The problem is, Evans isn't being tried for saying mean things to a little girl. That's kind of despicable, but it's not really a crime, so the DOJ had to come up with something else. So they used the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to put her on trial for violating the MySpace terms of service.
I agree that if she is convicted it would be bad for the rest of us because of the precedent it would set. It will mean that anyone who violates any online terms of service agreement is committing a felony. Drop the F bomb on World of Warcraft? Felony.
In their zeal to punish Evans for emotionally abusing a little girl, I'm afraid the DOJ is on a path that will end up criminalizing trivial infractions of dense legalese that most people don't even bother to read.
Ha, I found this on Wikipedia, attributed to Marcus J. Ranum -
...the rubber-hose technique of cryptanalysis. (in which a rubber hose is applied forcefully and frequently to the soles of the feet until the key to the cryptosystem is discovered, a process that can take a surprisingly short time and is quite computationally inexpensive)
Most Pirates I have heard about download it becasue they aren't sure about it, and paying 60 bucks for something you can't return is a little much.
On the Internet they have these things called "game reviews." What happens is, people play the game, then write about what it is like, and post it on their website. I have found that reading these "game reviews" is a less illegal way of learning about a game before buying it.
If using a false name on the Internet becomes a crime, then it is absolutely a First Amendment issue. Slashdot allows you to publish anonymously, but it is the exception rather than the rule. Most blog sites require you to create a username. You don't get a "Post Anonymously" box to check. If it becomes a legal requirement for your username to reflect your actual identity, then your freedom to speak without fear of retaliation will be infringed. Now, it's true that this woman horribly abused her ability to create an alternate identity, but if she is punished, it should be for what she did with that identity, not the fact that she created it.
In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995) the US Supreme Court held that the freedom to publish anonymously is protected by the First Amendment:
Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation - and their ideas from suppression - at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.... The State may, and does, punish fraud directly. But it cannot seek to punish fraud indirectly by indiscriminately outlawing a category of speech, based on its content, with no necessary relationship to the danger sought to be prevented.
I admit, I'm at a loss on how Lane's fraud can be punished directly. My first thought was try her for (psychological) child abuse, or maybe under some kind of anti-harassment statute. I wasn't able to find anything that seemed to fit. Any ideas?
I work in the defense industry which uses exactly the model you describe - pay private industry to develop products for the government. I can tell you the bureaucratic overhead is enormous, and the Money Spent to Products Produced ratio is extremely poor. My favorite example is the Comanche helicopter program. Again, I strongly suspect that textbooks funded by the government would not be low-cost alternatives at all. I also strongly suspect that they will end up being inferior to privately funded textbooks. If the adoption of the government texts were optional, no school in their right mind would buy these expensive, inferior products -- which is not to say that no school would buy them.
Your other argument, that biasing would only a real problem in history / civics books seems to imply that this would be no big deal. I beg to differ. I think it is only through knowledge of our past mistakes that we can grow as a society. Using government funds to write textbooks would open them even further than they already are to every piss ant congressman and shady special interest group obscuring the past mistakes that reflect poorly on them. Legislators from Georgia would try to minimize the amount of space given to the black lynchings that occurred in their state after the Civil War. The NRA and the gun control lobbyists would squabble over the interpretation and presentation of the Second Amendment. Over time, our textbooks would minimize more and more of our past questionable behavior, like the textbooks in Japan.
I'm not sure I like the idea of the government being the one to decide what my child learns in school. I know they do already to an extent with standardized tests, but actually letting government write the textbooks seems dangerous. It seems like it would lead to a lot of sugar coating of history. Also, I'm pretty sure we'd find "the cost of the paper" to be pretty expensive. Government is incapable of doing things cheaply.
A president is an elected official. I suppose the US will be setting our next president in November. It may or may not be sad.
However, this doesn't set a precedent either. Our country has always held searches conducted at the border to a lesser standard of suspicion.
On 31 July 1789, the 1st Congress enacted the first customs statute. Section 24 of the statute granted customs officials full power and authority to enter and search any ship or vessel that they suspect contain concealed goods subject to taxes. This was in contrast to the "warrent upon cause to suspect" required to search a house, store, or building. It is significant that the congress that made this distinction between searches at the border and searches elsewhere is the same congress that later drafted the Fourth Amendment.
Relevant Supreme Court cases: UNITED UNITED STATES V. MONTOYA DE HERNANDEZ, 473 U. S. 531 (1985): "Consistently, therefore, with Congress' power to protect the Nation by stopping and examining persons entering this country, the Fourth Amendment's balance of reasonableness is qualitatively different at the international border than in the interior. Routine searches of the persons and effects of entrants are not subject to any requirement of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or warrant, [Footnote 1] and first-class mail may be opened without a warrant on less than probable cause, Ramsey, supra. Automotive travelers may be stopped at fixed checkpoints near the border without individualized suspicion, even if the stop is based largely on ethnicity, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 562-563 (1976), and boats on inland waters with ready access to the sea may be hailed and boarded with no suspicion whatever. United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, supra."
UNITED STATES V. RAMSEY, 431 U. S. 606 (1977): "That searches made at the border, pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border should, by now, require no extended demonstration."
The city should use a squadron of UAVs to provide real-time 24/7 coverage of the entire area. They should also stream the UAV feeds in real time over the web so that any citizen has access to them. Keep the video in publicly available archives. That way the police can use them to track drug dealers, and citizens can use them to keep an eye out for police brutality. I'm not sure how to keep drug dealers from tracking the police. Maybe delay the public release of the videos by 2 hours or so. Any ideas?
I love how the students who created this blog chose the ditsy valley girl stereotype to convey their message, and stuck with the persona 'till the bitter end
Oddly enough, I have found some references on the Internet to a technology which may be able to counter devices like this. Supposedly the US Military currently issues this equipment to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to help defeat noise-related threats. Does anybody know if this technology really exists, or is it just science fiction?
Slashdot Mirror
...would be a good name for a band.
I strongly suspect that these guys are the ultimate trolls. I think "Flat Earth" is a giant exercise in keeping a straight face.
The problem is, Evans isn't being tried for saying mean things to a little girl. That's kind of despicable, but it's not really a crime, so the DOJ had to come up with something else. So they used the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to put her on trial for violating the MySpace terms of service. I agree that if she is convicted it would be bad for the rest of us because of the precedent it would set. It will mean that anyone who violates any online terms of service agreement is committing a felony. Drop the F bomb on World of Warcraft? Felony. In their zeal to punish Evans for emotionally abusing a little girl, I'm afraid the DOJ is on a path that will end up criminalizing trivial infractions of dense legalese that most people don't even bother to read.
62 75 74 20 75 72 32 20 3a 29
...the rubber-hose technique of cryptanalysis. (in which a rubber hose is applied forcefully and frequently to the soles of the feet until the key to the cryptosystem is discovered, a process that can take a surprisingly short time and is quite computationally inexpensive)
it was true. Then nVidia could focus on debugging their Vista video card drivers
I'm not sure you can hold up one bad review website as representative of all game reviews.
Most Pirates I have heard about download it becasue they aren't sure about it, and paying 60 bucks for something you can't return is a little much.
On the Internet they have these things called "game reviews." What happens is, people play the game, then write about what it is like, and post it on their website. I have found that reading these "game reviews" is a less illegal way of learning about a game before buying it.
If using a false name on the Internet becomes a crime, then it is absolutely a First Amendment issue. Slashdot allows you to publish anonymously, but it is the exception rather than the rule. Most blog sites require you to create a username. You don't get a "Post Anonymously" box to check. If it becomes a legal requirement for your username to reflect your actual identity, then your freedom to speak without fear of retaliation will be infringed. Now, it's true that this woman horribly abused her ability to create an alternate identity, but if she is punished, it should be for what she did with that identity, not the fact that she created it.
I admit, I'm at a loss on how Lane's fraud can be punished directly. My first thought was try her for (psychological) child abuse, or maybe under some kind of anti-harassment statute. I wasn't able to find anything that seemed to fit. Any ideas?
...could use more officers with the ability to realistically assess their own weaknesses. Have you considered applying for Officer Candidate School?
...you'd have people doinking each other willy nilly in the streets. Chaos!
don't get hysterical.
that's just what they want you to think
...Chairman and CEO, Recording Industry Association of America.
I work in the defense industry which uses exactly the model you describe - pay private industry to develop products for the government. I can tell you the bureaucratic overhead is enormous, and the Money Spent to Products Produced ratio is extremely poor. My favorite example is the Comanche helicopter program. Again, I strongly suspect that textbooks funded by the government would not be low-cost alternatives at all. I also strongly suspect that they will end up being inferior to privately funded textbooks. If the adoption of the government texts were optional, no school in their right mind would buy these expensive, inferior products -- which is not to say that no school would buy them. Your other argument, that biasing would only a real problem in history / civics books seems to imply that this would be no big deal. I beg to differ. I think it is only through knowledge of our past mistakes that we can grow as a society. Using government funds to write textbooks would open them even further than they already are to every piss ant congressman and shady special interest group obscuring the past mistakes that reflect poorly on them. Legislators from Georgia would try to minimize the amount of space given to the black lynchings that occurred in their state after the Civil War. The NRA and the gun control lobbyists would squabble over the interpretation and presentation of the Second Amendment. Over time, our textbooks would minimize more and more of our past questionable behavior, like the textbooks in Japan.
I'm not sure I like the idea of the government being the one to decide what my child learns in school. I know they do already to an extent with standardized tests, but actually letting government write the textbooks seems dangerous. It seems like it would lead to a lot of sugar coating of history. Also, I'm pretty sure we'd find "the cost of the paper" to be pretty expensive. Government is incapable of doing things cheaply.
NBC has recently activated a broadcast flag in its news studios. This large red flag is raised whenever the cameras are rolling to prevent newscasters blurting out obscenities on live TV.
A president is an elected official. I suppose the US will be setting our next president in November. It may or may not be sad.
However, this doesn't set a precedent either. Our country has always held searches conducted at the border to a lesser standard of suspicion.
On 31 July 1789, the 1st Congress enacted the first customs statute. Section 24 of the statute granted customs officials full power and authority to enter and search any ship or vessel that they suspect contain concealed goods subject to taxes. This was in contrast to the "warrent upon cause to suspect" required to search a house, store, or building. It is significant that the congress that made this distinction between searches at the border and searches elsewhere is the same congress that later drafted the Fourth Amendment.
Relevant Supreme Court cases:
UNITED UNITED STATES V. MONTOYA DE HERNANDEZ, 473 U. S. 531 (1985): "Consistently, therefore, with Congress' power to protect the Nation by stopping and examining persons entering this country, the Fourth Amendment's balance of reasonableness is qualitatively different at the international border than in the interior. Routine searches of the persons and effects of entrants are not subject to any requirement of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or warrant, [Footnote 1] and first-class mail may be opened without a warrant on less than probable cause, Ramsey, supra. Automotive travelers may be stopped at fixed checkpoints near the border without individualized suspicion, even if the stop is based largely on ethnicity, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 562-563 (1976), and boats on inland waters with ready access to the sea may be hailed and boarded with no suspicion whatever. United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, supra."
UNITED STATES V. RAMSEY, 431 U. S. 606 (1977): "That searches made at the border, pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border should, by now, require no extended demonstration."
See also: the Border Search Exception
The city should use a squadron of UAVs to provide real-time 24/7 coverage of the entire area. They should also stream the UAV feeds in real time over the web so that any citizen has access to them. Keep the video in publicly available archives. That way the police can use them to track drug dealers, and citizens can use them to keep an eye out for police brutality. I'm not sure how to keep drug dealers from tracking the police. Maybe delay the public release of the videos by 2 hours or so. Any ideas?
True dat. There are limits, of course, but the military values honesty over absolute squeaky cleanness when handing out security clearances.
I hereby pronounce you SANE.
Um... I don't think that's a persona...
Oddly enough, I have found some references on the Internet to a technology which may be able to counter devices like this. Supposedly the US Military currently issues this equipment to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to help defeat noise-related threats. Does anybody know if this technology really exists, or is it just science fiction?
"Premium 56K Dial Up Internet Access"