Sorry, I don't buy it. In my experience, the greatest impediment to effective policing isn't the tools they have available, it's laziness, stupidity and territoriality. I'll be the first to tell you there's incredibly good cops...I know several. But a lot of police would rather see a law enacted that utterly destroyed one of your rights than spend 15 minutes getting exactly the same results "the hard way".
And as for "having my cake and eating it too, you've really, really got it wrong if you think I value safety above freedom. Freedom is always paid for in blood. The ugly difference in today's world is that it's often innocent blood that gets spilled. Doesn't matter. You still have to make the choice.
Your example is perhaps a better one than you realize. The police already have everything they need to catch Joe with the machete. They're also very, very territorial and notoriously slow to share information with other jurisdictions. If you think breaking down barriers that were specifically erected to protect the civil rights of law-abiding civilians will help with that situation, you're dreaming. If I may paraphrase your closing remark, "That's not basic police work...it's Orwell."
... if the government is allowed to get away with this, the terrorists have won.
It's extremely difficult to take over a country where everything is decentralized and/or chaotic. You might inflict damage on one spot, but all the others just keep cooking along. US problems in Iraq are a good example of this.
Conversely, a society where every detail of every citizen's life is available in a centralized database (which is conveniently located in the same place as a strong central government) virtually begs to be taken over. You have only to take over the brain, and the rest of the body politic just keeps obliviously going about its business. The only difference is that there's a new boss raking in the profits.
And to all those jackasses who like to say, "If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of", I'd simply ask in return, "Are you really stupid enough to believe the information a government collects on you is always accurate?"
These dipshits can't locate 10 million illegal aliens, and they found out the Berlin Wall was coming down on the evening news. But you trust them to notice you're not the same guy as the one with a similar name and SIN who likes to rob banks half way across the country?
If somebody doesn't put some reins on these bastards right quick, we're going to find out there's worse things than losing a city or two to terrorist action.
You're preaching to the choir, my friend. I personally sent an e-mail and following letter to Harper on the bill, and I can see Toronto across the southwestern end of Lake Ontario from where I live (Stoney Creek). And if you listen to CBC Radio 1, you've heard me or my e-mails on a few call-in shows.
Cheers, neighbor!
"Yes, Billy, it's true. The United States wasn't always a fascist dictatorship. Actually, the proper term is oligarchy, but I won't bore you with all that stuff now. Anyway, there was a time when the people in office actually cared, some more than others, about the ideals that made it a good place to live. And, no, there was no invasion. Our people just gave it all away, a little at a time, by always voting for politicians who promised to make the country a safe place for children and kittens. It's safe now, Billy...just as long as you do exactly as you're told."
I really wish I could give that answer without reaching the obvious conclusion that the outlet isn't 100% confident of their own data, or their interpretation of it. Which also, of course, brings their honesty into question.
It would be so much easier to deal effectively with the flood of information we're responsible for if advocates for one position or another were more interested in being fair than in persuading you to accept their views. I think both of us are more interested in deciding an issue based on objective evidence rather than what feels right. It's easier to do that when you can have some reasonable assurance that you aren't being led to a particular conclusion by a carefully-selected dataset.
What I'd REALLY like to see in a televised debate is for the moderator to have staff available to do real-time context and fact checks. Then he could cry "bullshit" on a participant who was taking liberties. Wouldn't that be fun! Can you imagine if some of those weasels actually had to stick to objective truth rather than their twisted version of it?
There's actually a pretty good reason for having a good, old-fashioned uproar whenever something like this is proposed. It's called a trial balloon, and the reason it's floated is so the government of the day can judge the level of outrage they'll have to deal with if they try to pass a similar law. The usual method is to propose something as ridiculous as this, then work hard to enact a less draconian alternative that still manages to undermine civil liberties in a big way. The non-thinking majority of drones then nod their heads wisely and say, "Wow, we really dodged a bullet on that one, didn't we."
Not that I disagree with you about how much fun it is to ridicule these fascist half-wits, mind you. There's no rule that says you can't do something valuable and have a huge laugh at the same time.
You might want to do a little more reading on global warming. There's so many signs pointing in the same direction from so many branches of science that it's getting pretty hard to ignore all the evidence. Gore's movie barely scratches the surface, and oversimplifies to the point of inaccuracy in order to be accessible to a lay audience.
Bottom line: If the scientist isn't competent in a relevant field and doesn't have a good record of publication in refereed journals, he's full of crap.
When it turns out that torture, murder, intimidation and incarceration can't change the facts, a major religion of the day finally tries to repair its reputation by acknowledging one of the scientists who rubbed their noses in reality...four centuries late.
Something to remember when a modern would-be theocracy attempts to use its power to deny reality in American labs and classrooms. Science moves on, leaving the morons behind.
...a fundamentalist regime that doesn't much like free thought, free association or free speech. I bet ol' George Bush can't make up his mind whether to bomb them or hug them. And would anybody like to take a bet on whether Yahoo served the bloggers up to Iran's secret police on a platter?
by guerrilla marketing to the social fabric vastly outweighs any possible social benefit it could bestow. People practicing it should be wiped out of business without mercy or restraint. For society to work, we have to routinely extend a certain level of trust to people we don't know personally. When that trust is abused by people trying to sneak their products in front of your face with lies and misrepresentation, one of the pillars of society is undermined.
I always thought if I was one of the people aggressively solicited by those actors who were marketing cameras under the guise of needing help to take a picture, I'd have decked the creep when I found out what he was up to, and smashed his camera into tiny little pieces.
...who makes law on this side of the planet, all you need do is take an objective look at how indifferent governments and financial institutions are to identity theft. If somebody gets hold of your personal information, no matter whose fault it was, good luck if you expect a lot of help fixing the damage.
Canada's Royal Bank just sent around an amended customer agreement for people who bank on-line. They've refused to accept responsibility for quite a range of problems in this area, even if those problems are caused by the bank's negligence. Your choice, of course, is to quit using on-line banking. If you haven't already got an account there or some compelling reason to open one, I'd advise you to avoid this bank like the plague.
Some security problems aren't all that high on the big boys' lists, even in that "post-9-11 world" they love to talk about when they're stripping away another civil liberty.
This seems to fit in nicely with the MarsDirect idea, which revolves around having a lot of the infrastructure for a manned mission already in place before the astronauts leave Earth. I'd flat-out love to see us take the first real step off the planet before I croak.
We'll have to do it sooner or later, anyway. Why not now?
Maybe not, but they could probably stop you from screaming out the wrong name during an intimate moment with that questionable member of the opposite sex.
I think it's still illegal to drive a motor vehicle through my town after dark unless two men bearing lanterns walk in front of it. Does this mean that could change soon?
...a few hours afterward is immeasurably worse. The only thing I can even conceive of that might even be in the ballpark would have been dead in a swamp for at least a week and send hyenas away gagging.
I don't entirely disagree with you, but I can think of a very good reason for having that post on this forum. It points out how difficult it is for those of us who make a living from graphics and photography to fight against the outright theft of our work. In today's market, a web presence is an absolute necessity. And the reasons why you want to put samples of your best work out there are too obvious to mention. You don't want to totally destroy the impact of your work by using an overpowering watermark, either.
There's not too many of us who would object to somebody taking our work and using it for wallpaper, or circulating it among a few friends. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere, and this guy seems to have done a good job of it. He's far from the first artist to have his work stolen by thugs with deep pockets and a willingness to commit perjury. The news that he beat the bastards is a real encouragement to the rest of us to put up a fight when it's our day in the barrel. If he wants to strut a bit over the win, I don't mind throwing a few rose petals his way.
I hope they didn't spend a huge amount of money on this research. Unless you're the rankest amateur, your character will probably survive until you get into a fairly impossible situation. So basically, you're 100% focussed, concentrating, fingers going crazy on whatever control mechanism you're using. I almost guarantee the last thing you did as that final bad guy popped up and you couldn't get your sights on him in time was pound on the fire button in a futile attempt to do the impossible. Then, all of a sudden, you're done. You take a deep breath, blink a few times, roll your shoulders, relax all those cramped muscles and maybe reach for your beer.
Wouldn't that pretty much account for whatever readings they're getting? Or, to put it a little less elegantly, "I got your 'intriguing aesthetic question' right here".
I'm pretty sure the video my girlfriend made of me chasing her around the apartment dressed as Captain Cocktastic doesn't actually violate any laws (There's nothing on the books in Canada about good taste as far as I know).
On the other hand, I doubt whether having it posted on the internet would help my political career all that much, if I had one. Unless I was running in Toronto/Rosedale, of course.
Not only do I agree 100%, but I'd like to add that so-called "whistle-blower" legislation has proved to be fairly useless in protecting the employee from the wrath of the corporation or government they blow the whistle on. And some of those organizations have long memories and ethics that would make a vulture puke.
It's easy to sit on the sidelines and make black-and-white moral judgments about this kind of situation. It's not so simple if you're in the middle of one, and wondering what good a big damages pay-out will do 10 years after your kids lost the college fund and your wife left because she got sick of the on-going legal battle.
Maybe some of those small differences are reflected, for example, in whether one twin makes more efficient use of a particular protein than the other which in turn leads to tiny differences in how they make out on an identical diet, or with exposure to the same environment.
I wonder if this might in turn be reflected in small physiological differences that explain why people who know twins well can usually tell them apart when they're together.
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Sorry, I don't buy it. In my experience, the greatest impediment to effective policing isn't the tools they have available, it's laziness, stupidity and territoriality. I'll be the first to tell you there's incredibly good cops...I know several. But a lot of police would rather see a law enacted that utterly destroyed one of your rights than spend 15 minutes getting exactly the same results "the hard way".
And as for "having my cake and eating it too, you've really, really got it wrong if you think I value safety above freedom. Freedom is always paid for in blood. The ugly difference in today's world is that it's often innocent blood that gets spilled. Doesn't matter. You still have to make the choice.
Your example is perhaps a better one than you realize. The police already have everything they need to catch Joe with the machete. They're also very, very territorial and notoriously slow to share information with other jurisdictions. If you think breaking down barriers that were specifically erected to protect the civil rights of law-abiding civilians will help with that situation, you're dreaming. If I may paraphrase your closing remark, "That's not basic police work...it's Orwell."
Wish I could give you an answer. I'm Canadian, and I don't much like the direction my country is heading in at the moment, either.
I've forgotten what our Prime Minister looks like, it's been so long since he pulled his face out from between Bush's ass cheeks.
It's extremely difficult to take over a country where everything is decentralized and/or chaotic. You might inflict damage on one spot, but all the others just keep cooking along. US problems in Iraq are a good example of this.
Conversely, a society where every detail of every citizen's life is available in a centralized database (which is conveniently located in the same place as a strong central government) virtually begs to be taken over. You have only to take over the brain, and the rest of the body politic just keeps obliviously going about its business. The only difference is that there's a new boss raking in the profits.
And to all those jackasses who like to say, "If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of", I'd simply ask in return, "Are you really stupid enough to believe the information a government collects on you is always accurate?"
These dipshits can't locate 10 million illegal aliens, and they found out the Berlin Wall was coming down on the evening news. But you trust them to notice you're not the same guy as the one with a similar name and SIN who likes to rob banks half way across the country?
If somebody doesn't put some reins on these bastards right quick, we're going to find out there's worse things than losing a city or two to terrorist action.
You're preaching to the choir, my friend. I personally sent an e-mail and following letter to Harper on the bill, and I can see Toronto across the southwestern end of Lake Ontario from where I live (Stoney Creek). And if you listen to CBC Radio 1, you've heard me or my e-mails on a few call-in shows. Cheers, neighbor!
"Yes, Billy, it's true. The United States wasn't always a fascist dictatorship. Actually, the proper term is oligarchy, but I won't bore you with all that stuff now. Anyway, there was a time when the people in office actually cared, some more than others, about the ideals that made it a good place to live. And, no, there was no invasion. Our people just gave it all away, a little at a time, by always voting for politicians who promised to make the country a safe place for children and kittens. It's safe now, Billy...just as long as you do exactly as you're told."
"Maybe someone can answer me this one..."
I really wish I could give that answer without reaching the obvious conclusion that the outlet isn't 100% confident of their own data, or their interpretation of it. Which also, of course, brings their honesty into question.
It would be so much easier to deal effectively with the flood of information we're responsible for if advocates for one position or another were more interested in being fair than in persuading you to accept their views. I think both of us are more interested in deciding an issue based on objective evidence rather than what feels right. It's easier to do that when you can have some reasonable assurance that you aren't being led to a particular conclusion by a carefully-selected dataset.
What I'd REALLY like to see in a televised debate is for the moderator to have staff available to do real-time context and fact checks. Then he could cry "bullshit" on a participant who was taking liberties. Wouldn't that be fun! Can you imagine if some of those weasels actually had to stick to objective truth rather than their twisted version of it?
There's actually a pretty good reason for having a good, old-fashioned uproar whenever something like this is proposed. It's called a trial balloon, and the reason it's floated is so the government of the day can judge the level of outrage they'll have to deal with if they try to pass a similar law. The usual method is to propose something as ridiculous as this, then work hard to enact a less draconian alternative that still manages to undermine civil liberties in a big way. The non-thinking majority of drones then nod their heads wisely and say, "Wow, we really dodged a bullet on that one, didn't we."
Not that I disagree with you about how much fun it is to ridicule these fascist half-wits, mind you. There's no rule that says you can't do something valuable and have a huge laugh at the same time.
Sorry, I thought you were picking your examples to indicate a lack of attention to accuracy rather than excessive attention to results.
You might want to do a little more reading on global warming. There's so many signs pointing in the same direction from so many branches of science that it's getting pretty hard to ignore all the evidence. Gore's movie barely scratches the surface, and oversimplifies to the point of inaccuracy in order to be accessible to a lay audience.
Bottom line: If the scientist isn't competent in a relevant field and doesn't have a good record of publication in refereed journals, he's full of crap.
I did read some other comments, actually. And, no, I'm not Galileo. Unlike your brain, I'm alive.
When it turns out that torture, murder, intimidation and incarceration can't change the facts, a major religion of the day finally tries to repair its reputation by acknowledging one of the scientists who rubbed their noses in reality...four centuries late.
Something to remember when a modern would-be theocracy attempts to use its power to deny reality in American labs and classrooms. Science moves on, leaving the morons behind.
...a fundamentalist regime that doesn't much like free thought, free association or free speech. I bet ol' George Bush can't make up his mind whether to bomb them or hug them. And would anybody like to take a bet on whether Yahoo served the bloggers up to Iran's secret police on a platter?
by guerrilla marketing to the social fabric vastly outweighs any possible social benefit it could bestow. People practicing it should be wiped out of business without mercy or restraint. For society to work, we have to routinely extend a certain level of trust to people we don't know personally. When that trust is abused by people trying to sneak their products in front of your face with lies and misrepresentation, one of the pillars of society is undermined.
I always thought if I was one of the people aggressively solicited by those actors who were marketing cameras under the guise of needing help to take a picture, I'd have decked the creep when I found out what he was up to, and smashed his camera into tiny little pieces.
Canada's Royal Bank just sent around an amended customer agreement for people who bank on-line. They've refused to accept responsibility for quite a range of problems in this area, even if those problems are caused by the bank's negligence. Your choice, of course, is to quit using on-line banking. If you haven't already got an account there or some compelling reason to open one, I'd advise you to avoid this bank like the plague.
Some security problems aren't all that high on the big boys' lists, even in that "post-9-11 world" they love to talk about when they're stripping away another civil liberty.
This seems to fit in nicely with the MarsDirect idea, which revolves around having a lot of the infrastructure for a manned mission already in place before the astronauts leave Earth. I'd flat-out love to see us take the first real step off the planet before I croak.
We'll have to do it sooner or later, anyway. Why not now?
Maybe not, but they could probably stop you from screaming out the wrong name during an intimate moment with that questionable member of the opposite sex.
may I suggest that NASA replace their somewhat embarrassing "Faster, better, cheaper" motto with "Closer, cheaper, deeper"?
There's a really bad smell around here all of a sudden. That deal, maybe? Google could clear things up pretty fast with a bit of disclosure.
I think it's still illegal to drive a motor vehicle through my town after dark unless two men bearing lanterns walk in front of it. Does this mean that could change soon?
Yippee!
...a few hours afterward is immeasurably worse. The only thing I can even conceive of that might even be in the ballpark would have been dead in a swamp for at least a week and send hyenas away gagging.
I don't entirely disagree with you, but I can think of a very good reason for having that post on this forum. It points out how difficult it is for those of us who make a living from graphics and photography to fight against the outright theft of our work. In today's market, a web presence is an absolute necessity. And the reasons why you want to put samples of your best work out there are too obvious to mention. You don't want to totally destroy the impact of your work by using an overpowering watermark, either.
There's not too many of us who would object to somebody taking our work and using it for wallpaper, or circulating it among a few friends. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere, and this guy seems to have done a good job of it. He's far from the first artist to have his work stolen by thugs with deep pockets and a willingness to commit perjury. The news that he beat the bastards is a real encouragement to the rest of us to put up a fight when it's our day in the barrel. If he wants to strut a bit over the win, I don't mind throwing a few rose petals his way.
I hope they didn't spend a huge amount of money on this research. Unless you're the rankest amateur, your character will probably survive until you get into a fairly impossible situation. So basically, you're 100% focussed, concentrating, fingers going crazy on whatever control mechanism you're using. I almost guarantee the last thing you did as that final bad guy popped up and you couldn't get your sights on him in time was pound on the fire button in a futile attempt to do the impossible. Then, all of a sudden, you're done. You take a deep breath, blink a few times, roll your shoulders, relax all those cramped muscles and maybe reach for your beer.
Wouldn't that pretty much account for whatever readings they're getting? Or, to put it a little less elegantly, "I got your 'intriguing aesthetic question' right here".
I'm pretty sure the video my girlfriend made of me chasing her around the apartment dressed as Captain Cocktastic doesn't actually violate any laws (There's nothing on the books in Canada about good taste as far as I know).
On the other hand, I doubt whether having it posted on the internet would help my political career all that much, if I had one. Unless I was running in Toronto/Rosedale, of course.
Not only do I agree 100%, but I'd like to add that so-called "whistle-blower" legislation has proved to be fairly useless in protecting the employee from the wrath of the corporation or government they blow the whistle on. And some of those organizations have long memories and ethics that would make a vulture puke.
It's easy to sit on the sidelines and make black-and-white moral judgments about this kind of situation. It's not so simple if you're in the middle of one, and wondering what good a big damages pay-out will do 10 years after your kids lost the college fund and your wife left because she got sick of the on-going legal battle.
Maybe some of those small differences are reflected, for example, in whether one twin makes more efficient use of a particular protein than the other which in turn leads to tiny differences in how they make out on an identical diet, or with exposure to the same environment.
I wonder if this might in turn be reflected in small physiological differences that explain why people who know twins well can usually tell them apart when they're together.