Yes, everything I said was speculative. No, I don't think we're actually in a simulation. That does not mean that such a thing has been proven impossible. Until it is, it cannot be dismissed as a theory to explain observations that don't fit existing theories.
Science only deals in what we can see and observe
That is not limited to what we can see or observe right now. Perhaps a future observation will reveal discrepancies in We could not observe the Higgs boson until long after its existence was theorized. In fact, I think your original post said it well:
But given that we have no evidence to suggest we are, any assumptions around the notion that we are (or may be) are pretty much useless to us unless we can figure out the gaps in the simulation.
But where do we look for those gaps? What experiments should we run to determine whether that speculative instant communication is possible? We must consider the ramifications of such speculation, find a testable observation, then try it. That is curiosity. That is what drives discovery.
Your "proof" only illustrates one particular case, which does not necessarily apply to the question at hand.
It is indeed like Plato's cave, and the same lesson applies: Occam's razor is not always correct. Sometimes there are really weird truths, and with enough experiments, they can be discerned. Perhaps that MP3 player takes a little longer between songs while it tries to randomize the list. With a long enough recording of the playback at a high enough precision, the slight delay can be noticed, and that analyzing nerd can announce the mode with certainty.
The fundamental basis of all science is that we are wrong. Aristotle was wrong, Newton was wrong, Einstein was wrong, Hawking was wrong, and every scientist today is probably wrong about something. The scientific method allows us to become right. Each successive scientist makes more and better observations than his predecessors, notices what observations don't match the old law's predictions, theorizes new hypotheses to fit existing data, then experiments to test the hypothesis. Eventually, a new theory replaces the old one for situations where the new (and probably more complex) theory is necessary.
In your thought experiment, you said "relying on your ears only". This is as much a mistake as saying that time is measured on a wristwatch only, which is, of course, far too imprecise to test the effects of relativity at attainable speeds. As technology improves, so does our ability to measure and observe, giving us more data on which to base our hypotheses, such as the few-cycle timing differences in the playback. There may be just such a slight defect in our universe, that would open up a whole new field of study in trans-universal physics. There also may not be. We haven't observed such a thing yet, but we should not be so arrogant as to assume that our current knowledge is absolutely all-encompassing.
doesn't seem to have any application to understanding our universe.
If we are a simulation, we may be able to discern exactly what we're simulating, and why. Theology aside, even discovering that our universe functions like a simulation may allow us to seek out and utilize aspects of the simulation that are useful to us.
Consider, for example, if we could simply access an information store outside our universe from anywhere within it. Even a single bit being accessible would offer the ability to have near-instant communications with other planets, or perhaps even other stars. If we could push matter out of or into the universe, we'd have an effective teleportation mechanism.
Science is all about figuring out the rules of our universe. Being inside a simulation means there are other, possibly different, rules outside, so breaking out means we have new capabilities that are impossible within our universe.
First, we'll hire a new engineer to figure out exactly what the effects of our years-old design are. Then we'll have to hire a tech writer to write the documentation, a lawyer to make sure we aren't opening ourselves up to licensing or patent disputes, a customer service rep to answer questions about whether this will work with regular DVI gear, and a librarian to keep track of all the bullshit standards that have better alternatives before they're even published. Of course, all these new staff will add to the facilities workload, so the cost of doing business will rise further.
In return, we get a slightly happier third-party manufacturer of a cheap adapter. No new sales, and certainly no new major supply contracts, but at least the users are happy, until they find something else to complain about.
I suspect there's a licensing agreement somewhere saying they must conform to the DVI spec, including its lack of audio support, but if they count the HDMI adapter as a part of the whole system, they're just using a DVI-like connector in the middle of an HDMI system.
Another cause could be avoiding liability. If they send out audio by default and it breaks some other device, they're at fault. If the other device asked for it (by the presence of the special chip), it should be able to handle it just fine.
As yet another possible reason, the audio-over-DVI system could have been designed as a feature, that AMD simply abandoned. Since they've done the work implementing it in their chips and adapters, it costs almost nothing more for them to keep using it, probably even costing less than it would to support separate product lines with and without the capability. However, they may not want to run the extra expense of publishing and supporting yet another standard, when HDMI is already showing wide adoption as the next standard for everything.
Mine are steel with a light coating of silica sand, because I carry them in my pocket, which always seems to have a bit of sand in it, ready to scratch the softer steel and get caught in the impression.
A downmod on this is a shame. Allow me to rephrase in a less inflammatory tone:
Lawyers are not necessary in every situation, but should be readily consulted as soon as they are needed, and not a moment later. Lawyers, as a profession, exist solely to provide advice. If you have the slightest doubt about the law's application, you should call a lawyer immediately. On the other hand, if you're comfortable with the situation and understand well what the risks are, getting a lawyer is often an unnecessary expense.
Unfortunately, lawyers' time is expensive, because they are highly-skilled and highly-educated professionals. There are few good solutions to this problem, but some cities do have legal assistance charities that have lawyers on staff for basic needs, and often receive pro-bono assistance from other local lawyers. Look into such an organization, and be able to call them when needed.
To avoid the hassle and expense of a lawyer, the other option is to learn the law yourself. There are several good resources online (my favorite is the Illustrated Guide to Law, which provides a good summary of laws in an easily-accessible format, with an explanation of why the law is how it is), and the local library is an excellent place to get information on local ordinances, as well.
Once you've put in the time to learn your rights (your actual rights, not the exaggerations and myths so often spouted on forums), you have little to worry about when talking to police. Most importantly, you should not (and have no obligation to) commit to anything you are not absolutely certain of - and you should be certain of very little. Even if you witnessed a crime directly, for example, and are sure you saw someone in a black hoodie, that may have been an illusion from the lighting, or your mind may be unconsciously be associating the real perpetrator (who wore a black hoodie) with someone else wearing a blue coat. Unfortunately, even our own memories are terribly unreliable, and we often can't realize it.
For this reason, you should be extremely cautious when phrasing your statements. Phrases such as "as I recall" and "I think that..." are vitally important for marking those parts of your statement as unreliable. If you don't know something, say so rather than speculating. Give written statements whenever possible, so there can be no misunderstandings about what you say. Never intentionally lie, and be aware of the officers' time constraints. His job is to gather evidence about the event, not to hear you ramble on about how you know your rights and are intent on exercising every last one of them.
You are not legally required to assist in an investigation, but you are not legally allowed to hinder it, instead.
Please take a civics course. The prosecutor is not actually duty-bound to seek some personal idea of "justice". Rather, the prosecutor's job is to lay out a theory of the events, and enumerate what crimes he thinks were committed, that he can thinks he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
The "justice" the executive branch (including prosecutors) is supposed to seek is procedural. Searches should have probable cause, witnesses should be safe from intimidation, and the accused should be treated with dignity and respect - not that this always happens by any means, but it should. The prosecutor should also disclose to the accused exactly what the charges are, and what the options are for sentencing, should the case be proven.
It's at that point that the accused must absolutely understand what's going on. Yes, Swartz could actually have gotten 35 years in prison, and the prosecutor was right to present that as a fact to be considered during negotiation. Swartz's counsel should then have informed him about sentences in similar cases, and what of the charges were likely to actually be proven. This is why anyone receiving any sort of legal threat (such as from patent trolls or SCO), regardless of their personal legal knowledge, should seek an expert in that particular legal area.
A good example of the prosecutor's duty to truth, not justice, is the Zimmerman case. That article, written by a lawyer, illustrates well how regardless of what's actually "justice", the prosecutor's goal should be to simply prove what is provable. Moral judgement is the role of the judicial branch. Executing proper procedure is the role of the executive branch.
They could have blown up British ships, or just started slaughtering British soldiers, or gathered guerrillas to immediately start a war. That'd be quick, but ineffective because their adversary was so much stronger.
Communications have changed, but human nature hasn't. We still take a long time to change our minds.
From 1895 until the 1950s, "patience, compromise, and steady change" did jack shit and only served to retard progress.
I'd bet the NAACP would beg to differ. They were manipulating the civil rights movement since their founding in 1909, highlighting every injustice to build public support, eventually making the protests and demonstrations of the '50s effective. They were the ones who actively chose not to emphasize earlier bus disobedience, until Rosa Parks presented the perfect candidate.
thoughts and cultural memes get entrenched... and the only thing that'll force them out is conflict.
Absolutely true, but it doesn't have to be a conflict with the law, or anything putting people's lives or livelihoods at risk. Often the most effective conflict for changing opinions is to violate prejudice. In my activist work, I've often encountered ex-bigots whose epiphanies came when they had judged someone inferior as usual, only to find a short while later that they had something major in common. That opens the door to realizing the injustice in their own position, and that is what causes a desire for change.
Bradley Manning couldn't've released his information piecemeal because between the volume of data
...so release less data. Does the world really need several gigabytes of mundane diplomatic notes? If the goal is really to highlight military abuses, why not simply enumerate several incidents and include only related evidence? That's enough to get journalists started, without putting military officials on defense.
regardless of what the law says there's nothing right...
The law isn't about what's right. The law is about what's legal. Reconciling any difference in the two is the job of the courts, which Swartz was in the process of. Yes, it is wrong that it's usually a several-year process, but that's a matter for another discussion.
about fifty years in jail for a few minutes in a closet
Swartz wasn't charged with "occupation of a closet". He was charged with wire fraud and computer abuse, for bypassing several layers of security to get access to data, which he did repeatedly. Each charge carries a short penalty, and all together, he was facing a legal maximum of 35 years and a million-dollar fine, as specified in the laws. Personally, I think it's unlikely he would have received much jail time at all, and the fine would be greatly reduced as well, because the total maximums are excessive for what was essentially automatic.
The charges are what the prosecutor thinks they can prove, at most. The judge has the ability and the duty to assign a fair punishment based on what the jury says was actually proven.
then constant legal issues to the point where you kill yourself just to escape
The real problem, then, is the lack of mental health care. I've been through the legal system myself, and yes, it's a constant nuisance as the lawyers go back and forth with motions and counter-motions, and every week or so has a new hearing where the same stories are retold, and precise definitions of words are debated seemingly without end. This is a problem that should be changed, but it's also not going to happen overnight.
what's really being said, be it your intent or not...
...so you don't actually care what I'm saying, but you've made up your mind what I'm saying anyway. That's prejudice. You should change that.
...is to just shut up, bend over, and hope it'll be over quicker this time.
Hardly. I'm saying to plan your actions and consider the full consequences, knowing the worst case. Go ahead and fight - in fact I encourage it - but do so carefully, to maximize the lasting impact of the price you pay. Ghandi suffered for years for pea
Maybe if they had, they would have written essays for years prior to the Declaration of Independence, slowly building public support and highlighting the injustice of the British rule. Following the official channels, they should have sent representatives to England to attempt to have their interests heard, even knowing that their requests would be denied. After the first stirrings of independence, it would probably have taken at least ten years before support was widespread enough to actually go ahead with a revolution.
Messengers delivering bad news should know that the recipients will be mad, and it's naive to assume that all recipients will be civil. Their trainers should have warned them to watch out for any signs of aggression, and to deliver their message with carefully-planned tact so as to minimize risk.
The biggest tragedy about the actions leading to Aaron Swartz's death is that he's become a martyr for a ridiculous cause. Swartz once worked with a friend of mine, and from what I've been told, "naive" isn't too far outside his personality. I'm told he was an idealist, with little regard for consequences, and often a blind faith that things would work out with good triumphing over evil. Unfortunately, he was stuck living in the real world.
While I agree on the principles of his actions, that science should be freely available, the actions he took to accomplish his goals were asinine. Wantonly breaking the rules of the institution you're trying to change will not actually bring about change; it just makes your opponents mad. When your opponents have vastly superior power, that's a pretty bad idea.
What makes civil disobedience an effective form of protest is that the laws broken are trivial, but the trials must be public, so the whole affair is a PR campaign. Few remember that Rosa Parks' disobedience was not the first of its kind, but rather just the best candidate to go through a full (and widely-publicized) trial. By Parks becoming a celebrity over an injustice, the whole civil rights movement gained popularity.
What I see now is a disturbing trend of irresponsible lawbreaking, under the banner of "protesting". Websites are hacked, contracts are ignored, and people with small problems feel entitled to disrupt all normal business until somebody takes care of them. Somewhere, people have forgotten that change comes slowly.
Bradley Manning could have released his information in small quantities to human rights advocates. Edward Snowden could have sent information anonymously to the EFF. There are responsible channels for changing the world, but they are slow and often frustrating. Swartz had already founded Demand Progress to fight various forms of online censorship; adding scientific lockdown to that campaign would not have taken much effort, and would be much more likely to succeed than going after JSTOR directly.
Can we as a society please stop this madness? Let's stop glorifying leaks, stop vilifying our opponents, and stop encouraging concerned citizens to become martyred heroes. Instead, let's promote patience, compromise, and a steady societal change, rather than an overnight revolution.
Somebody has to approve the waivers, and those small airports still usually get federal funding, sometimes being the only reason they stay operational. I've helped organize an air show before, and there's a ton of paperwork that gets shuffled off to the federal government for approval. Even if the organizations involved are essential enough to stay operational, they still may not have the ability to spend money on frivolous things like approving air shows.
No, but much of their PR functions are. Who's going to clean up after the crowd coming in for the show? Who's going to stand out there at the table talking about airplane specs? And how are they justifying those expenses as "essential"?
Since it's the same government that paves our roads, funds our schools, cleans our water, forecasts the weather, explores space, prosecutes our criminals, and extinguishes our fires, yes. We may as well add "heals the injured" and "cures the sick" to that as well.
Ours is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Sure, we've got problems - big ones - but we are not doomed. The Great Experiment continues.
Government contracts typically come with a large list of requirements (on the order of 500 pages), almost entirely written by a committee with no idea what they're actually looking for. They'll require silly things like "must weigh over 1750 pounds" or "[a Windows XP system] must be accessible via VT-100 terminal", or my personal favorite, "all components [including electronics] must be manufactured in the United States or France".
I'm told, though I haven't seen it myself, that the requirements aren't actually all enforced, but instead provide an escape mechanism the government can pull out when it wants to add features that weren't in the original plan. They'll ask for the new feature, and if the contractor refuses, they'll void the contract and claim it's because of all the missing required features. They do usually also append funding for the new features, but it's
With so many requirements, of course a few key details like stress testing get missed. The political folks writing the specs don't always think about such trivialities. That means it's more difficult to get funding for such testing, and you certainly shouldn't expect government help.
The problem with load testing is that it's as much an exercise in testing resources as in the application's efficiency. When it comes time to simulate a million users' load on the server, Amazon or Google could just spin up a few thousand virtual machines on their spare capacity, and simulate a few thousand users on each one. Smaller companies have to make do with what they have - probably a few old servers running a few hundred simulations. Combined with the forced feature creep and short-but-we-can-extend-it-and-blame-you deadlines, I'm always a little surprised when a government website runs at all.
Alright, I'll bite. One of those headlines is preposterous enough to warrant clicking... I wonder how exactly one pulls off a "private air" anything, what with the FAA, airports, and various safety groups all being government bodies...
Okay, that wasn't too bad, just run-of-the-mill ignorance. It's private aircraft flying from a Marine base, and with no budget the military can't legally authorize the expense of opening the base and running the show. As expected, the article makes a big deal about a wholly-expected consequence. Maybe someone will point this out in the comments...
OH DEAR GOD GET ME BACK TO SLASHDOT!
My fellow Slashdotters, you folks are jackasses sometimes. So am I, I'm sure... but I thank you all heartily for at least being intelligent asshats.
Slashdot Mirror
Because then they'd have to support it, document it, and carry it forward to future cards when some big customer relies on such functionality.
Yes, everything I said was speculative. No, I don't think we're actually in a simulation. That does not mean that such a thing has been proven impossible. Until it is, it cannot be dismissed as a theory to explain observations that don't fit existing theories.
Science only deals in what we can see and observe
That is not limited to what we can see or observe right now. Perhaps a future observation will reveal discrepancies in We could not observe the Higgs boson until long after its existence was theorized. In fact, I think your original post said it well:
But given that we have no evidence to suggest we are, any assumptions around the notion that we are (or may be) are pretty much useless to us unless we can figure out the gaps in the simulation.
But where do we look for those gaps? What experiments should we run to determine whether that speculative instant communication is possible? We must consider the ramifications of such speculation, find a testable observation, then try it. That is curiosity. That is what drives discovery.
Your "proof" only illustrates one particular case, which does not necessarily apply to the question at hand.
It is indeed like Plato's cave, and the same lesson applies: Occam's razor is not always correct. Sometimes there are really weird truths, and with enough experiments, they can be discerned. Perhaps that MP3 player takes a little longer between songs while it tries to randomize the list. With a long enough recording of the playback at a high enough precision, the slight delay can be noticed, and that analyzing nerd can announce the mode with certainty.
The fundamental basis of all science is that we are wrong. Aristotle was wrong, Newton was wrong, Einstein was wrong, Hawking was wrong, and every scientist today is probably wrong about something. The scientific method allows us to become right. Each successive scientist makes more and better observations than his predecessors, notices what observations don't match the old law's predictions, theorizes new hypotheses to fit existing data, then experiments to test the hypothesis. Eventually, a new theory replaces the old one for situations where the new (and probably more complex) theory is necessary.
In your thought experiment, you said "relying on your ears only". This is as much a mistake as saying that time is measured on a wristwatch only, which is, of course, far too imprecise to test the effects of relativity at attainable speeds. As technology improves, so does our ability to measure and observe, giving us more data on which to base our hypotheses, such as the few-cycle timing differences in the playback. There may be just such a slight defect in our universe, that would open up a whole new field of study in trans-universal physics. There also may not be. We haven't observed such a thing yet, but we should not be so arrogant as to assume that our current knowledge is absolutely all-encompassing.
doesn't seem to have any application to understanding our universe.
If we are a simulation, we may be able to discern exactly what we're simulating, and why. Theology aside, even discovering that our universe functions like a simulation may allow us to seek out and utilize aspects of the simulation that are useful to us.
Consider, for example, if we could simply access an information store outside our universe from anywhere within it. Even a single bit being accessible would offer the ability to have near-instant communications with other planets, or perhaps even other stars. If we could push matter out of or into the universe, we'd have an effective teleportation mechanism.
Science is all about figuring out the rules of our universe. Being inside a simulation means there are other, possibly different, rules outside, so breaking out means we have new capabilities that are impossible within our universe.
Okay, let's publish instead.
First, we'll hire a new engineer to figure out exactly what the effects of our years-old design are. Then we'll have to hire a tech writer to write the documentation, a lawyer to make sure we aren't opening ourselves up to licensing or patent disputes, a customer service rep to answer questions about whether this will work with regular DVI gear, and a librarian to keep track of all the bullshit standards that have better alternatives before they're even published. Of course, all these new staff will add to the facilities workload, so the cost of doing business will rise further.
In return, we get a slightly happier third-party manufacturer of a cheap adapter. No new sales, and certainly no new major supply contracts, but at least the users are happy, until they find something else to complain about.
Every real Wookiee I know has indeed trained with Star Wars games.
It can't. The complaint is that a non-standard feature is only enabled for known non-standard adapters. The story is flamebait.
Because DVI isn't supposed to carry audio.
I suspect there's a licensing agreement somewhere saying they must conform to the DVI spec, including its lack of audio support, but if they count the HDMI adapter as a part of the whole system, they're just using a DVI-like connector in the middle of an HDMI system.
Another cause could be avoiding liability. If they send out audio by default and it breaks some other device, they're at fault. If the other device asked for it (by the presence of the special chip), it should be able to handle it just fine.
As yet another possible reason, the audio-over-DVI system could have been designed as a feature, that AMD simply abandoned. Since they've done the work implementing it in their chips and adapters, it costs almost nothing more for them to keep using it, probably even costing less than it would to support separate product lines with and without the capability. However, they may not want to run the extra expense of publishing and supporting yet another standard, when HDMI is already showing wide adoption as the next standard for everything.
And ow much money does it cost to let people in, tend to them while they're there, then clean up when they leave?
Anybody who notices that they've started leaking badly, or throwing parts around, or otherwise misbehaving.
These are big machines operating in the real world. I, for one, am glad that they can be shut off quickly, though they shouldn't need to be.
Mine are steel with a light coating of silica sand, because I carry them in my pocket, which always seems to have a bit of sand in it, ready to scratch the softer steel and get caught in the impression.
A downmod on this is a shame. Allow me to rephrase in a less inflammatory tone:
Lawyers are not necessary in every situation, but should be readily consulted as soon as they are needed, and not a moment later. Lawyers, as a profession, exist solely to provide advice. If you have the slightest doubt about the law's application, you should call a lawyer immediately. On the other hand, if you're comfortable with the situation and understand well what the risks are, getting a lawyer is often an unnecessary expense.
Unfortunately, lawyers' time is expensive, because they are highly-skilled and highly-educated professionals. There are few good solutions to this problem, but some cities do have legal assistance charities that have lawyers on staff for basic needs, and often receive pro-bono assistance from other local lawyers. Look into such an organization, and be able to call them when needed.
To avoid the hassle and expense of a lawyer, the other option is to learn the law yourself. There are several good resources online (my favorite is the Illustrated Guide to Law, which provides a good summary of laws in an easily-accessible format, with an explanation of why the law is how it is), and the local library is an excellent place to get information on local ordinances, as well.
Once you've put in the time to learn your rights (your actual rights, not the exaggerations and myths so often spouted on forums), you have little to worry about when talking to police. Most importantly, you should not (and have no obligation to) commit to anything you are not absolutely certain of - and you should be certain of very little. Even if you witnessed a crime directly, for example, and are sure you saw someone in a black hoodie, that may have been an illusion from the lighting, or your mind may be unconsciously be associating the real perpetrator (who wore a black hoodie) with someone else wearing a blue coat. Unfortunately, even our own memories are terribly unreliable, and we often can't realize it.
For this reason, you should be extremely cautious when phrasing your statements. Phrases such as "as I recall" and "I think that..." are vitally important for marking those parts of your statement as unreliable. If you don't know something, say so rather than speculating. Give written statements whenever possible, so there can be no misunderstandings about what you say. Never intentionally lie, and be aware of the officers' time constraints. His job is to gather evidence about the event, not to hear you ramble on about how you know your rights and are intent on exercising every last one of them.
You are not legally required to assist in an investigation, but you are not legally allowed to hinder it, instead.
Please take a civics course. The prosecutor is not actually duty-bound to seek some personal idea of "justice". Rather, the prosecutor's job is to lay out a theory of the events, and enumerate what crimes he thinks were committed, that he can thinks he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
The "justice" the executive branch (including prosecutors) is supposed to seek is procedural. Searches should have probable cause, witnesses should be safe from intimidation, and the accused should be treated with dignity and respect - not that this always happens by any means, but it should. The prosecutor should also disclose to the accused exactly what the charges are, and what the options are for sentencing, should the case be proven.
It's at that point that the accused must absolutely understand what's going on. Yes, Swartz could actually have gotten 35 years in prison, and the prosecutor was right to present that as a fact to be considered during negotiation. Swartz's counsel should then have informed him about sentences in similar cases, and what of the charges were likely to actually be proven. This is why anyone receiving any sort of legal threat (such as from patent trolls or SCO), regardless of their personal legal knowledge, should seek an expert in that particular legal area.
A good example of the prosecutor's duty to truth, not justice, is the Zimmerman case. That article, written by a lawyer, illustrates well how regardless of what's actually "justice", the prosecutor's goal should be to simply prove what is provable. Moral judgement is the role of the judicial branch. Executing proper procedure is the role of the executive branch.
They could have blown up British ships, or just started slaughtering British soldiers, or gathered guerrillas to immediately start a war. That'd be quick, but ineffective because their adversary was so much stronger.
Communications have changed, but human nature hasn't. We still take a long time to change our minds.
From 1895 until the 1950s, "patience, compromise, and steady change" did jack shit and only served to retard progress.
I'd bet the NAACP would beg to differ. They were manipulating the civil rights movement since their founding in 1909, highlighting every injustice to build public support, eventually making the protests and demonstrations of the '50s effective. They were the ones who actively chose not to emphasize earlier bus disobedience, until Rosa Parks presented the perfect candidate.
thoughts and cultural memes get entrenched ... and the only thing that'll force them out is conflict.
Absolutely true, but it doesn't have to be a conflict with the law, or anything putting people's lives or livelihoods at risk. Often the most effective conflict for changing opinions is to violate prejudice. In my activist work, I've often encountered ex-bigots whose epiphanies came when they had judged someone inferior as usual, only to find a short while later that they had something major in common. That opens the door to realizing the injustice in their own position, and that is what causes a desire for change.
Bradley Manning couldn't've released his information piecemeal because between the volume of data
...so release less data. Does the world really need several gigabytes of mundane diplomatic notes? If the goal is really to highlight military abuses, why not simply enumerate several incidents and include only related evidence? That's enough to get journalists started, without putting military officials on defense.
regardless of what the law says there's nothing right...
The law isn't about what's right. The law is about what's legal. Reconciling any difference in the two is the job of the courts, which Swartz was in the process of. Yes, it is wrong that it's usually a several-year process, but that's a matter for another discussion.
about fifty years in jail for a few minutes in a closet
Swartz wasn't charged with "occupation of a closet". He was charged with wire fraud and computer abuse, for bypassing several layers of security to get access to data, which he did repeatedly. Each charge carries a short penalty, and all together, he was facing a legal maximum of 35 years and a million-dollar fine, as specified in the laws. Personally, I think it's unlikely he would have received much jail time at all, and the fine would be greatly reduced as well, because the total maximums are excessive for what was essentially automatic.
The charges are what the prosecutor thinks they can prove, at most. The judge has the ability and the duty to assign a fair punishment based on what the jury says was actually proven.
then constant legal issues to the point where you kill yourself just to escape
The real problem, then, is the lack of mental health care. I've been through the legal system myself, and yes, it's a constant nuisance as the lawyers go back and forth with motions and counter-motions, and every week or so has a new hearing where the same stories are retold, and precise definitions of words are debated seemingly without end. This is a problem that should be changed, but it's also not going to happen overnight.
what's really being said, be it your intent or not...
...so you don't actually care what I'm saying, but you've made up your mind what I'm saying anyway. That's prejudice. You should change that.
...is to just shut up, bend over, and hope it'll be over quicker this time.
Hardly. I'm saying to plan your actions and consider the full consequences, knowing the worst case. Go ahead and fight - in fact I encourage it - but do so carefully, to maximize the lasting impact of the price you pay. Ghandi suffered for years for pea
Maybe if they had, they would have written essays for years prior to the Declaration of Independence, slowly building public support and highlighting the injustice of the British rule. Following the official channels, they should have sent representatives to England to attempt to have their interests heard, even knowing that their requests would be denied. After the first stirrings of independence, it would probably have taken at least ten years before support was widespread enough to actually go ahead with a revolution.
Oh, right... that's exactly what happened.
Messengers delivering bad news should know that the recipients will be mad, and it's naive to assume that all recipients will be civil. Their trainers should have warned them to watch out for any signs of aggression, and to deliver their message with carefully-planned tact so as to minimize risk.
The biggest tragedy about the actions leading to Aaron Swartz's death is that he's become a martyr for a ridiculous cause. Swartz once worked with a friend of mine, and from what I've been told, "naive" isn't too far outside his personality. I'm told he was an idealist, with little regard for consequences, and often a blind faith that things would work out with good triumphing over evil. Unfortunately, he was stuck living in the real world.
While I agree on the principles of his actions, that science should be freely available, the actions he took to accomplish his goals were asinine. Wantonly breaking the rules of the institution you're trying to change will not actually bring about change; it just makes your opponents mad. When your opponents have vastly superior power, that's a pretty bad idea.
What makes civil disobedience an effective form of protest is that the laws broken are trivial, but the trials must be public, so the whole affair is a PR campaign. Few remember that Rosa Parks' disobedience was not the first of its kind, but rather just the best candidate to go through a full (and widely-publicized) trial. By Parks becoming a celebrity over an injustice, the whole civil rights movement gained popularity.
What I see now is a disturbing trend of irresponsible lawbreaking, under the banner of "protesting". Websites are hacked, contracts are ignored, and people with small problems feel entitled to disrupt all normal business until somebody takes care of them. Somewhere, people have forgotten that change comes slowly.
Bradley Manning could have released his information in small quantities to human rights advocates. Edward Snowden could have sent information anonymously to the EFF. There are responsible channels for changing the world, but they are slow and often frustrating. Swartz had already founded Demand Progress to fight various forms of online censorship; adding scientific lockdown to that campaign would not have taken much effort, and would be much more likely to succeed than going after JSTOR directly.
Can we as a society please stop this madness? Let's stop glorifying leaks, stop vilifying our opponents, and stop encouraging concerned citizens to become martyred heroes. Instead, let's promote patience, compromise, and a steady societal change, rather than an overnight revolution.
Look, I know you're trying to be funny, but you're just showing your ignorance, and it's really getting in the way of the joke.
The word is "marijuani".
...Aided significantly by federal money.
Somebody has to approve the waivers, and those small airports still usually get federal funding, sometimes being the only reason they stay operational. I've helped organize an air show before, and there's a ton of paperwork that gets shuffled off to the federal government for approval. Even if the organizations involved are essential enough to stay operational, they still may not have the ability to spend money on frivolous things like approving air shows.
No, but much of their PR functions are. Who's going to clean up after the crowd coming in for the show? Who's going to stand out there at the table talking about airplane specs? And how are they justifying those expenses as "essential"?
Since it's the same government that paves our roads, funds our schools, cleans our water, forecasts the weather, explores space, prosecutes our criminals, and extinguishes our fires, yes. We may as well add "heals the injured" and "cures the sick" to that as well.
Ours is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Sure, we've got problems - big ones - but we are not doomed. The Great Experiment continues.
Government contracts typically come with a large list of requirements (on the order of 500 pages), almost entirely written by a committee with no idea what they're actually looking for. They'll require silly things like "must weigh over 1750 pounds" or "[a Windows XP system] must be accessible via VT-100 terminal", or my personal favorite, "all components [including electronics] must be manufactured in the United States or France".
I'm told, though I haven't seen it myself, that the requirements aren't actually all enforced, but instead provide an escape mechanism the government can pull out when it wants to add features that weren't in the original plan. They'll ask for the new feature, and if the contractor refuses, they'll void the contract and claim it's because of all the missing required features. They do usually also append funding for the new features, but it's
With so many requirements, of course a few key details like stress testing get missed. The political folks writing the specs don't always think about such trivialities. That means it's more difficult to get funding for such testing, and you certainly shouldn't expect government help.
The problem with load testing is that it's as much an exercise in testing resources as in the application's efficiency. When it comes time to simulate a million users' load on the server, Amazon or Google could just spin up a few thousand virtual machines on their spare capacity, and simulate a few thousand users on each one. Smaller companies have to make do with what they have - probably a few old servers running a few hundred simulations. Combined with the forced feature creep and short-but-we-can-extend-it-and-blame-you deadlines, I'm always a little surprised when a government website runs at all.
Alright, I'll bite. One of those headlines is preposterous enough to warrant clicking... I wonder how exactly one pulls off a "private air" anything, what with the FAA, airports, and various safety groups all being government bodies...
Okay, that wasn't too bad, just run-of-the-mill ignorance. It's private aircraft flying from a Marine base, and with no budget the military can't legally authorize the expense of opening the base and running the show. As expected, the article makes a big deal about a wholly-expected consequence. Maybe someone will point this out in the comments...
OH DEAR GOD GET ME BACK TO SLASHDOT!
My fellow Slashdotters, you folks are jackasses sometimes. So am I, I'm sure... but I thank you all heartily for at least being intelligent asshats.