret arrests...
Anyone who'd looking at the issue of 'We've decided you have no privacy rights when arrested' is utterly wrong. We didn't say that. We made cops release that information to safeguard people's rights.
You can't have people demanding 'habeas corpus' if the police don't tell people they've arrested you. (And please note the 'one phone call' is a myth.)
If they're using the release of that information in an abusive manner, or we just don't think it's worth it anymore, we have every right to make them stop.
Incidentally, as we've recently gone back to having secret arrests, I'm not entirely sure we should get rid of this yet. It might be a good idea, in fact, to apply it to the CIA and whatnot, who have apparently determined they can imprison people without informing the public.
Same here. I just want them to be arrested and prosecuted based on observable behavior, such as the way that they drive. A dangerous driver who disregards safety is not exactly difficult to detect. On the plus side, doing things this way might accomplish more towards addressing the dangerous drivers who are quite sober but just aggressive and/or stupid.
Indeed, but that would result in much less arrests. Most legally drunk drivers aren't actually a danger to anyone, and certainly aren't driving in such a manner to cause car accidents. A lot of them, in fact, are driving under the speed limit, and have about the driving-skill level of the safest new driver. (The kind that drive cautiously and slowly.) Which is dangerous on the highway, of course, but just insanely annoying on most roads.
Once we stopped making drunk driving about safety, and started making it about alcohol level (And we kept lowering the alcohol level, as some people honestly can't drive safely with even small amounts. Or with none at all.), arrests sure as hell shot up. Things weren't a lot safer, but arrests were higher, because police could hang out at bars and nab anyone leaving them, and at least 20% would 'fail the test'.
Now, I can see why we, as society, thought we had to do something. It was absurd that we were letting people get away with repeatedly dangerous driving.
Of course, we still do that as long as it doesn't include alcohol, so we haven't really solved any problems.
What we need to do is observe actual reckless driving, and add that up, and perhaps let people argue that downward if they can come up with a good reason. I.e., they can't use 'You was drunk' to punish people, but you can use 'I was sober and tired' as a partial defense.
OTOH, I'm not sure there are a lot of 'good' reasons to be a bad driver...people who regularly drive while tired as just as dangerous as people who regularly drive while drunk. A better idea might be to partially forgive non-repeating reasons, aka, 'I was in a hurry because someone I know just got hospitalized'.
Or even up the penalty for repeated reasons. (I.e, someone who drives while tired and then, a month later, drives while drunk, would get penalized less than someone who drives while tired and then, a month later, does the same thing.) Of course, if you refuse to give a reason, it would be assumed you're driving poorly for the same reason as last time.
The point system is supposed to be something like this, but it's horribly designed and mainly used for speeding. (Which is not normally, in itself, dangerous.)
Ah, the voice of the never-arrested, never-charged, never-taken-into-custody. LOL, such innocent brethren who unexpectedly find themselves immersed in "The System" are always shocked, SHOCKED by how irremediably cold and unforgiving it is.
Hey, not all of us. I got a rude awakening when I plead guilty to a traffic ticket when 20 (I just wanted to pay the thing) and, tada, they suspended my license.
Since then, I've assumed that every aspect is entirely against you.
The explanation of the legal doctrine of necessity, which basically says, 'You can commit a crime to stop greater harm', actually uses 'driving drunk to escape a kidnapper' as an example.
I'm glad someone else understand the problem. I don't know how to fix it either...I don't think encouraging spending is as pointless as you think, but that's simply because I have no other options.
For the past three or so decades we've steadily been shipping jobs out while borrowing against everything we own so we can purchase stuff.
It used to be US workers made something, and got paid via the profit on selling that, and with their paycheck they could purchase other stuff.
Now it's the Chinese who make stuff, it's the rich who get the profit, and normal people buy stuff by having absurd mortgage that don't require them to pay anything...until they reset. Or they borrow on credit cards, or whatever.
The rich, of course, like to pretend the reason we have no industry in this country is taxes, because, apparently, if we reduce taxes by 10%, companies will bring the jobs back and pay workers three times as much as they cost in China. Um, no.
The solution to this is problem is get rid of the entire WTO and the treaties disallowing 'protectionism'.
I'm all for free trade between countries with equal standards of living. If Canada can provide steel for cheaper than the US, fine...we can provide other stuff cheaper than they can, and it's the ciiiircle of liiiife...I mean, the circle of commerce. We can buy stuff from each other.
But when the workers are being paid ten cents an hour, we need to check at custom and saying 'Well, okay, you owe us roughly enough to bring it up to minimum wage...oh, and you had them in an unsafe factory, so that's a rather large fine, and you appear to have them work 10 hours a day without a break, so another fine...'
We need to make sure the cost of labor (and damage to the environment, and safety standards, and all sorts of things) is roughly the same for all goods sold here, or at least the minimum allowed here, whether or not they're made here.
And, yes, companies would abuse that, and lobby the government to have their industry 'protected' from the evil competition of some German company that's just better than they are at making toasters...but, OTOH, they do that now, even though it's not allowed, and they also do the same thing via getting government subsidies. Saying 'corporations would get too much incentive to manipulate the government' is a bit like saying 'serial killers would get too much incentive to murder people'.
And as an aside, I absolutely hate how copyright is in this country, and would like to see it altered to the near original terms, where you had to apply for it and it was for a much shorter period of time. I suspect that would do nothing to the production of it...it's only in crazy-world that people produce a movie because the copyright is 90 years and thus they might coast on it the rest of their lives, vs. it only being 28 years so...they might coast on it most of their lives. People don't go 'Sure, doing that sounds great, but in three decades I'll stop making money from it, and then what?' We don't seem to need to provide these sort of 'lottery-like rich-for-the-rest-of-your-life incentives' to any other industry, and 95% of the time, the results would be no difference at all, as no money comes from stuff that old.
Ad the remaining 5% of the time, when the thing is popular enough to be paid for 30 years later, well, those people have probably made enough to live comfortable on it after 28 years of profits...and it being in the public domain doesn't take away who they are, they're still the famous actor or the famous writer or whatever, they can probably easily find work. I mean, if the Beatles' copyright had expired by 1999, do we really think McCartney or, hell, Ringo, would be broke?
So while I'm for US industry, I not only think our current copyright terms don't help it, I suspect they hurt it, because our public domain isn't growing any bigger.
I'm not sure what goes into your calculation that the coffee costs 20 cents.
Because it's just coffee beans, run through a machine. (Yes, yes, more complicated coffee costs more, but we're talking about the cheap stuff.)
I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't having some moral objection to the cost. I understand the cost. It's just a dumb business model.
I mean, I could open a business selling twist ties. (Those little things people use to hold together the end of bread and stuff. Apparently, some other places call them different things.)
And, to stay in business, I'd probably have to charge $5 each for them. Not trying to rip people off, just to pay the staff and rent. This is probably not a good business plan.
I'm not begrudging coffee places the fact they need to make money, I'm just saying that the entire concept of 'a store that sells a category of drinks' is a bit iffy, and simply existed due to a fad. (Bars are the same concept, except that people have been getting together and drinking alcohol for thousands of years.)
Fast food places manage to stay in business because they aren't that much more expensive than making the food yourself, and a hell of a lot more work. In terms of absolute markup of the food vs. what you would pay yourself to make it, you're probably paying 2 times as much there, and saving yourself several minutes of cooking.
Well, coffee is actually pretty easy to make. And is market up a lot more than
You think a $1.50 is reasonable for coffee? Really?
I bet you think $1.50 is reasonable for a fountain drink at Taco Bell, too.
Both those maybe $0.20 to make. Yes even with fancy fresh beans.
Of course, at Taco Bell, buying the drink is incidental to the food, and, hell, usually thrown in for free with a 'meal'.
With coffee places, you walk in and actually spend that much money straight up.
Granted, they can't charge lower prices and actually afford their staff...but that doesn't fix the problem. The problem is that operating a building and staffing it to just sell people coffee is a pretty goofy business model, and only actually ever worked because of a 'hang out in coffee shop, buying weird concoctions of coffee' fad that's slowly dying out. (As Raenex said below, they certainly should charge whatever the market will bear...but the market is not quite the same mid-90s market it used to be.)
Hopefully, most of those places will be able to throw a small grill in there or something and make it a 'cafe'.
There's a difference between going up to get a drink instead of waiting to be served, and not having a waiter at all.
And there's a different between going to a bar, and having someone come over to serve you even if they just have to walk down the bar...vs. standing in line, as I've done the few times I've gone to Starbucks.
You are, at that point, even if you don't use a waiter, tipping more the concept of service. Yes, you didn't ask for it, but in theory if you had waved your arm and attracted their attention at the table they would have come over. Someone is standing there watching your table or bar location, ready to help you, even if you never ask for you. Usually they come over and see if you need service. And you tip them for that, even if you didn't need any.
Meanwhile, at Starbucks, there is not even any hypothetical service, last I checked. I might tip waiters that don't do anything for me, but I don't tip non-existent waiters. Nor do I tip people I stand in line to buy things from. (Where exactly does that end? I start tipping the people at Taco Bell? The checkout clerk at the grocery store?)
I wouldn't tip if I was in a bar without waiters either, although I've never even heard of such a place.
Meanwhile, I do tip if I'm in a coffee shop with servers, as I've been before. (Although that was more a cafe with coffee shop attached.)
If you don't want to, then don't. That's why it's called a tip or "gratuity", because you don't have to do it if you don't want.
Maybe you think that way, but most people see tipping as a responsibility. I always tip, usually 20%. Except when I don't get any service, even if they've put up jars to try to get people to tip.
Meanwhile, I'm sure there are some people working at Starbucks who are annoyed at me because they get paid assuming they get tips, which is a totally and utter scam on their management's part. 'Hey, I know, let's cut their wages and see if we can get people to nonsensically tip the difference for the imaginary service being provided!'. Don't blame me for that nonsense, speak up.
Yes, in your universe where totally spending is somehow unlinked to how much people put in.
So, yes if you run around including Medicare spending and Social Security spending, it sure looks like social spending is high, doesn't it.
Of course, Social Security is currently running a net profit from collection of payments.
And Medicare, while not running a profit, is just barely losing money. Maybe $30 billion a year. Because it's insurance, which is just barely subsided by the government. People pay money to be on it.
Those two systems are programs where people pay in and then get money back. They are not spending 'taxes', or at least not more than a tiny amount.
And let's not forget unemployment insurance, the same thing. Unemployment benefits aren't coming from the general budget, they're coming from people and companies paying unemployment premiums. Although that's not a very big chunk of the budget.
In other words, social programs mostly have to pay their own way. The sole exception is Medicaid and some welfare.
If you look at actual spending of tax money from general revenues, um, yeah, the defense budget is pretty damn close to social spending.
So I will correct: War and disabled suffering children (Medicaid) are about the only things we're willing to spend tax money on at all.
Which is slightly more noble, I guess. But still no bridges.
So, we're talking about a legal issue, and I invent a term clearly intended to describe breaking that law, saying he didn't do it, and beanluc spends multiple posts arguing he did...only in the end, to argue that the term I invented isn't a violation of that law.
Quick, everyone applaud the guy who moved the goalpost so far that he 'won'.
Of course, you're still wrong.
To be clear, 'password protecting' stuff without permission? Yes, it's a violation of this law, in the actual sense of 'password protecting', which is 'putting a password on an account'. It's not one in the sense of 'put a password on an account in the past when there was permission, even if there is not permission now', but that's not the right tense and a damn insane way to speak!
So your universe, where 'password protecting' is in whatever tense people want it to be in, but 'permission' is always WRT the present, 'password protecting' is not specifically a violation of this law, because you could have 'password protecting' things last week when you did have permission. Or maybe you willon havon password protecting in the future but haven't already gotten permission yet, so you're already broke the law!
Yeah, I'd continue this discussion, but you apparently has died already, and by 'has died already', I mean in the future. So there's not a lot of point in continuing, or having has already continued, is there as it really doesn't make sense to discussion things with people who has died.
Yes, that was only a tad judgmental. It really needed to be a lot more judgmental to reach the correct amount.
Seriously, people, it is not acceptable to wander around in public dressed in sleepwear. Your dorm common room, fine, a business, no.
No, it's not an issue of how 'modest' it is, and the joke here is I'm one of the most informal persons I know...I barely own any shirts with buttons on them, and I spend my entire life in a t-shirt plus shorts or blue jeans. But just because an outfit is 'legal' doesn't make it reasonable clothing. If you want to start some new trend, or you're trying to change the types of clothing people think is okay via sheer force of will...whatever, I'm not the clothes polices, and styles change. Perhaps some day in the future we will all wear pajama-style pants.
But failing to put real clothes on is not a 'trend'. And it isn't being 'non-conformist', which I'm sure some people will claim. It's just being a lazy ass. You want to be non-conformist or something, show up in a skirt or with a giant Mayan headdress, don't try to pass laziness off as it.
Likewise, it is not acceptable to just plop yourself down and take over entire areas with books and stuff, unless you're in a library or something. That's just basic courtesy.
No. No coffee place does table service. Coffee places in American are like fast food places that don't serve food. I think you're probably thinking they're more like 'cafes', which also exist, are a different thing, and they often will do table service and have actual food.
If you think it's insane to have fast food restaurants that exist solely to serve coffee, and that's it, a lot of us agree with you, especially as someone decided we needed them everywhere. But, they exist, you stand in line and get extremely overpriced coffee, and leave.
Although, although they have no table service, for some reason some of them apparently think you should tip them.
Um, no. When I go up to the counter and order there and carry stuff away, you don't get a damn tip. I tip people who wait on me.
Plus, BKs tend to be a lot larger than coffeeshops.
There are plenty of coffee places where there is literally just one row of tables, maybe eight or so. When four of those tables have freeloaders with laptops on them...
Whereas most fast food places are rather bigger than they need to be, and it's really not important.
When i go and see a movie somewhere alone, I often stop in some fast food places, order some food, and eat it and, sit and keep reading a book until the movie is near, sometimes for an hour or more. They don't mind, because I'm taking up 1 of the 30 tables.
I'm sure there are busy times that they would mind, but fast food places have a lot more slack space than coffee houses in general, at least around here, which are often jammed into 35-foot wide strip mall places, which doesn't leave a lot of room for anything after the coffee-making area is put in.
Or, hell, I don't have to come up with an example weirder than this case, where apparently you can make people work for you for free. You can hire someone to set up security on a computer, and then you have them, for free, the entire damn rest of their life if you every want someone else to have access to that system, they are required by law to come in and add authorized users to it and change passwords.
In fact, forget the rest of my post. Just answer this:
Let's hypothesize that you're a sysadmin, and I hire you to set up a network server. You come in, you add users and stuff, and leave.
Five years later, I want another user to have an account. Well, that user is being kept out by your security setup.
So I call you up, and tell you you don't have permission to deny that user anymore, and either you come in and add that user, or I call the police because you have 'without permission...denies or causes the denial of computer services'. Hey, look, free employee.
Explain to me, under your theory of law, how that is not correct on my part. Please note that there is nothing in that law that says 'Unless someone else can undo that denial'....it is illegal to deny access even if someone can fix it, so any hypothetical other employees I have, or access to the server myself, are not relevant here.
'The network being password protected' is not the crime, you loon.
The crime is if he 'without permission disrupts or causes the disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of computer services'. Sarten-X helpfully quoted it up there.
He had permission when he denied access.
Removing permission doesn't retroactively make his previous actions into a crime. You'll notice that laws are not written in weird crazy mixed tenses, nor are they interpreted like that.
There is an action listed there: denying service. There is an exception listed there: having permission.
When he did the former, he had the later, and his action is covered by the exception. He denied services, with permission.
Later, on, after he was fired, he did not 'deny services'. Services were already being denied. Inaction is not a crime. (Before you mention 'if the court says you have to do it, you do', I will point out that that crime is 'contempt of court', and he was not charged with it.)
Under your reading of the law, anyone can instantly make a sysadmin into a criminal, because, after all, there's no indication of how long they have to complete the request. 'I have forgotten my password, and I am a legitimate user! Give me a login! Oh, too slow, you are under arrest. Your action of setting a password on my account retroactively denied me access after I forgot it.'
Or, hell, I don't have to come up with an example weirder than this case, where apparently you can make people work for you for free. You can hire someone to set up security on a computer, and then you have them, for free, the entire damn rest of their life if you every want someone else to have access to that system, they are required by law to come in and add authorized users to it and change passwords.
Your reading of the law is nonsense. The thing you think is called 'denying access' is really 'failing to grant access', and is not illegal in the least. Crimes require action.
Just asserting things does not make them true.
Christ, we need some sort of 'remedial law' in this country.
You do not 'go to prison' unless you break a law.
If you lawfully possess something, aka, if you were granted possession of it by the rightful owner, it is not illegal to refuse their request that you hand it back.
Nor, just in case there's any confusion, is it illegal to refuse their requests to do anything else, such as sing the karaoke version of Mandy, or engage in a duel to the death. In fact, you can refuse to do almost anythinganyone requests of you at any time and not be breaking the law. Even if you have previously agreed to do so, and you have a contract saying you'll do it. Trespassing is about the only exception, the only 'he's not doing something I told him to do' crime there is, so 'leaving' is about the only thing it can be illegal not to do.
Now, you eventually will have to hand stuff back, as the courts will demand you do so. You don't magically get it for free.
However, you are not committing any crime until then. There is no law saying 'if you don't hand stuff back to people they handed to you, you're committing a crime'.
There is, of course, a law saying 'If you don't do what the courts say, you're committing a crime', so once the courts say what to do, and you don't, you're committing a crime, but not before then.
Does no one here even vaguely understand that contract and loans and other agreements are not illegal to breach, and you cannot be arrested for breaching them...you can be just be sued.
Serious people, have you never heard of car repossessers? Why the fuck would they even exist if the banks could just call the sheriff and have you arrested if you didn't hand your car back? They can't do that...they can either go through an amazing hassle of a lawsuit, or just take the car physically from you. (And this is why evictions are such a bitch, as banks essentially have to 'win a lawsuit', although it's a rather specific one made exactly for that purpose.)
You're having some sort of amazing reading comprehension problem here, or you're just an ass. I will bold important words for you.
I know you have to turn over passwords (or keys) when demanded to do so by the court. (At least, I'm arguing here as if that's true, although that's never been decided. Passwords have a fifth amendment issue, but that isn't relevant in this case.)
And I know you can be held in contempt of court until you do what the court says, as I mentioned in my post. A 'few days' was an example, as I said in the part of my post you didn't quote, 'courts wouldn't keep you after you turned them over', which rather implies they will keep you until you do that.
And, as I mentioned in my post, none of this is relevant in the least. He was not arrested for contempt of court, he was not held for contempt of court, and he is still being held, even after, duh, he's given the password.
No one would have any problems if a court had ordered him to turn over the passwords and sat in jail until he decided to do so, we're upset because they invented criminal charges against someone for doing their job, and then refusing to do their job.
That was because he was charged with 'denial of service' of a computer, and convicted, and not anything to do with contempt at all.
Nor was he charged with 'Obstruction of Justice', which doesn't really make any sense.
Refusing to turn over keys or passwords to some third party can't possibly be 'Obstruction of Justice'. It's not obstruction of justice if you just don't generally do what the police say...they can't, for example, charge you with obstruction of justice if you refuse to leave someone's premises. (They'll charge you with trespassing, of course, but not obstruction of justice.)
To obstruct justice, you have to interfere with a criminal investigation. Refusing to hand evidence to the police, yes, refusing to hand something over to someone else, even if the police say they're the rightful owner, no.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly.
Even in a WoT model, most people would not really use it. They'd use the hundred or so big list that came with the browser, consisting of major banks and whatnot. And the first time they went to amazon, the browser would popup a message and say 'According to 100,000 other users, this cert is legitimate. Trust Yes/No?' and they'd say yes.
The current system is so entirely broken it's a good thing we don't actually need need certs in the first place...99.999% of the time, we just need damn encryption. MitM is such an order of magnitude more complicated than sniffing it's crazy we've decided to care about it that much.
Now that we have DNSSEC actually up and running, I wish we'd invent some sort of 'Here is my SSL cert fingerprint' DNS record. Then people could just make their own cert (Which should be easier and not require them to also make a CA.) and stick the fingerprint in their DNS. (This would work without DNSSEC also, but with DNSSEC it's secure.)
I can top that in 'sheer incompetence for no reason'.
Okay, I pull up to a four-way stop, and a car pulls up, at the same time, to the right of me. That car goes first (obviously), turning left towards me...and almost drives into my fucking front bumper. I mean, I'm behind both the line and the stop sign, and it wasn't a tricky turn, it was perfectly normal residential crossroad with 25mph roads. And I'm driving a damn white car, and it's day time.
But she's talking on their cell phone, so stops, drives left, and almost drive straight into my bumper. The left of her bumper was about a foot away from the middle of bumper. She notices me at the last second, stops, and looks at me for a second like she's expecting me to back up. Um, fuck no. She was so close, she actually has to back up a few feet to get past me.
Seriously....what the hell? This wasn't 'running a stop sign', this was 'stopping at a stop sign and not bothering to notice the other cars also stopping at the same time'. She's lucky I was to the left of her, or we'd probably have collided in the middle of the intersection as I tried to go first.
I don't have a lot of issues when observant people break the law. I mean, if someone wants to just slow down at stop signs when no one else is there, whatever. They should get a ticket, but they aren't endangering people.
But here's someone who's driving around obeying the damn law...and shouldn't be driving.
Well, technically, she'd have been on over the middle line when finishing her turn(If I hadn't been in the way!), but many people do that, at least a little, when turning left, simple because the damn roads are paved and painted by idiots who don't understand turning radius and expect us to make turns at 5 mph apparently. I always thought it would be interesting to drive around the town I live in and not touch the lines with my wheels...I think I could do it, but I'd sure as hell end up pissing everyone off behind me as I slowed to make exactly right-angle turns because the numbnut construction people painted lines like that.(1)
She didn't have much of an excuse, because this was a reasonably intersection, but I wouldn't have complained if she'd turned poorly. But good^Wnon-stupid drivers actually, you know, don't drive into other cars when doing that.
1) The police, about a year ago, pulled me over for 'weaving', aka, 'driving an old car on a known-drug traffic route during the middle of the day', so that whole thing annoys me. I agree that people should stay on their sides of the road when driving around damn curves, especially around here in the mountains, but right now 'weaving' is just a pretext for a search, and damn near impossible to avoid in a lot of places around here thanks to inane road construction, where intersections are apparently made by crossing roads and then erasing all the lines where they physically cross. I.e., the double-yellow and white go up literally to other road, and where the white turns onto the other road at a damn right angle! You can't even not-'weave' turning right.
Incidentally, the reason they're doing this is usually that they're required. See, before they were required to publish that information, we had secret arrests...
Anyone who'd looking at the issue of 'We've decided you have no privacy rights when arrested' is utterly wrong. We didn't say that. We made cops release that information to safeguard people's rights.
You can't have people demanding 'habeas corpus' if the police don't tell people they've arrested you. (And please note the 'one phone call' is a myth.)
If they're using the release of that information in an abusive manner, or we just don't think it's worth it anymore, we have every right to make them stop.
Incidentally, as we've recently gone back to having secret arrests, I'm not entirely sure we should get rid of this yet. It might be a good idea, in fact, to apply it to the CIA and whatnot, who have apparently determined they can imprison people without informing the public.
Same here. I just want them to be arrested and prosecuted based on observable behavior, such as the way that they drive. A dangerous driver who disregards safety is not exactly difficult to detect. On the plus side, doing things this way might accomplish more towards addressing the dangerous drivers who are quite sober but just aggressive and/or stupid.
Indeed, but that would result in much less arrests. Most legally drunk drivers aren't actually a danger to anyone, and certainly aren't driving in such a manner to cause car accidents. A lot of them, in fact, are driving under the speed limit, and have about the driving-skill level of the safest new driver. (The kind that drive cautiously and slowly.) Which is dangerous on the highway, of course, but just insanely annoying on most roads.
Once we stopped making drunk driving about safety, and started making it about alcohol level (And we kept lowering the alcohol level, as some people honestly can't drive safely with even small amounts. Or with none at all.), arrests sure as hell shot up. Things weren't a lot safer, but arrests were higher, because police could hang out at bars and nab anyone leaving them, and at least 20% would 'fail the test'.
Now, I can see why we, as society, thought we had to do something. It was absurd that we were letting people get away with repeatedly dangerous driving.
Of course, we still do that as long as it doesn't include alcohol, so we haven't really solved any problems.
What we need to do is observe actual reckless driving, and add that up, and perhaps let people argue that downward if they can come up with a good reason. I.e., they can't use 'You was drunk' to punish people, but you can use 'I was sober and tired' as a partial defense.
OTOH, I'm not sure there are a lot of 'good' reasons to be a bad driver...people who regularly drive while tired as just as dangerous as people who regularly drive while drunk. A better idea might be to partially forgive non-repeating reasons, aka, 'I was in a hurry because someone I know just got hospitalized'.
Or even up the penalty for repeated reasons. (I.e, someone who drives while tired and then, a month later, drives while drunk, would get penalized less than someone who drives while tired and then, a month later, does the same thing.) Of course, if you refuse to give a reason, it would be assumed you're driving poorly for the same reason as last time.
The point system is supposed to be something like this, but it's horribly designed and mainly used for speeding. (Which is not normally, in itself, dangerous.)
Ah, the voice of the never-arrested, never-charged, never-taken-into-custody. LOL, such innocent brethren who unexpectedly find themselves immersed in "The System" are always shocked, SHOCKED by how irremediably cold and unforgiving it is.
Hey, not all of us. I got a rude awakening when I plead guilty to a traffic ticket when 20 (I just wanted to pay the thing) and, tada, they suspended my license.
Since then, I've assumed that every aspect is entirely against you.
The explanation of the legal doctrine of necessity, which basically says, 'You can commit a crime to stop greater harm', actually uses 'driving drunk to escape a kidnapper' as an example.
If they aren't punishment, then why the hell are we spending government resources to do it?
As long as you've made it clear you're better than everyone else, no one will mind that you spend your time watching YouTube and playing video games.
I'm glad someone else understand the problem. I don't know how to fix it either...I don't think encouraging spending is as pointless as you think, but that's simply because I have no other options.
For the past three or so decades we've steadily been shipping jobs out while borrowing against everything we own so we can purchase stuff.
It used to be US workers made something, and got paid via the profit on selling that, and with their paycheck they could purchase other stuff.
Now it's the Chinese who make stuff, it's the rich who get the profit, and normal people buy stuff by having absurd mortgage that don't require them to pay anything...until they reset. Or they borrow on credit cards, or whatever.
The rich, of course, like to pretend the reason we have no industry in this country is taxes, because, apparently, if we reduce taxes by 10%, companies will bring the jobs back and pay workers three times as much as they cost in China. Um, no.
The solution to this is problem is get rid of the entire WTO and the treaties disallowing 'protectionism'.
I'm all for free trade between countries with equal standards of living. If Canada can provide steel for cheaper than the US, fine...we can provide other stuff cheaper than they can, and it's the ciiiircle of liiiife...I mean, the circle of commerce. We can buy stuff from each other.
But when the workers are being paid ten cents an hour, we need to check at custom and saying 'Well, okay, you owe us roughly enough to bring it up to minimum wage...oh, and you had them in an unsafe factory, so that's a rather large fine, and you appear to have them work 10 hours a day without a break, so another fine...'
We need to make sure the cost of labor (and damage to the environment, and safety standards, and all sorts of things) is roughly the same for all goods sold here, or at least the minimum allowed here, whether or not they're made here. And, yes, companies would abuse that, and lobby the government to have their industry 'protected' from the evil competition of some German company that's just better than they are at making toasters...but, OTOH, they do that now, even though it's not allowed, and they also do the same thing via getting government subsidies. Saying 'corporations would get too much incentive to manipulate the government' is a bit like saying 'serial killers would get too much incentive to murder people'.
And as an aside, I absolutely hate how copyright is in this country, and would like to see it altered to the near original terms, where you had to apply for it and it was for a much shorter period of time. I suspect that would do nothing to the production of it...it's only in crazy-world that people produce a movie because the copyright is 90 years and thus they might coast on it the rest of their lives, vs. it only being 28 years so...they might coast on it most of their lives. People don't go 'Sure, doing that sounds great, but in three decades I'll stop making money from it, and then what?' We don't seem to need to provide these sort of 'lottery-like rich-for-the-rest-of-your-life incentives' to any other industry, and 95% of the time, the results would be no difference at all, as no money comes from stuff that old.
Ad the remaining 5% of the time, when the thing is popular enough to be paid for 30 years later, well, those people have probably made enough to live comfortable on it after 28 years of profits...and it being in the public domain doesn't take away who they are, they're still the famous actor or the famous writer or whatever, they can probably easily find work. I mean, if the Beatles' copyright had expired by 1999, do we really think McCartney or, hell, Ringo, would be broke?
So while I'm for US industry, I not only think our current copyright terms don't help it, I suspect they hurt it, because our public domain isn't growing any bigger.
I'm not sure what goes into your calculation that the coffee costs 20 cents.
Because it's just coffee beans, run through a machine. (Yes, yes, more complicated coffee costs more, but we're talking about the cheap stuff.)
I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't having some moral objection to the cost. I understand the cost. It's just a dumb business model.
I mean, I could open a business selling twist ties. (Those little things people use to hold together the end of bread and stuff. Apparently, some other places call them different things.)
And, to stay in business, I'd probably have to charge $5 each for them. Not trying to rip people off, just to pay the staff and rent. This is probably not a good business plan.
I'm not begrudging coffee places the fact they need to make money, I'm just saying that the entire concept of 'a store that sells a category of drinks' is a bit iffy, and simply existed due to a fad. (Bars are the same concept, except that people have been getting together and drinking alcohol for thousands of years.)
Fast food places manage to stay in business because they aren't that much more expensive than making the food yourself, and a hell of a lot more work. In terms of absolute markup of the food vs. what you would pay yourself to make it, you're probably paying 2 times as much there, and saving yourself several minutes of cooking.
Well, coffee is actually pretty easy to make. And is market up a lot more than
You think a $1.50 is reasonable for coffee? Really?
I bet you think $1.50 is reasonable for a fountain drink at Taco Bell, too.
Both those maybe $0.20 to make. Yes even with fancy fresh beans.
Of course, at Taco Bell, buying the drink is incidental to the food, and, hell, usually thrown in for free with a 'meal'.
With coffee places, you walk in and actually spend that much money straight up.
Granted, they can't charge lower prices and actually afford their staff...but that doesn't fix the problem. The problem is that operating a building and staffing it to just sell people coffee is a pretty goofy business model, and only actually ever worked because of a 'hang out in coffee shop, buying weird concoctions of coffee' fad that's slowly dying out. (As Raenex said below, they certainly should charge whatever the market will bear...but the market is not quite the same mid-90s market it used to be.)
Hopefully, most of those places will be able to throw a small grill in there or something and make it a 'cafe'.
There's a difference between going up to get a drink instead of waiting to be served, and not having a waiter at all.
And there's a different between going to a bar, and having someone come over to serve you even if they just have to walk down the bar...vs. standing in line, as I've done the few times I've gone to Starbucks.
You are, at that point, even if you don't use a waiter, tipping more the concept of service. Yes, you didn't ask for it, but in theory if you had waved your arm and attracted their attention at the table they would have come over. Someone is standing there watching your table or bar location, ready to help you, even if you never ask for you. Usually they come over and see if you need service. And you tip them for that, even if you didn't need any.
Meanwhile, at Starbucks, there is not even any hypothetical service, last I checked. I might tip waiters that don't do anything for me, but I don't tip non-existent waiters. Nor do I tip people I stand in line to buy things from. (Where exactly does that end? I start tipping the people at Taco Bell? The checkout clerk at the grocery store?)
I wouldn't tip if I was in a bar without waiters either, although I've never even heard of such a place.
Meanwhile, I do tip if I'm in a coffee shop with servers, as I've been before. (Although that was more a cafe with coffee shop attached.)
If you don't want to, then don't. That's why it's called a tip or "gratuity", because you don't have to do it if you don't want.
Maybe you think that way, but most people see tipping as a responsibility. I always tip, usually 20%. Except when I don't get any service, even if they've put up jars to try to get people to tip.
Meanwhile, I'm sure there are some people working at Starbucks who are annoyed at me because they get paid assuming they get tips, which is a totally and utter scam on their management's part. 'Hey, I know, let's cut their wages and see if we can get people to nonsensically tip the difference for the imaginary service being provided!'. Don't blame me for that nonsense, speak up.
Yes, in your universe where totally spending is somehow unlinked to how much people put in.
So, yes if you run around including Medicare spending and Social Security spending, it sure looks like social spending is high, doesn't it.
Of course, Social Security is currently running a net profit from collection of payments.
And Medicare, while not running a profit, is just barely losing money. Maybe $30 billion a year. Because it's insurance, which is just barely subsided by the government. People pay money to be on it.
Those two systems are programs where people pay in and then get money back. They are not spending 'taxes', or at least not more than a tiny amount.
And let's not forget unemployment insurance, the same thing. Unemployment benefits aren't coming from the general budget, they're coming from people and companies paying unemployment premiums. Although that's not a very big chunk of the budget.
In other words, social programs mostly have to pay their own way. The sole exception is Medicaid and some welfare.
If you look at actual spending of tax money from general revenues, um, yeah, the defense budget is pretty damn close to social spending.
So I will correct: War and disabled suffering children (Medicaid) are about the only things we're willing to spend tax money on at all.
Which is slightly more noble, I guess. But still no bridges.
It amazes me that people can stand there and that war has some unique property that causes development.
The only reason that 'war' advances development is that we're willing to spend tax money on development during war.
We could get all the effect (In fact, more, as war sucks resources.) and none of the deaths if we'd just spend money on development.
Of course, I live in the US, where we can't even spend tax money on bridges. War is about the only thing we're willing to spend tax money on at all.
Well, that's what they should have done, but in this case the people paying their salaries were the people who were 'victimized'.
So, we're talking about a legal issue, and I invent a term clearly intended to describe breaking that law, saying he didn't do it, and beanluc spends multiple posts arguing he did...only in the end, to argue that the term I invented isn't a violation of that law.
Quick, everyone applaud the guy who moved the goalpost so far that he 'won'.
Of course, you're still wrong.
To be clear, 'password protecting' stuff without permission? Yes, it's a violation of this law, in the actual sense of 'password protecting', which is 'putting a password on an account'. It's not one in the sense of 'put a password on an account in the past when there was permission, even if there is not permission now', but that's not the right tense and a damn insane way to speak!
So your universe, where 'password protecting' is in whatever tense people want it to be in, but 'permission' is always WRT the present, 'password protecting' is not specifically a violation of this law, because you could have 'password protecting' things last week when you did have permission. Or maybe you willon havon password protecting in the future but haven't already gotten permission yet, so you're already broke the law!
Yeah, I'd continue this discussion, but you apparently has died already, and by 'has died already', I mean in the future. So there's not a lot of point in continuing, or having has already continued, is there as it really doesn't make sense to discussion things with people who has died.
Yes, that was only a tad judgmental. It really needed to be a lot more judgmental to reach the correct amount.
Seriously, people, it is not acceptable to wander around in public dressed in sleepwear. Your dorm common room, fine, a business, no.
No, it's not an issue of how 'modest' it is, and the joke here is I'm one of the most informal persons I know...I barely own any shirts with buttons on them, and I spend my entire life in a t-shirt plus shorts or blue jeans. But just because an outfit is 'legal' doesn't make it reasonable clothing. If you want to start some new trend, or you're trying to change the types of clothing people think is okay via sheer force of will...whatever, I'm not the clothes polices, and styles change. Perhaps some day in the future we will all wear pajama-style pants.
But failing to put real clothes on is not a 'trend'. And it isn't being 'non-conformist', which I'm sure some people will claim. It's just being a lazy ass. You want to be non-conformist or something, show up in a skirt or with a giant Mayan headdress, don't try to pass laziness off as it.
Likewise, it is not acceptable to just plop yourself down and take over entire areas with books and stuff, unless you're in a library or something. That's just basic courtesy.
If you're on a date, perhaps you should pay attention to the date instead of your laptop?
Or, conversely, be willing to spend money buying more than one drink.
Of course, freeloaders don't magically become okay because they're on a date.
If they want to do something different, why don't they try making their coffee reasonably priced?
No. No coffee place does table service. Coffee places in American are like fast food places that don't serve food. I think you're probably thinking they're more like 'cafes', which also exist, are a different thing, and they often will do table service and have actual food.
If you think it's insane to have fast food restaurants that exist solely to serve coffee, and that's it, a lot of us agree with you, especially as someone decided we needed them everywhere. But, they exist, you stand in line and get extremely overpriced coffee, and leave.
Although, although they have no table service, for some reason some of them apparently think you should tip them.
Um, no. When I go up to the counter and order there and carry stuff away, you don't get a damn tip. I tip people who wait on me.
Plus, BKs tend to be a lot larger than coffeeshops.
There are plenty of coffee places where there is literally just one row of tables, maybe eight or so. When four of those tables have freeloaders with laptops on them...
Whereas most fast food places are rather bigger than they need to be, and it's really not important.
When i go and see a movie somewhere alone, I often stop in some fast food places, order some food, and eat it and, sit and keep reading a book until the movie is near, sometimes for an hour or more. They don't mind, because I'm taking up 1 of the 30 tables.
I'm sure there are busy times that they would mind, but fast food places have a lot more slack space than coffee houses in general, at least around here, which are often jammed into 35-foot wide strip mall places, which doesn't leave a lot of room for anything after the coffee-making area is put in.
Or, hell, I don't have to come up with an example weirder than this case, where apparently you can make people work for you for free. You can hire someone to set up security on a computer, and then you have them, for free, the entire damn rest of their life if you every want someone else to have access to that system, they are required by law to come in and add authorized users to it and change passwords.
In fact, forget the rest of my post. Just answer this:
Let's hypothesize that you're a sysadmin, and I hire you to set up a network server. You come in, you add users and stuff, and leave.
Five years later, I want another user to have an account. Well, that user is being kept out by your security setup.
So I call you up, and tell you you don't have permission to deny that user anymore, and either you come in and add that user, or I call the police because you have 'without permission...denies or causes the denial of computer services'. Hey, look, free employee.
Explain to me, under your theory of law, how that is not correct on my part. Please note that there is nothing in that law that says 'Unless someone else can undo that denial'....it is illegal to deny access even if someone can fix it, so any hypothetical other employees I have, or access to the server myself, are not relevant here.
Was the network password protected? Yes.
'The network being password protected' is not the crime, you loon.
The crime is if he 'without permission disrupts or causes the disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of computer services'. Sarten-X helpfully quoted it up there.
He had permission when he denied access.
Removing permission doesn't retroactively make his previous actions into a crime. You'll notice that laws are not written in weird crazy mixed tenses, nor are they interpreted like that.
There is an action listed there: denying service. There is an exception listed there: having permission.
When he did the former, he had the later, and his action is covered by the exception. He denied services, with permission.
Later, on, after he was fired, he did not 'deny services'. Services were already being denied. Inaction is not a crime. (Before you mention 'if the court says you have to do it, you do', I will point out that that crime is 'contempt of court', and he was not charged with it.)
Under your reading of the law, anyone can instantly make a sysadmin into a criminal, because, after all, there's no indication of how long they have to complete the request. 'I have forgotten my password, and I am a legitimate user! Give me a login! Oh, too slow, you are under arrest. Your action of setting a password on my account retroactively denied me access after I forgot it.'
Or, hell, I don't have to come up with an example weirder than this case, where apparently you can make people work for you for free. You can hire someone to set up security on a computer, and then you have them, for free, the entire damn rest of their life if you every want someone else to have access to that system, they are required by law to come in and add authorized users to it and change passwords.
Your reading of the law is nonsense. The thing you think is called 'denying access' is really 'failing to grant access', and is not illegal in the least. Crimes require action.
Just asserting things does not make them true. Christ, we need some sort of 'remedial law' in this country.
You do not 'go to prison' unless you break a law.
If you lawfully possess something, aka, if you were granted possession of it by the rightful owner, it is not illegal to refuse their request that you hand it back.
Nor, just in case there's any confusion, is it illegal to refuse their requests to do anything else, such as sing the karaoke version of Mandy, or engage in a duel to the death. In fact, you can refuse to do almost anything anyone requests of you at any time and not be breaking the law. Even if you have previously agreed to do so, and you have a contract saying you'll do it. Trespassing is about the only exception, the only 'he's not doing something I told him to do' crime there is, so 'leaving' is about the only thing it can be illegal not to do.
Now, you eventually will have to hand stuff back, as the courts will demand you do so. You don't magically get it for free.
However, you are not committing any crime until then. There is no law saying 'if you don't hand stuff back to people they handed to you, you're committing a crime'.
There is, of course, a law saying 'If you don't do what the courts say, you're committing a crime', so once the courts say what to do, and you don't, you're committing a crime, but not before then.
Does no one here even vaguely understand that contract and loans and other agreements are not illegal to breach, and you cannot be arrested for breaching them...you can be just be sued.
Serious people, have you never heard of car repossessers? Why the fuck would they even exist if the banks could just call the sheriff and have you arrested if you didn't hand your car back? They can't do that...they can either go through an amazing hassle of a lawsuit, or just take the car physically from you. (And this is why evictions are such a bitch, as banks essentially have to 'win a lawsuit', although it's a rather specific one made exactly for that purpose.)
You're having some sort of amazing reading comprehension problem here, or you're just an ass. I will bold important words for you.
I know you have to turn over passwords (or keys) when demanded to do so by the court. (At least, I'm arguing here as if that's true, although that's never been decided. Passwords have a fifth amendment issue, but that isn't relevant in this case.)
And I know you can be held in contempt of court until you do what the court says, as I mentioned in my post. A 'few days' was an example, as I said in the part of my post you didn't quote, 'courts wouldn't keep you after you turned them over', which rather implies they will keep you until you do that.
And, as I mentioned in my post, none of this is relevant in the least. He was not arrested for contempt of court, he was not held for contempt of court, and he is still being held, even after, duh, he's given the password.
No one would have any problems if a court had ordered him to turn over the passwords and sat in jail until he decided to do so, we're upset because they invented criminal charges against someone for doing their job, and then refusing to do their job.
That was because he was charged with 'denial of service' of a computer, and convicted, and not anything to do with contempt at all.
Nor was he charged with 'Obstruction of Justice', which doesn't really make any sense.
Refusing to turn over keys or passwords to some third party can't possibly be 'Obstruction of Justice'. It's not obstruction of justice if you just don't generally do what the police say...they can't, for example, charge you with obstruction of justice if you refuse to leave someone's premises. (They'll charge you with trespassing, of course, but not obstruction of justice.)
To obstruct justice, you have to interfere with a criminal investigation. Refusing to hand evidence to the police, yes, refusing to hand something over to someone else, even if the police say they're the rightful owner, no.