Why is it only lies that can be malicious? Even truth can be distorted by careful word choice. Let's look at all the inflammatory rhetoric:
the nice (but obviously naive) folks
that big, expensive, rather slowly-delivered project
My U of M gopher blood boils with shame.
who has been a plaintiff in a lawsuit against JACC
misconduct, (fistfight, cough cough)
controversial figure
consternation was followed by seething anger
Repeated and specific evidence in Hennepin County District Court
Jerry Moore was involved with a high-profile fraudulent mortgage at 1564 Hillside Ave. N.
The collective judgment of decent people... is that Jerry Moore is the last person who should be working on this kind of task
actively involved in mortgage fraud
Get rid of him and we will talk.
UROC has just lost major cred with North Minneapolis leadership.
involved with mortgage fraud
UROC has never had the creditability of CURA
Why is there a UROC at all
stupid bulls***t?"
How about just "the folks" and "that big project"? Why keep reiterating the "involvement", without the counterpoint that Moore was never charged, or even implicated in actual wrongdoing? Hoff's post goes beyond simply "not being nice", and wanders deep into the realm of "blatantly offensive."
Such offense is not necessary. Another blog manages to present more facts about Jerry Moore, without the attacks. That blog post provides an opportunity for the university to make a press release explaining their decision. There are no ultimatums, no excessive insults, and not even avoidance of the fact that Moore was never charged with wrongdoing. If Moore were still fired, it'd be much harder to present that post as the direct cause.
The suit was for "tortious interference". The jury found that Hoff intended to interfere with Moore's employment, rather than to just present facts to the public. The ultimatum of "get rid of him and we will talk", the pressure on UROC and the U of M, and the repetitive rhetoric all contribute to making that intent clear.
I remember playing with banana-flinging gorillas in the early nineties. By the late nineties, I remember playing a catapult game where the target would collapse according to a fairly decent physics engine. Where's the innovation, exactly?
The judge in that case was fired, because he made several other bad rulings, too. Did you expect a bunch of humans to somehow be perfect, just because they hold a particular office?
John Hoff didn't just "inform people". He sought to enrage people. His blog reads like a crusade for hatred of anyone who's ever done something wrong. No forgiveness, no conscience, and no concern for actually promoting the "justice" he claims to seek.
The responsible thing to do would be to alert the research group of the conflict of interest, then let it go. Maybe Jerry Moore would still have gotten fired, and that'd be the end of it. That's not what happened, though. Instead, Hoff's blog post also attacks Moore's employers, calling them naive and questioning their credibility. It's pretty clear that his intent was to bias any critical review, and embarrass the research group into firing Moore, and that's illegal.
Maybe, as you implied, the research group was aware of Moore's history. Maybe it's what they wanted, but just couldn't take the bad publicity John Hoff was stirring up. Or perhaps Moore is repentant for his past wrongdoings, and is trying to set things right? Hoff never gave Moore a fair chance at redemption.
...because by the age of 25, you've done all the inventing and creation you're going to, and all educational efforts should be spent on just the children.
I'm not suggesting a subsidy for farmers, but for transport. With proper regulation, the subsidy could improve incentives for distribution within the United States, leaving developing nations to handle themselves.
On the other side of the equation, countries that care about their farmers could raise tariffs on imported food, to reduce the amount of foreign crops going into their country. To do that, though, the government has to be certain that its own food supplies can adequately feed the population. That's not really common among developing nations, and certainly not feasible unless better transport improves distribution. That goes back to my original point: make transport profitable. I frankly don't care if it's a government subsidy for transport, an NGO leading road-improvement projects, or a fleet of flying monkeys genetically engineered by Rupert Murdoch. Poor transportation leads to a poor distribution of resources, and I want to see that fixed.
You suggest the government manage food distribution, but that would only be worse. With a transport subsidy, the government partially pays for shipping. With a government-managed distribution, the government has to purchase food, transport it, and distribute it to those in need, paying for everything and trying not to act as a monopoly against actual companies. Thanks, but I'd prefer to keep the bureaucracy detached.
I did not say it was "simple". I said it was the "simplest" (though that should be followed by "that I know of"). Subsidies put downward pressure on the price of whatever good they target, because participating companies can make a decent profit, while selling the goods at lower prices. Subsidizing transport forces food's final price to be lower, hopefully enough that even families with low incomes can afford it.
As an example of the situation, let's consider Ghana. In the southern half of the country, there is a food surplus, due to the Atlantic ocean, Lake Volta, and generally heavier rainfall. In the northern half, the farms can't produce enough food, due to winds from the Sahara and a lack of large water sources. Major northbound roads, such as the one from Kintampo to Tamale, have heavy tolls. Those roads are also in poor condition, and vehicles often have to be repaired after only a few crossings. There are fewer big cities in the north, and more small villages, so less wealthy people as well. Food brought to the north will sell, but it's not as profitable as keeping it in the south. Bear in mind that this disparity is in a country roughly the same size as Wyoming. A government-backed reduction in the transport cost would make the northern villages into feasible markets for southern suppliers.
The same situation applies to areas of the United States as well. On average, 1 in 6 Americans don't have secure food supplies. Where Ghana has long treacherous roads, America has mountains and sheer distance. There are areas, like my hometown, that simply can't afford enough food. I grew up less than a mile from a large grain farm, but it was primarily low-grade corn... good for turning into biofuel, but not suitable for human consumption, and certainly not directly contributing to local food stability.
A well-regulated subsidy of transport would improve the availability of food in small towns like mine. Yes, it'd require a lot of people to manage the system, but it's the simplest solution I've heard yet.
And where, exactly, are these hungry people supposed to get the energy to walk halfway across the country? And where should they go? And if they can't afford a stable food supply in the United States, how will they be able to afford it anywhere else nearby? After giving up their current housing and whatever low-income job they have, will they be able to find a better job after enduring a several-month hike? Can they really be expected to sever all family and community ties for that trek, as well?
It's not that America's hungry have absolutely no food, but rather just less than they need. They could just be living on unemployment benefits, the kindness of strangers, or just a fast-food job that barely covers the outstanding student loans while they work through college. Leaving would just make things worse.
Whereas right now, corn productions is managed efficiently, and the starving people all get food... right.
Starvation is mostly a logistics and political problem. Low-grade corn is cheap near where it's produced, but that's generally not where people are starving. Moving the food to the people costs money, which raises the final cost beyond what the people can afford. A government could subsidize that cost, but that kind of action is often systematically abused and easily spun by political opponents as "propping up those greedy transport companies".
Basic economic analysis tells us that with starving people needing food, but only being able to pay a lower amount for it, a smart distribution company will simply ignore those people in favor of markets that will turn a profit. The simplest solution is to make starving areas profitable, either with a subsidy or by lowering the cost of transport.
Why not? I've had an axe head fly off the handle, a blender motor burn out, and a GPS receiver take 30 minutes to figure out my location. The respective workarounds are to make sure nobody else is near the axe, keep a wire whisk handy, and know how to use a map & compass.
Using secondary solutions is a basic part of robust engineering. With regards to GPS, each piece of GPS-using technology can use an appropriate backup system. For something that only needs to know its approximate position, like tracking a shipped package, the cellular phone network can be used. For ships, LORAN may be acceptable (if not for the fact that it's being shut down in North America). For trains or other vehicles on a fixed route, local beacons or even visual recognition may be sufficient. For all such applications, it may even be acceptable to simply use another satellite navigation system in the future. Regardless, all engineers working on a GPS-using project should be asking themselves "what happens if this fails?" constantly. The results of not asking such questions can be lethal.
Even knowing the destination is enough for filtering. Most home users have dynamic addresses, and those are usually recorded in spam blacklists (to filter email from viruses). It's a very small leap to assume that a dynamic address is another home user, and if you're uploading a lot of data to them, it's probably file-sharing. Sure, there will be some false positives, but the ISP can just say "that's what you get for encrypting" and move on.
The limit is on upload bandwidth, so a peer-to-peer connection from someone within your same area - which should be faster - will now be slower. This means more connections to outside of the immediate area will be preferred because of their speed, increasing the amount of traffic going through the backbone routers. I don't think this measure will help much, but it will piss off some customers and make others pay more.
My point is to illustrate the utter misuse of the term "unconstitutional" as a mechanism to evoke rage. You seem to have missed that.
The Constitution grants the federal government the power to do effectively anything, if the legislature approves, under the "necessary and proper" clause. It has traditionally been interpreted to mean that whatever Congress feels is necessary and proper, is. The Supreme Court can declare a power to be unnecessary, but it'd require some better reason than "we don't like this."
Usually, those better reasons come from other sections of the Constitution, like the Bill of Rights, where the powers of government are expressly limited. That brings me back to my original question: Where is anything in the Constitution that would prohibit this search of public records?
"Gee, Mr. Legislator, there's 25 studies all saying that piracy is caused by teenagers' disrespect for the law, and only three saying it's caused by stupid decisions by the publishers... You should really support that bill for tougher piracy penalties."
compared to
"Look, Mr. Lobbyist, there's thirty studies from different organizations saying it's the publishers' greed causing piracy, and only 25 studies, all done by organizations funded by the BSA, RIAA and MPAA. Copyright's a civil matter, and I'm not going to waste more money criminalizing it. Do your own dirty work."
Government corruption accusations aside, the same ideas apply to media and the public at large. More studies from independent organizations are necessary to counteract the farcical studies from the cartels' think tanks. Yeah, it's a waste of money, but it's part of the fight.
Congress shall make no law infringing on something Slashdot users want. Actions not otherwise prohibited by law shall be forbidden if Slashdot users do not approve.
I jest, of course. There is no such amendment, so where exactly does the Constitution prohibit keeping mug shots as a matter of public record, or prohibit searching public records?
I'm aware of that. To rephrase, why would a law prohibiting recording be unconstitutional? To my knowledge, the U.S. Constitution does not say "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the recording of anything somebody feels they might want to use to their advantage later."
Generally, it's because those nations weren't built with car transit in mind. The United States is a child, as far as nations go. I spent a few months in a small town in Italy. There was a decent-sized grocery store every few blocks. I was in a rural village in Ghana, where you could walk across the whole town in 30 minutes, and it had two marketplaces!
The United States has had cars for almost half its life. Cities are built with shopping centers in a single place, because it's easy to just use a car to get there. Because the cities are designed that way, having a car is necessary for future generations. I's a vicious cycle, but "just add trains" won't fix anything.
There are some places in the US where life without a car is perfectly fine, such as Manhattan. Such places are busy enough that a car is impractical, so there is enough demand to support smaller, more frequent grocery stores. Those places are few enough that they can't provide an adequate generalization for the rest of the country, though.
A person is guilty of a class B felony if... without the consent of all parties to the communication, the person:
(a) Wilfully intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept, any telecommunication or oral communication;
That would require being an active citizen. It's much easier to just post on Slashdot talking about how elected officials are all corrupt and evil members of the Illuminati.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it only lies that can be malicious? Even truth can be distorted by careful word choice. Let's look at all the inflammatory rhetoric:
the nice (but obviously naive) folks
that big, expensive, rather slowly-delivered project
My U of M gopher blood boils with shame.
who has been a plaintiff in a lawsuit against JACC
misconduct, (fistfight, cough cough)
controversial figure
consternation was followed by seething anger
Repeated and specific evidence in Hennepin County District Court
Jerry Moore was involved with a high-profile fraudulent mortgage at 1564 Hillside Ave. N.
The collective judgment of decent people ... is that Jerry Moore is the last person who should be working on this kind of task
actively involved in mortgage fraud
Get rid of him and we will talk.
UROC has just lost major cred with North Minneapolis leadership.
involved with mortgage fraud
UROC has never had the creditability of CURA
Why is there a UROC at all
stupid bulls***t?"
How about just "the folks" and "that big project"? Why keep reiterating the "involvement", without the counterpoint that Moore was never charged, or even implicated in actual wrongdoing? Hoff's post goes beyond simply "not being nice", and wanders deep into the realm of "blatantly offensive."
Such offense is not necessary. Another blog manages to present more facts about Jerry Moore, without the attacks. That blog post provides an opportunity for the university to make a press release explaining their decision. There are no ultimatums, no excessive insults, and not even avoidance of the fact that Moore was never charged with wrongdoing. If Moore were still fired, it'd be much harder to present that post as the direct cause.
The suit was for "tortious interference". The jury found that Hoff intended to interfere with Moore's employment, rather than to just present facts to the public. The ultimatum of "get rid of him and we will talk", the pressure on UROC and the U of M, and the repetitive rhetoric all contribute to making that intent clear.
I remember playing with banana-flinging gorillas in the early nineties. By the late nineties, I remember playing a catapult game where the target would collapse according to a fairly decent physics engine. Where's the innovation, exactly?
The judge in that case was fired, because he made several other bad rulings, too. Did you expect a bunch of humans to somehow be perfect, just because they hold a particular office?
John Hoff didn't just "inform people". He sought to enrage people. His blog reads like a crusade for hatred of anyone who's ever done something wrong. No forgiveness, no conscience, and no concern for actually promoting the "justice" he claims to seek.
The responsible thing to do would be to alert the research group of the conflict of interest, then let it go. Maybe Jerry Moore would still have gotten fired, and that'd be the end of it. That's not what happened, though. Instead, Hoff's blog post also attacks Moore's employers, calling them naive and questioning their credibility. It's pretty clear that his intent was to bias any critical review, and embarrass the research group into firing Moore, and that's illegal.
Maybe, as you implied, the research group was aware of Moore's history. Maybe it's what they wanted, but just couldn't take the bad publicity John Hoff was stirring up. Or perhaps Moore is repentant for his past wrongdoings, and is trying to set things right? Hoff never gave Moore a fair chance at redemption.
...because by the age of 25, you've done all the inventing and creation you're going to, and all educational efforts should be spent on just the children.
I'm not suggesting a subsidy for farmers, but for transport. With proper regulation, the subsidy could improve incentives for distribution within the United States, leaving developing nations to handle themselves.
On the other side of the equation, countries that care about their farmers could raise tariffs on imported food, to reduce the amount of foreign crops going into their country. To do that, though, the government has to be certain that its own food supplies can adequately feed the population. That's not really common among developing nations, and certainly not feasible unless better transport improves distribution. That goes back to my original point: make transport profitable. I frankly don't care if it's a government subsidy for transport, an NGO leading road-improvement projects, or a fleet of flying monkeys genetically engineered by Rupert Murdoch. Poor transportation leads to a poor distribution of resources, and I want to see that fixed.
You suggest the government manage food distribution, but that would only be worse. With a transport subsidy, the government partially pays for shipping. With a government-managed distribution, the government has to purchase food, transport it, and distribute it to those in need, paying for everything and trying not to act as a monopoly against actual companies. Thanks, but I'd prefer to keep the bureaucracy detached.
I did not say it was "simple". I said it was the "simplest" (though that should be followed by "that I know of"). Subsidies put downward pressure on the price of whatever good they target, because participating companies can make a decent profit, while selling the goods at lower prices. Subsidizing transport forces food's final price to be lower, hopefully enough that even families with low incomes can afford it.
As an example of the situation, let's consider Ghana. In the southern half of the country, there is a food surplus, due to the Atlantic ocean, Lake Volta, and generally heavier rainfall. In the northern half, the farms can't produce enough food, due to winds from the Sahara and a lack of large water sources. Major northbound roads, such as the one from Kintampo to Tamale, have heavy tolls. Those roads are also in poor condition, and vehicles often have to be repaired after only a few crossings. There are fewer big cities in the north, and more small villages, so less wealthy people as well. Food brought to the north will sell, but it's not as profitable as keeping it in the south. Bear in mind that this disparity is in a country roughly the same size as Wyoming. A government-backed reduction in the transport cost would make the northern villages into feasible markets for southern suppliers.
The same situation applies to areas of the United States as well. On average, 1 in 6 Americans don't have secure food supplies. Where Ghana has long treacherous roads, America has mountains and sheer distance. There are areas, like my hometown, that simply can't afford enough food. I grew up less than a mile from a large grain farm, but it was primarily low-grade corn... good for turning into biofuel, but not suitable for human consumption, and certainly not directly contributing to local food stability.
A well-regulated subsidy of transport would improve the availability of food in small towns like mine. Yes, it'd require a lot of people to manage the system, but it's the simplest solution I've heard yet.
And where, exactly, are these hungry people supposed to get the energy to walk halfway across the country? And where should they go? And if they can't afford a stable food supply in the United States, how will they be able to afford it anywhere else nearby? After giving up their current housing and whatever low-income job they have, will they be able to find a better job after enduring a several-month hike? Can they really be expected to sever all family and community ties for that trek, as well?
It's not that America's hungry have absolutely no food, but rather just less than they need. They could just be living on unemployment benefits, the kindness of strangers, or just a fast-food job that barely covers the outstanding student loans while they work through college. Leaving would just make things worse.
Whereas right now, corn productions is managed efficiently, and the starving people all get food... right.
Starvation is mostly a logistics and political problem. Low-grade corn is cheap near where it's produced, but that's generally not where people are starving. Moving the food to the people costs money, which raises the final cost beyond what the people can afford. A government could subsidize that cost, but that kind of action is often systematically abused and easily spun by political opponents as "propping up those greedy transport companies".
Basic economic analysis tells us that with starving people needing food, but only being able to pay a lower amount for it, a smart distribution company will simply ignore those people in favor of markets that will turn a profit. The simplest solution is to make starving areas profitable, either with a subsidy or by lowering the cost of transport.
Why not? I've had an axe head fly off the handle, a blender motor burn out, and a GPS receiver take 30 minutes to figure out my location. The respective workarounds are to make sure nobody else is near the axe, keep a wire whisk handy, and know how to use a map & compass.
Using secondary solutions is a basic part of robust engineering. With regards to GPS, each piece of GPS-using technology can use an appropriate backup system. For something that only needs to know its approximate position, like tracking a shipped package, the cellular phone network can be used. For ships, LORAN may be acceptable (if not for the fact that it's being shut down in North America). For trains or other vehicles on a fixed route, local beacons or even visual recognition may be sufficient. For all such applications, it may even be acceptable to simply use another satellite navigation system in the future. Regardless, all engineers working on a GPS-using project should be asking themselves "what happens if this fails?" constantly. The results of not asking such questions can be lethal.
That is the first time in many years I've found such a comment funny. Well played!
Even knowing the destination is enough for filtering. Most home users have dynamic addresses, and those are usually recorded in spam blacklists (to filter email from viruses). It's a very small leap to assume that a dynamic address is another home user, and if you're uploading a lot of data to them, it's probably file-sharing. Sure, there will be some false positives, but the ISP can just say "that's what you get for encrypting" and move on.
The limit is on upload bandwidth, so a peer-to-peer connection from someone within your same area - which should be faster - will now be slower. This means more connections to outside of the immediate area will be preferred because of their speed, increasing the amount of traffic going through the backbone routers. I don't think this measure will help much, but it will piss off some customers and make others pay more.
My point is to illustrate the utter misuse of the term "unconstitutional" as a mechanism to evoke rage. You seem to have missed that.
The Constitution grants the federal government the power to do effectively anything, if the legislature approves, under the "necessary and proper" clause. It has traditionally been interpreted to mean that whatever Congress feels is necessary and proper, is. The Supreme Court can declare a power to be unnecessary, but it'd require some better reason than "we don't like this."
Usually, those better reasons come from other sections of the Constitution, like the Bill of Rights, where the powers of government are expressly limited. That brings me back to my original question: Where is anything in the Constitution that would prohibit this search of public records?
...replaced with something better.
Do you have something specific in mind that will do the same job as DNS, work reliably, and not require any entity like ICANN?
1050 miles per hour, at 1 foot per gallon.
Consider the following:
"Gee, Mr. Legislator, there's 25 studies all saying that piracy is caused by teenagers' disrespect for the law, and only three saying it's caused by stupid decisions by the publishers... You should really support that bill for tougher piracy penalties."
compared to
"Look, Mr. Lobbyist, there's thirty studies from different organizations saying it's the publishers' greed causing piracy, and only 25 studies, all done by organizations funded by the BSA, RIAA and MPAA. Copyright's a civil matter, and I'm not going to waste more money criminalizing it. Do your own dirty work."
Government corruption accusations aside, the same ideas apply to media and the public at large. More studies from independent organizations are necessary to counteract the farcical studies from the cartels' think tanks. Yeah, it's a waste of money, but it's part of the fight.
In fact, it's unconstitutional
Ah yes, the Zeroth Amendment...
Congress shall make no law infringing on something Slashdot users want. Actions not otherwise prohibited by law shall be forbidden if Slashdot users do not approve.
I jest, of course. There is no such amendment, so where exactly does the Constitution prohibit keeping mug shots as a matter of public record, or prohibit searching public records?
It gives all undefined powers to the states, and some (including New Hampshire) have chosen to stop you.
I'm aware of that. To rephrase, why would a law prohibiting recording be unconstitutional? To my knowledge, the U.S. Constitution does not say "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the recording of anything somebody feels they might want to use to their advantage later."
Generally, it's because those nations weren't built with car transit in mind. The United States is a child, as far as nations go. I spent a few months in a small town in Italy. There was a decent-sized grocery store every few blocks. I was in a rural village in Ghana, where you could walk across the whole town in 30 minutes, and it had two marketplaces!
The United States has had cars for almost half its life. Cities are built with shopping centers in a single place, because it's easy to just use a car to get there. Because the cities are designed that way, having a car is necessary for future generations. I's a vicious cycle, but "just add trains" won't fix anything.
There are some places in the US where life without a car is perfectly fine, such as Manhattan. Such places are busy enough that a car is impractical, so there is enough demand to support smaller, more frequent grocery stores. Those places are few enough that they can't provide an adequate generalization for the rest of the country, though.
As someone who simply doesn't listen to music, pirated or otherwise, I'm going to go with "no way in Hell".
unconstitutional
And where does the Constitution explicitly guarantee your right to record police officers without consent? I don't see that...
The Wiretap statute doesn't apply.
Why not?
A person is guilty of a class B felony if ... without the consent of all parties to the communication, the person:
(a) Wilfully intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept, any telecommunication or oral communication;
That would require being an active citizen. It's much easier to just post on Slashdot talking about how elected officials are all corrupt and evil members of the Illuminati.