I don't exactly know what the u.s. equivalent is, but in Germany there is something called negative Feststellungsklage which means that Suse could apply for a court order declaring that SCOs claims are false and prohibits them to repeat their allegations.
If SCO seeks to achieve a precedent by sueing Suse this might be the appropriate backfire.
There's a similar mechanism in the US (nothing to do with "affirmative action", at least in the US sense): you can petition the court for a "Declaratory Judgement". Effectively, winning such a judgement in your favor would mean SCO had already lost the first court case - they'd have to start off by appealing an existing ruling in your favor, instead of starting a new case against you. Definition here.
Wow, so you're saying that there's no reason for me to use the Linux 2.4.20 over the 2.4.0 kernel? or the 2.2.0 kernel? or the 2.0.0 kernel?
If you'll tell me the IPs of some of your machines, I'll be glad to crack them for you!
Really? Name a kernel security hole which would give you root access, without any services running. I think you'll have a hard search! Linux was probably the worst of the four links for security (not sure about FreeBSD) - but, as their website proudly boasts, OpenBSD has had one single remote vulnerability in 7 years. The Linux kernel, of course, has had none (since there are no services, there's virtually nothing to exploit!)
Whichever you choose, though, you'll be doing far, far less patching than you would with an equivalent WinNT/2k/XP system. Bernstein's code on an OpenBSD system? Almost no patching ever needed; you could have a 7 year old machine, having been patched slightly once (or just disable SSH!) and you're pretty safe.
Incidentally, my 2.4.x machine is on 192.168.0.100. Cracking it may prove challenging for you...
The difficult question is whether the costs of patching outweigh the costs of NOT patching. There's a lot to be said for "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" sometimes.
For the usual "feature" patches ("This patch adds pretty shiny things to the edge of your window"...), you're absolutely right: making any kind of large-scale change (like putting a new patch on 1000 machines) is a big deal. Even if it's all automated via network management tools, you'll need to test, prepare and then support it. Do you really need that little tweak added?
However, with security patches usually you have no choice. The only decision for some security patches is how long do you wait before deploying it. Don't wanna be the first ones to put a bad patch on now, do we?
That's a tough one. Deploying a patch seems like a big hassle, especially when you need to test it thoroughly and have a fallback option if it fails. Big hassle, that is, up until it's too late and you have to clear out a few dozen CodeRed or Nimda infected machines! Like insurance: seems too expensive, right up until you actually need it...
Of course, they don't seem to mention the alternative, of notneedingtopatch;-) As Bernstein says, reliability means never having to say "sorry" - and never having to patch, either!
Obviously, money and personal safety are more important to you than life.
Far from it. I simply value personal safety and freedom more highly than you seem to: I believe I have a right to stop you interfering with my life, and vice versa. If you force a situation on me where I have to choose between my rights and yours, of course I will defend mine against you, the aggressor.
Life matters very much to me as well - quantity and quality. To me, it seems entirely reasonable that if someone must lose, it is the attacker not the victim!
What if that presumably dangerous "criminal" was your own son?
What about it? If you choose to commit a crime, you're taking a risk, and must face the consequences. Of couse I wouldn't want any of my family doing so, just as I wouldn't want them taking drugs or playing Russian roulette!
what if you knew he was delinquent but couldn't stop him?
If the person has some mental problem like that, have them locked up ("certified" or "sectioned"). That's exactly what those laws exist for: to control those who would otherwise present a danger to themselves and/or others.
would you say the same thing?
Yes. The solution is to stop them committing crimes, not to make crime safe for them!
I totally agree with self-defense. However, there are certain rules to self-defense. You can't just shoot an unarmed man in the back while he's running away from your house with your stereo. That just doesn't qualify as self-defense. You could be accused of murder.
It varies widely with jurisdiction. In the UK, if an intruder is accidentally harmed while breaking into your house, you can be sued; if the harm is intentional, that's assault, and you get prosecuted. Literally: even getting in a fight with an intruder will get you jail time. Meanwhile, in Texas, using force to prevent a criminal escaping with your property is OK. (I strongly prefer the latter system, as you can probably tell...)
I agree that killing them assures you they won't remain criminals. Just where do you stop with this logic? Who decides what's a crime and what isn't?
That isn't really the question. When you have an intruder in your home, or you are attacked outside it, you have a right to defend yourself and household from that person.
What crime is "bad" enough to merit the death penalty?
Death penalty? There's an exhaustive list somewhere in the US Code and the relevant State Codes - basically, treason and espionage, terrorism, some but not all murders. I was not talking about the death penalty, though, I was talking about the use of force in self-defense. Obviously killing someone for jay-walking isn't self-defense. There is no "threshold amount".
And more, who decides? The angry citizen woken up at night, who's pissed and has a gun in his hand? I just can't see this as right.
It's a matter of self-defense: of course it is the victim's decision how to defend him or herself! (Since only the victim(s) and perpetrator(s) are present, that one seems obvious to me.) If you attack me, it's up to me how I defend myself - to me, that's not just right, but obvious.
I really think no object(s) a human could steal from someone's house could amount to the value of the life of that human. It's that simple.
It isn't a trade. I'm not trying to compare the value of either: I'm not giving the person a loaf of bread in exchange for their life!
Oh, and by the way, I believe that stealing as a teenager doesn't necessarily mean you'll screw up your life.
No - but killing the criminal ones guarantees they won't remain criminals. Letting them get away with it doesn't - that way, they've profited from their crime, and are free to commit another. And another. I think you'll have to admit that criminals are far more likely to remain criminals than law-abiding people are to become criminals?
I really don't think killing them would have done any good. Or are you so excellent as to be able to predict the future ?
I don't need to predict anything. Just the possibility of dying in the act is a major deterrent to would-be criminals. If committing a crime becomes Russian roulette, it's a much less attractive option! At the very least, I can guarantee the dead criminal will never re-offend - all at far less cost to the public than trial and incarceration, even assuming the criminal is actually caught otherwise. Think of it as Darwinian law enforcement.
My point was that Canada, which has very strict gun control is a very safe place because of it.
I know. I just don't agree with that claim. (As an aside: according to Bowling for Columbine, Canada's homicide rate is very significantly higher than the UK's, despite a smaller population.) You also appear to be defining "safe place" as "place with low homicide rate", ignoring all other crimes.
I suspect the the insanely restrictive gun laws in DC are a response to gun violence not the cause of it. This year DC had about 250 murders. 10 years ago DC had over 700 murders. Sounds like the insanely restictive gun laws are working....
The figures I have here show a (gradual) increase in homicides per 100,000 population for DC. Sounds like those laws aren't working. (CDC figures.)
So your country, on a per capita basis, has WAY more murders than mine, and of those, the majority of the murders in your country are commited with guns. Both our countries have similar urban populations (actually Canada is more urban than the US), but the main difference is our gun control laws.
First, my country has far fewer murders than yours. (I'm British, not American.) Second: your cities are far smaller than American ones; even the GTA (nice place to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there) is only half the size of NYC's resident population, which excludes commuters. You keep trying to skew the statistics: comparing against the homicide hotspot of the US (which remains the homicide hotspot, and deteriorating, yet has the strictest gun "control" in the US.) If you want to compare homicide rates with NYC, you'll have to provide figures for a Canadian city with 8m people. That may be difficult.
You're also taking a very very narrow view: focussing exclusively on homicides, ignoring all other crimes, and assuming that victim disarmament policies are the only different between the US and Canada. I disagree on all counts: I for one care very much more about overall crime, and plenty of evidence indicates criminals in the US fear armed victims more than they fear any police force. As I said earlier, statistics strongly suggest that criminals in the US avoid crimes such as hot burglaries, because they know such crimes carry a non-trivial risk of being shot. Ban guns, and that deterrent disappears.
Within the US, more permissive gun laws are quite strongly linked to reduced overall crime levels. It's interesting to note that two of the worst areas for homicide - DC and LA - both have unusually tight gun restrictions.
As for "It only disarms law-abiding members of the public, leaving them defenseless against any criminals.", maybe criminals carry guns in the US because they know that they need them because everyone else is armed? Just a thought, using your logic...
I'd agree that criminals in the US know they will (potentially) face a serious fight, unlike other countries. Some will equip themselves for that fight, and take the risk - but the statistics suggest most of them decide not to take that risk in the first place. An armed populace - even if only a small percentage is actually armed - is a major deterrent.
Finally: as I said earlier, I'm British. Despite that, I feel safer in the US (and to a lesser extent in Canada) than in the UK: even without a gun of my own, the statistics make robbing or attacking me a much more dangerous choice for any criminal in the US than in Canada or the UK, simply because I might be armed. It's also a (fairly minor) factor in my wish to emigrate to the US...
Need I remind you that last year the capital of your "civilized nation" alone has a murder rate nearly 48 times that of my entire nation -> Washington DC, 48.5 murders per 100 000 people [reuters.com], compared to the entire country of Canada, 1.78 murders per 100 000 people [statcan.ca]. Also of note from Stats Canada on murders involving guns:
Need I explain to you what per capita figures mean? (Namely, that your "the capital... alone" compared to your "entire nation" is completely meaningless.) I'd also point out that DC is one of the worst areas in the US - largely thanks to insanely restrictive gun laws! LA also has this problem, as your statistics show. Now try comparing to a city which respects the Bill of Rights...
I for one feel much, much safer where individuals are permitted guns legally. I've lived (for most of my life) in a country where gun "control" is enforced (i.e. only the military, police and criminals have guns) - it doesn't work. The criminals, surprise surprise, don't give a shit about guns being illegal - so is everything else they do! It only disarms law-abiding members of the public, leaving them defenseless against any criminals.
In the US, only a desperate or stupid criminal would even consider committing a "hot" burglary (where the occupants are at home). In the UK, they are the order of the day - especially in rural areas, where the police have a policy of not responding to 999 (UK version of 911) calls, and defending your home against intruders using force is illegal. Only an idiot would support that system; unfortunately, idiots get elected far too often.
I find myself quite lucky to live in a country like Canada, where crazed citizens with guns don't think they have a legal right to take my life if I rob them. And hey, I'm not talking about self-defense here, but an actual guy who has the right to shoot me up the back when if I steal a loaf of bread from him. Kinda extreme, ain't it ?
No. If you choose to rob someone, they [should] have every right to use force to stop you. Deadly force just means one less criminal to deal with. Don't like it? Don't steal! It's really quite simple, and easy. As a taxpayer, I'd far rather have dead criminals than live ones: much cheaper to deal with, much less risk of re-offending. (I'm not advocating a death sentence for theft, just the use of force to prevent crimes in progress.)
That being said, to all the Muslims, Shi'ites, Sunnis, Bahai or anyone else who has recently had a resume removed from Monster.com or similar listing because of your linguistic, geographical or religious affliations:
It's not supposed to involve linguistic or religious affiliations, just references to a specific (US government) list of countries. Apparently, they've also done a U-turn on excluding education from those countries:
But the company said Friday that, after receiving complaints, it had re-examined its technology and beginning next week would allow the countries specified to be listed in the education entry.
So you can't list vacancies located in the listed countries (fair enough I think: US companies aren't supposed to do business with those countries at all, AIUI) - and people in those countries can't list their resumes (not so good, but probably prohibited by the same law). You won't get deleted for being Muslim (why did you refer to "Muslim, Shi'ites, Sunnis" by the way?)
I was never very impressed with Monster; their website seemed very limited and clumsy. On the other hand, another service I tried sold my email address to spammers, which is worse than just being crap! (Own domain: I gave the site companyname@domain, so when I started getting spam to companyname@domain, I knew whom to blame...)
...anyone else who has recently had a resume removed from Monster.com or similar listing because of your linguistic, geographical or religious affliations: If you're talented, passionate, team-oriented and looking to move to a new Internet technology company in the Bay Area in the coming months, please send resumes directly to my e-mail address.
Sounds interesting, but I haven't been delisted from Monster.com...;-( Any more details??
Having gone through this (got a Jordanian Passport):
"little more" is not what I'd call it. I'm not sure if it was called a "DS-157", but it took about 45 min telling the officer about everything that was on the Visa application form already, telling him what my plans in the US were, and having a picture and my fingerprints taken.
That bit's standard; a friend of mine (from Romania) had a similar interview for her visa to visit the UK as a tourist. AFAICT, the UK has always done this; I imagine the US has too.
(great so now they know everything about me, very relaxing)
If you want to enter the US without the US knowing about you, you have to sneak in while nobody's looking. This usually gets you into a US prison, which is probably not what you wanted;-)
Then after 4 weeks I had to report back to the INS in Minniapolis,MN. That was the nearest office but still a five hour drive. And all that for asking me questions again and proving that I was staying where I had said I was and doing what I had said I was. I can somehow understand that actions, though I don't like them, but "little more than a database search" is not what that is.
But I guess that's what you meant by "..." *g*
OK, so you were interviewed, then they checked you were doing what you said. What's the big deal? (OK, the five hour drive to get to an INS office is a pain, but hardly the end of the world!)
Such acts like the Patriot Act, detainings of people -- many times US Citizens themselves -- on the basis of race, under no basis for charge,
Uh, that was in WWII... (Yes, there's a US citizen or two in Guantanamo. Bear in mind how they got there...) The US has done far, far worse things of this sort in the fairly recent past than is happening now!
new onerous immigration restrictions that make even getting a tourist visa about as easy as winning the lottery if one is unlucky enough to be from a country that's not western European, and other such hypocritical erosions of the consitution have turned me off.
Do you mean the DS-157 check? If so, remember that only applies to the Middle East plus Malaysia, according to visalaw.com's list. Even then, only to men of certain ages, and it's little more than a database search...
As for "erosions of the constitution", which amendment grants foreigners the right to come and go freely, regardless of background, intent or criminal involvement?!
But even they don't think of us as criminals without a cause, which is what the US is doing.
"us"? Japanese citizens are free to enter the US just by filling out a visa waiver. If you retained Indian citizenship, you need to get a B-2 or B-1 from a consulate (not hard), then for the next 10 years you can do the same. How exactly does the US government treat you "as criminals"?
(Incidentally, the only two visa problems friends of mine have had were with India and the UK: a British citizen of Indian ancestry was studying in India, but couldn't renew his visa, and an American friend couldn't get a suitable visa at all for the UK.)
I very strongly disagree with everything you say about "erosion of the Constitution", and as for "crackdowns on people in the US", there's definitely some crack involved somewhere...
In the Netherlands one is ALWAYS insured for basic health care, where the premium is determined by income. You have to jump through some pretty amazing loops to fall out of this system.
It would actually be possible to achieve a similar result - at least with respect to non-residents - in the US. Thinking about it, I rather like that idea. Anyway, someone should have explained to these two Dutch men that the US is not part of the Netherlands, and hence trying to deal with the US sytem rather than the Dutch one would have been sensible...
My understanding (and it's a little complicated, so I'm not sure I understand correctly) is that that the court ruled that RIAA has the right, under the DMCA, to demand the customer's names without a court order.
No. The subpoena authorized by the DMCA is a court order: it's a legally binding subpoena, issued by the clerk of court. Verizon is simply challenging that subpoena in court (as you are entitled to do) - and losing, so far.
Not that the RIAA has sufficient grounds to demand the names.
The DMCA defines what those grounds are; as far as I can see, the RIAA does meet the requirements. (The requirements for obtaining a subpoena in civil cases are very very low, and have existed a great deal longer than the DMCA, RIAA or Verizon without anyone finding them unconstitutional - perhaps because they're specifically authorized under the Fourth Amendment.)
Basically, Verizon wants a ruling on the constitutionality of that portion of the DMCA because that opens Verizon (and all ISPs) up to anybody to demand customer names under the DMCA based on merely the claim of a copyright violation. If they have to get a court order first, that at least filters out most of the nuisance claims.
This subpoena is a court order. Verizon are just trying to argue that this subpoena is unconstitutional; from what I've seen (and from what the courts have ruled so far!) they haven't got a case.
Now corporations have more power than the cops, since cops need a judicial approval aka warrant to retrieve evidense/information.
No, the whole point of this case is that Verizon is fighting to stop judicial approval being given! (Or rather, the court gave that approval, but Verizon decided to appeal.) AFAIK you don't really have that option with the cops: the first you know about their warrant is when they come to visit, warrant in hand. You can't stop them at that point, although you can try to have any evidence they obtain suppressed...
My father just build a new home, and he hired two dutch brothers to do some of the carpentry work. They had been in the US about 6 months, and were here to work, have fun etc.
One of the guys was using a circular saw and it caught an edge, which whipped the saw down and nearly cut this guy's thumb off. He was taken to the hospital, and treated. He's now been working 3 years, and all of his money goes toward food, rent...and paying his hospital debt.
OK, your father hired a contractor who obviously didn't have the right insurance cover. The contractor screwed up, causing expensive damage not covered by his insurance, and is now having to pay for fixing the damage. Seems fair.
Still think this is a civilized country?
Yes: this guy is paying for his own mistake, instead of the government forcing others to cover for him. My one criticism here is that they really should have been required to carry appropriate insurance, but that's very difficult to enforce - why didn't your father check that, by the way?
Supposing, instead of a thumb, that saw had cut a water main, ruining the house. Would you expect other people to foot the bill for fixing that, too?
(Also, I'd point out nothing bad came of that, despite his stupidity: he was treated (despite not having insurance or the money to pay for it) - now he's working to make up for it. Nothing wrong with that.
But the local loop isn't bandwidth-limited by other customer's bandwidth habits. When I don't get my full 6Mbits down, it's not my local loop's fault.
With cable, that 6 Mbit/sec limitation doesn't exist. If the ISP's backbone can deliver it, you can download at your channel's full 20 Mbps, subject to whatever throttling is configured. With normal throttling, you should never hit these channel limitations: you can get whatever bandwidth you've paid for.
(Yes, some cable ISPs try to cut corners, and give a crap service. Others are flooded by abusers, with the same result. Can you honestly claim you don't get DSL ISPs who do the same, though?)
Well I wouldn't disagree with this, although I am not particularly a fan of all this free market stuff anyway. I just find it interesting how the argument seems to be given both ways from some people. "The free market is a great thing, except when it isn't". We here all sorts of nonsense coming out of the free marketters about health services, and such like. I can't see why the same logic does not apply to the armed forces.
It does, but with constraints. Instead of buying more F-18s, the USAF would get much better value buying MiG-29s or perhaps Su-25s for the strike role; militarily, however, importing equipment from any foreign country is bad.
As I said, I have no idea whether the US has the talent or not. Maybe the redhat guys could do it. There again maybe they already have a job, and didn't this grant. Its not an uncommon situation in research.
As I said, there is ample talent, and evidence of that talent. In fact, much of that talent is already DoD funded to work on exactly this area, which raises another question about the justification for funding a rival foreign team to compete with your own!
...Never mind...(Come to think of it, I can't even think of a counter-example where someone didn't try to control a market through control of the programming language.)
BCPL springs to mind; it was developed (by one of my old supervisors!) specifically to avoid platform lockin. At the time, the university was about to acquire a second computer - but it wasn't compatible with the first. To make matters easier for the users, Martin Richards designed BCPL and an accompanying bytecode language called cintcode. Despite its age - it's an indirect ancestor of C! - it is still in use today in a few applications; apparently Ford have a custom-built setup running in BCPL on a pair of Vaxes to manage each factory outside the US. (For some reason, the US factories use a different system.) With the demise of the Vax, Ford have been supporting Martin's work in porting the whole BCPL/cintcode/Tripos (a cintcode OS) to run on Linux/x86 systems.
For that matter, I seem to recall most of the early computer languages were intended to reduce the need to be tied to a specific platform; Fortran, Pascal, C (derived from B, itself a cut-down version of BCPL), as well as the original Unix concept.
I think you've got it backwards. With cable, the bandwidth that is shared is in the neighborhood segment. That's the expensive stuff to upgrade, because it requires truck rolls and trenching, and it only has limited bandwidth because there are dozens of TV channels crammed in that same bandwidth.
No need to upgrade the copper itself, though: you can add frequencies (and there are plenty; cable companies aren't bandwidth limited there), and you can often re-segment quite trivially. DSL, meanwhile, is bandwidth limited in the local loop.
Essentially, you have a choice between sharing an insane amount of bandwidth (tens of Mbps per segment) between you and the head-end, or having a dedicated but small amount of bandwidth (usually up to 1.5 Mbps) between you and the equivalent. The existing copper could, with the current equipment, provide me with 20 Mbps: try doing that over existing telco lines!
Once you leave the copper, whether you used DSL or DOCSIS to traverse it, you're onto fiber; from that point on, there's no real difference. What matters is the copper bit.
The big Achilles heel of cable is the upstream bandwidth: while downstream bandwidth is plentiful, providing upstream bandwidth is much more of a headache.
I could have sworn that cable has the EXACT SAME PROBLEM. You're always limited by the slowest link. If your cable (or DSL) provider has a crappy backhaul anywhere, of COURSE you're going to be limited.
That's the point I was making: both cable and DSL share an uplink between all the users. The only shared vs. non-shared element is the last few hundred feet of copper, between you and the nearest shared box. Cable, however, could be managed to give better performance for interactive traffic: you could use almost the entire 20 Mbps in short bursts (to view each new web page or whatever) - whereas with DSL, you can never have burst traffic faster than the 1.5 Mbps (or whatever) of your link. For web surfing, those ultra-fast bursts of traffic could be a big advantage...
But it's called "Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency" for good reason.
Yes: because it funds Defense related projects, as opposed to, say, medical research or quantum physics.
You're right that a lot of defense-related government spending is disguised subsidies.
Not "disguised subsidies"; promoting research is one of the federal governments constitutional jobs.
But equally, if some foreign researcher has developed some "innovative" technique for killing people more efficiently or more horribly
Actually, DARPA's focus is on not killing people at all, where possible. Killing people is easy: humans have been doing that for many thousands of years. DARPA has no interest whatsoever in killing people "more horribly"; indeed, non-lethal weapons have been one of their major efforts.
or something which would increase US military superiority on the battlefield - they're not necessarily going to turn up their noses at it...
If a foreign company develops a product useful to the US military, the DoD may well buy it - but that's Defense Procurement, which is not DARPA. DARPA's job is to fund research and development projects in the US.
Since cable in our area has a shared backbone for neighbourhood segments, that means that cable in my area is a lot slower than DSL. With Kazaa running all the time on almost all of the machines, I end up getting a faster connection for a lower price.
Yes, cable's more vulnerable to that - although with DSL, you're still sharing the backhaul pipe from the DSLAM to the ISP, and of course all the ISP's customers are sharing the ISP's pipe(s) to the rest of the Net. The tradeoff is that cable has much more bandwidth to share.
In theory, with some clever traffic shaping, you could give "interactive" users the full bandwidth of the pipe (in short burts) - so when you view a webpage, it arrives at many megabits/sec. Then after, say, the first megabyte (a fraction of a second at full bandwidth for a cable segment), start throttling back to the "bulk download" rate. That could give insanely fast interactive performance (even really bloated webpages would appear in a flash, if the remote server can manage it) without taking the financial hit of Kazaa users eating a couple of Mbps 24x7.
P2P is, as you say, a huge problem on cable segments (and on DSL: it's still shared once you reach the exchange); one user running Kazaa can easily eat the bandwidth of a few dozen "normal" users. Either the ISP has to buy a load more bandwidth to cope (and a massive price hike to cover it), or do something to stop them: traffic shaping, ban it (and enforce that ban), or impose traffic quotas.
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There's a similar mechanism in the US (nothing to do with "affirmative action", at least in the US sense): you can petition the court for a "Declaratory Judgement". Effectively, winning such a judgement in your favor would mean SCO had already lost the first court case - they'd have to start off by appealing an existing ruling in your favor, instead of starting a new case against you. Definition here.
If you'll tell me the IPs of some of your machines, I'll be glad to crack them for you!
Really? Name a kernel security hole which would give you root access, without any services running. I think you'll have a hard search! Linux was probably the worst of the four links for security (not sure about FreeBSD) - but, as their website proudly boasts, OpenBSD has had one single remote vulnerability in 7 years. The Linux kernel, of course, has had none (since there are no services, there's virtually nothing to exploit!)
Whichever you choose, though, you'll be doing far, far less patching than you would with an equivalent WinNT/2k/XP system. Bernstein's code on an OpenBSD system? Almost no patching ever needed; you could have a 7 year old machine, having been patched slightly once (or just disable SSH!) and you're pretty safe.
Incidentally, my 2.4.x machine is on 192.168.0.100. Cracking it may prove challenging for you...
For the usual "feature" patches ("This patch adds pretty shiny things to the edge of your window"...), you're absolutely right: making any kind of large-scale change (like putting a new patch on 1000 machines) is a big deal. Even if it's all automated via network management tools, you'll need to test, prepare and then support it. Do you really need that little tweak added?
However, with security patches usually you have no choice. The only decision for some security patches is how long do you wait before deploying it. Don't wanna be the first ones to put a bad patch on now, do we?
That's a tough one. Deploying a patch seems like a big hassle, especially when you need to test it thoroughly and have a fallback option if it fails. Big hassle, that is, up until it's too late and you have to clear out a few dozen CodeRed or Nimda infected machines! Like insurance: seems too expensive, right up until you actually need it...
Of course, they don't seem to mention the alternative, of not needing to patch ;-) As Bernstein says, reliability means never having to say "sorry" - and never having to patch, either!
Far from it. I simply value personal safety and freedom more highly than you seem to: I believe I have a right to stop you interfering with my life, and vice versa. If you force a situation on me where I have to choose between my rights and yours, of course I will defend mine against you, the aggressor.
Life matters very much to me as well - quantity and quality. To me, it seems entirely reasonable that if someone must lose, it is the attacker not the victim!
What about it? If you choose to commit a crime, you're taking a risk, and must face the consequences. Of couse I wouldn't want any of my family doing so, just as I wouldn't want them taking drugs or playing Russian roulette!
what if you knew he was delinquent but couldn't stop him?
If the person has some mental problem like that, have them locked up ("certified" or "sectioned"). That's exactly what those laws exist for: to control those who would otherwise present a danger to themselves and/or others.
would you say the same thing?
Yes. The solution is to stop them committing crimes, not to make crime safe for them!
It varies widely with jurisdiction. In the UK, if an intruder is accidentally harmed while breaking into your house, you can be sued; if the harm is intentional, that's assault, and you get prosecuted. Literally: even getting in a fight with an intruder will get you jail time. Meanwhile, in Texas, using force to prevent a criminal escaping with your property is OK. (I strongly prefer the latter system, as you can probably tell...)
That isn't really the question. When you have an intruder in your home, or you are attacked outside it, you have a right to defend yourself and household from that person.
What crime is "bad" enough to merit the death penalty?
Death penalty? There's an exhaustive list somewhere in the US Code and the relevant State Codes - basically, treason and espionage, terrorism, some but not all murders. I was not talking about the death penalty, though, I was talking about the use of force in self-defense. Obviously killing someone for jay-walking isn't self-defense. There is no "threshold amount".
And more, who decides? The angry citizen woken up at night, who's pissed and has a gun in his hand? I just can't see this as right.
It's a matter of self-defense: of course it is the victim's decision how to defend him or herself! (Since only the victim(s) and perpetrator(s) are present, that one seems obvious to me.) If you attack me, it's up to me how I defend myself - to me, that's not just right, but obvious.
It isn't a trade. I'm not trying to compare the value of either: I'm not giving the person a loaf of bread in exchange for their life!
Oh, and by the way, I believe that stealing as a teenager doesn't necessarily mean you'll screw up your life.
No - but killing the criminal ones guarantees they won't remain criminals. Letting them get away with it doesn't - that way, they've profited from their crime, and are free to commit another. And another. I think you'll have to admit that criminals are far more likely to remain criminals than law-abiding people are to become criminals?
I really don't think killing them would have done any good. Or are you so excellent as to be able to predict the future ?
I don't need to predict anything. Just the possibility of dying in the act is a major deterrent to would-be criminals. If committing a crime becomes Russian roulette, it's a much less attractive option! At the very least, I can guarantee the dead criminal will never re-offend - all at far less cost to the public than trial and incarceration, even assuming the criminal is actually caught otherwise. Think of it as Darwinian law enforcement.
I know. I just don't agree with that claim. (As an aside: according to Bowling for Columbine, Canada's homicide rate is very significantly higher than the UK's, despite a smaller population.) You also appear to be defining "safe place" as "place with low homicide rate", ignoring all other crimes.
I suspect the the insanely restrictive gun laws in DC are a response to gun violence not the cause of it. This year DC had about 250 murders. 10 years ago DC had over 700 murders. Sounds like the insanely restictive gun laws are working....
The figures I have here show a (gradual) increase in homicides per 100,000 population for DC. Sounds like those laws aren't working. (CDC figures.)
So your country, on a per capita basis, has WAY more murders than mine, and of those, the majority of the murders in your country are commited with guns. Both our countries have similar urban populations (actually Canada is more urban than the US), but the main difference is our gun control laws.
First, my country has far fewer murders than yours. (I'm British, not American.) Second: your cities are far smaller than American ones; even the GTA (nice place to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there) is only half the size of NYC's resident population, which excludes commuters. You keep trying to skew the statistics: comparing against the homicide hotspot of the US (which remains the homicide hotspot, and deteriorating, yet has the strictest gun "control" in the US.) If you want to compare homicide rates with NYC, you'll have to provide figures for a Canadian city with 8m people. That may be difficult.
You're also taking a very very narrow view: focussing exclusively on homicides, ignoring all other crimes, and assuming that victim disarmament policies are the only different between the US and Canada. I disagree on all counts: I for one care very much more about overall crime, and plenty of evidence indicates criminals in the US fear armed victims more than they fear any police force. As I said earlier, statistics strongly suggest that criminals in the US avoid crimes such as hot burglaries, because they know such crimes carry a non-trivial risk of being shot. Ban guns, and that deterrent disappears.
Within the US, more permissive gun laws are quite strongly linked to reduced overall crime levels. It's interesting to note that two of the worst areas for homicide - DC and LA - both have unusually tight gun restrictions.
As for "It only disarms law-abiding members of the public, leaving them defenseless against any criminals.", maybe criminals carry guns in the US because they know that they need them because everyone else is armed? Just a thought, using your logic...
I'd agree that criminals in the US know they will (potentially) face a serious fight, unlike other countries. Some will equip themselves for that fight, and take the risk - but the statistics suggest most of them decide not to take that risk in the first place. An armed populace - even if only a small percentage is actually armed - is a major deterrent.
Finally: as I said earlier, I'm British. Despite that, I feel safer in the US (and to a lesser extent in Canada) than in the UK: even without a gun of my own, the statistics make robbing or attacking me a much more dangerous choice for any criminal in the US than in Canada or the UK, simply because I might be armed. It's also a (fairly minor) factor in my wish to emigrate to the US...
Need I explain to you what per capita figures mean? (Namely, that your "the capital... alone" compared to your "entire nation" is completely meaningless.) I'd also point out that DC is one of the worst areas in the US - largely thanks to insanely restrictive gun laws! LA also has this problem, as your statistics show. Now try comparing to a city which respects the Bill of Rights...
I for one feel much, much safer where individuals are permitted guns legally. I've lived (for most of my life) in a country where gun "control" is enforced (i.e. only the military, police and criminals have guns) - it doesn't work. The criminals, surprise surprise, don't give a shit about guns being illegal - so is everything else they do! It only disarms law-abiding members of the public, leaving them defenseless against any criminals.
In the US, only a desperate or stupid criminal would even consider committing a "hot" burglary (where the occupants are at home). In the UK, they are the order of the day - especially in rural areas, where the police have a policy of not responding to 999 (UK version of 911) calls, and defending your home against intruders using force is illegal. Only an idiot would support that system; unfortunately, idiots get elected far too often.
No. If you choose to rob someone, they [should] have every right to use force to stop you. Deadly force just means one less criminal to deal with. Don't like it? Don't steal! It's really quite simple, and easy. As a taxpayer, I'd far rather have dead criminals than live ones: much cheaper to deal with, much less risk of re-offending. (I'm not advocating a death sentence for theft, just the use of force to prevent crimes in progress.)
It's not supposed to involve linguistic or religious affiliations, just references to a specific (US government) list of countries. Apparently, they've also done a U-turn on excluding education from those countries:
But the company said Friday that, after receiving complaints, it had re-examined its technology and beginning next week would allow the countries specified to be listed in the education entry.
So you can't list vacancies located in the listed countries (fair enough I think: US companies aren't supposed to do business with those countries at all, AIUI) - and people in those countries can't list their resumes (not so good, but probably prohibited by the same law). You won't get deleted for being Muslim (why did you refer to "Muslim, Shi'ites, Sunnis" by the way?)
I was never very impressed with Monster; their website seemed very limited and clumsy. On the other hand, another service I tried sold my email address to spammers, which is worse than just being crap! (Own domain: I gave the site companyname@domain, so when I started getting spam to companyname@domain, I knew whom to blame...)
Sounds interesting, but I haven't been delisted from Monster.com... ;-( Any more details??
That bit's standard; a friend of mine (from Romania) had a similar interview for her visa to visit the UK as a tourist. AFAICT, the UK has always done this; I imagine the US has too.
If you want to enter the US without the US knowing about you, you have to sneak in while nobody's looking. This usually gets you into a US prison, which is probably not what you wanted ;-)
OK, so you were interviewed, then they checked you were doing what you said. What's the big deal? (OK, the five hour drive to get to an INS office is a pain, but hardly the end of the world!)
Uh, that was in WWII... (Yes, there's a US citizen or two in Guantanamo. Bear in mind how they got there...) The US has done far, far worse things of this sort in the fairly recent past than is happening now!
new onerous immigration restrictions that make even getting a tourist visa about as easy as winning the lottery if one is unlucky enough to be from a country that's not western European, and other such hypocritical erosions of the consitution have turned me off.
Do you mean the DS-157 check? If so, remember that only applies to the Middle East plus Malaysia, according to visalaw.com's list. Even then, only to men of certain ages, and it's little more than a database search...
As for "erosions of the constitution", which amendment grants foreigners the right to come and go freely, regardless of background, intent or criminal involvement?!
But even they don't think of us as criminals without a cause, which is what the US is doing.
"us"? Japanese citizens are free to enter the US just by filling out a visa waiver. If you retained Indian citizenship, you need to get a B-2 or B-1 from a consulate (not hard), then for the next 10 years you can do the same. How exactly does the US government treat you "as criminals"?
(Incidentally, the only two visa problems friends of mine have had were with India and the UK: a British citizen of Indian ancestry was studying in India, but couldn't renew his visa, and an American friend couldn't get a suitable visa at all for the UK.)
I very strongly disagree with everything you say about "erosion of the Constitution", and as for "crackdowns on people in the US", there's definitely some crack involved somewhere...
It would actually be possible to achieve a similar result - at least with respect to non-residents - in the US. Thinking about it, I rather like that idea. Anyway, someone should have explained to these two Dutch men that the US is not part of the Netherlands, and hence trying to deal with the US sytem rather than the Dutch one would have been sensible...
No. The subpoena authorized by the DMCA is a court order: it's a legally binding subpoena, issued by the clerk of court. Verizon is simply challenging that subpoena in court (as you are entitled to do) - and losing, so far.
Not that the RIAA has sufficient grounds to demand the names.
The DMCA defines what those grounds are; as far as I can see, the RIAA does meet the requirements. (The requirements for obtaining a subpoena in civil cases are very very low, and have existed a great deal longer than the DMCA, RIAA or Verizon without anyone finding them unconstitutional - perhaps because they're specifically authorized under the Fourth Amendment.)
Basically, Verizon wants a ruling on the constitutionality of that portion of the DMCA because that opens Verizon (and all ISPs) up to anybody to demand customer names under the DMCA based on merely the claim of a copyright violation. If they have to get a court order first, that at least filters out most of the nuisance claims.
This subpoena is a court order. Verizon are just trying to argue that this subpoena is unconstitutional; from what I've seen (and from what the courts have ruled so far!) they haven't got a case.
No, the whole point of this case is that Verizon is fighting to stop judicial approval being given! (Or rather, the court gave that approval, but Verizon decided to appeal.) AFAIK you don't really have that option with the cops: the first you know about their warrant is when they come to visit, warrant in hand. You can't stop them at that point, although you can try to have any evidence they obtain suppressed...
One of the guys was using a circular saw and it caught an edge, which whipped the saw down and nearly cut this guy's thumb off. He was taken to the hospital, and treated. He's now been working 3 years, and all of his money goes toward food, rent...and paying his hospital debt.
OK, your father hired a contractor who obviously didn't have the right insurance cover. The contractor screwed up, causing expensive damage not covered by his insurance, and is now having to pay for fixing the damage. Seems fair.
Still think this is a civilized country?
Yes: this guy is paying for his own mistake, instead of the government forcing others to cover for him. My one criticism here is that they really should have been required to carry appropriate insurance, but that's very difficult to enforce - why didn't your father check that, by the way?
Supposing, instead of a thumb, that saw had cut a water main, ruining the house. Would you expect other people to foot the bill for fixing that, too?
(Also, I'd point out nothing bad came of that, despite his stupidity: he was treated (despite not having insurance or the money to pay for it) - now he's working to make up for it. Nothing wrong with that.
With cable, that 6 Mbit/sec limitation doesn't exist. If the ISP's backbone can deliver it, you can download at your channel's full 20 Mbps, subject to whatever throttling is configured. With normal throttling, you should never hit these channel limitations: you can get whatever bandwidth you've paid for.
(Yes, some cable ISPs try to cut corners, and give a crap service. Others are flooded by abusers, with the same result. Can you honestly claim you don't get DSL ISPs who do the same, though?)
It does, but with constraints. Instead of buying more F-18s, the USAF would get much better value buying MiG-29s or perhaps Su-25s for the strike role; militarily, however, importing equipment from any foreign country is bad.
As I said, I have no idea whether the US has the talent or not. Maybe the redhat guys could do it. There again maybe they already have a job, and didn't this grant. Its not an uncommon situation in research.
As I said, there is ample talent, and evidence of that talent. In fact, much of that talent is already DoD funded to work on exactly this area, which raises another question about the justification for funding a rival foreign team to compete with your own!
BCPL springs to mind; it was developed (by one of my old supervisors!) specifically to avoid platform lockin. At the time, the university was about to acquire a second computer - but it wasn't compatible with the first. To make matters easier for the users, Martin Richards designed BCPL and an accompanying bytecode language called cintcode. Despite its age - it's an indirect ancestor of C! - it is still in use today in a few applications; apparently Ford have a custom-built setup running in BCPL on a pair of Vaxes to manage each factory outside the US. (For some reason, the US factories use a different system.) With the demise of the Vax, Ford have been supporting Martin's work in porting the whole BCPL/cintcode/Tripos (a cintcode OS) to run on Linux/x86 systems.
For that matter, I seem to recall most of the early computer languages were intended to reduce the need to be tied to a specific platform; Fortran, Pascal, C (derived from B, itself a cut-down version of BCPL), as well as the original Unix concept.
No need to upgrade the copper itself, though: you can add frequencies (and there are plenty; cable companies aren't bandwidth limited there), and you can often re-segment quite trivially. DSL, meanwhile, is bandwidth limited in the local loop.
Essentially, you have a choice between sharing an insane amount of bandwidth (tens of Mbps per segment) between you and the head-end, or having a dedicated but small amount of bandwidth (usually up to 1.5 Mbps) between you and the equivalent. The existing copper could, with the current equipment, provide me with 20 Mbps: try doing that over existing telco lines!
Once you leave the copper, whether you used DSL or DOCSIS to traverse it, you're onto fiber; from that point on, there's no real difference. What matters is the copper bit.
The big Achilles heel of cable is the upstream bandwidth: while downstream bandwidth is plentiful, providing upstream bandwidth is much more of a headache.
That's the point I was making: both cable and DSL share an uplink between all the users. The only shared vs. non-shared element is the last few hundred feet of copper, between you and the nearest shared box. Cable, however, could be managed to give better performance for interactive traffic: you could use almost the entire 20 Mbps in short bursts (to view each new web page or whatever) - whereas with DSL, you can never have burst traffic faster than the 1.5 Mbps (or whatever) of your link. For web surfing, those ultra-fast bursts of traffic could be a big advantage...
Yes: because it funds Defense related projects, as opposed to, say, medical research or quantum physics.
You're right that a lot of defense-related government spending is disguised subsidies.
Not "disguised subsidies"; promoting research is one of the federal governments constitutional jobs.
But equally, if some foreign researcher has developed some "innovative" technique for killing people more efficiently or more horribly
Actually, DARPA's focus is on not killing people at all, where possible. Killing people is easy: humans have been doing that for many thousands of years. DARPA has no interest whatsoever in killing people "more horribly"; indeed, non-lethal weapons have been one of their major efforts.
or something which would increase US military superiority on the battlefield - they're not necessarily going to turn up their noses at it...
If a foreign company develops a product useful to the US military, the DoD may well buy it - but that's Defense Procurement, which is not DARPA. DARPA's job is to fund research and development projects in the US.
Yes, cable's more vulnerable to that - although with DSL, you're still sharing the backhaul pipe from the DSLAM to the ISP, and of course all the ISP's customers are sharing the ISP's pipe(s) to the rest of the Net. The tradeoff is that cable has much more bandwidth to share.
In theory, with some clever traffic shaping, you could give "interactive" users the full bandwidth of the pipe (in short burts) - so when you view a webpage, it arrives at many megabits/sec. Then after, say, the first megabyte (a fraction of a second at full bandwidth for a cable segment), start throttling back to the "bulk download" rate. That could give insanely fast interactive performance (even really bloated webpages would appear in a flash, if the remote server can manage it) without taking the financial hit of Kazaa users eating a couple of Mbps 24x7.
P2P is, as you say, a huge problem on cable segments (and on DSL: it's still shared once you reach the exchange); one user running Kazaa can easily eat the bandwidth of a few dozen "normal" users. Either the ISP has to buy a load more bandwidth to cope (and a massive price hike to cover it), or do something to stop them: traffic shaping, ban it (and enforce that ban), or impose traffic quotas.