Consider the alternative - Send people who dislike the president out to do diplomatic work?
Or you could just send the best people to do the job.
Remember the media fiasco when Powell and President Bush merely made conflicting statements?
Yes, because they were discussing whether or not the country was going to !@$@!# go to war!
It is simply not a good idea to look divided on issues when speaking on the international stage.
From the article:
The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations.
[...]
One nixed participant, who has been to many of these telecom meetings and who wants to remain anonymous, gave just $250 to the Democratic Party.
Yes, because if you give a paltry $250 to a Presidential campaign, you're going to create an international fiasco when you say that VoIP should have access to traditional 911 systems, or something like that. The President isn't going to be making any pronouncements from on high about these issues, so let's not get all breathless.
Let's call this for what it is: an administration that values loyalty first and actual job performance second, and has the time and energy to be really childish and petty about the issue.
If I publish a webpage and the state of Texas tells people that they are forbidden from using government-funded equipment to read my document because the state finds the content of my speech to be offensive, the state has abridged my First Amendment rights.
That is both false [...]
Wrong: Internet speech that is merely critical, annoying, offensive or demeaning enjoys constitutional protection.
and not relevent to what we were discussing.
See the supreme court decision about filters in libraries [cnn.com].
Right. How about linking to the Court decision itself rather than a half-assed CNN writeup? Two prior attempts to implement Internet filtering failed, in large part because they imposed child-like standards on all citizens. This law succeeded in large part because
Justice Kennedy concluded that if, as the Government represents, a librarian will unblock filtered material or disable the Internet software filter without significant delay on an adult user's request, there is little to [plaintiff's] case.
And it's irrelevant because they have not made any claim about the blocked content being offensive. Read the bill.
I did. It's short. And it imposed unconstitutional restraints on access to free speech. Similar laws have failed in other states. This is politicking, plain and simple.
Your sequence of steps fails at step two where they impose a restriction on what someone else can distribute. That is censorship.
"Censorship"... you keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means. And step #2 is merely imposing the same restrictions on companies as they place on government-operated ISPs (in my example). The work in my example originates in and around Hawaii, and is distributed from there. Therefore, by your logic, unless the government shuts down the source of distribution (i.e., the hosting center in Hawaii) they can prevent every other ISP in the U.S. from accessing that one ISP and not actually "censor" anything. By your logic, the government could actually take down that ISP, as long as there's a paper copy of the work somewhere. After all, (by your logic) they're not imposing a restriction on what that person is distributing, merely how they distribute their work.
You seem to want to force every bad/stupid/evil action by the state into the `censorship' box. This massively undrestimates the power of the state to be obnoxious.
You poor, naive person you. Since you're not American, though, and the topic under discussion is a subtlety of American law, I suppose it's understandable. See, here we have this thing called the Constitution. The first ten Amendments to that document are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment to our Constitution states
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
If I publish a webpage and the state of Texas tells people that they are forbidden -- not just unable, but able although explicitly forbidden -- from using government-funded equipment to read my document because the state finds the content of my speech to be offensive, the state has abridged by First Amendment rights.
If the state wants to put bandwidth caps on their equipment to keep down costs, that is a content-neutral way of limiting costs without violating the First Amendment. However, the second the state starts telling people that, although the content is available, the state is going to prohibit them from viewing that content using publically funded infrastructure, that's a violation of those rights.
Your simplistic view of "it's only censorship if the government prohibits or destroys all known copies from being distributed" is at odds with our Constitution. For example, let's say I'm in New York, and someone in Hawaii publishes a document that is an off-color critisism of the east cost of the U.S. At what point is it censorship if:
The State of New York prohibits all taxpayer-funded Internet Access Points from viewing this "obscene" content. I can still go to my home computer.
The State of New York passes a law requiring all companies wishing to serve as ISPs to prohibit citizens from viewing obscene content that is also unavailable from the taxpayer-funded content. After all, companies are chartered by state governments and operate within boundaries established by the state. No problem, I can still go to New Jersey to view this document.
Whoops, New Jersey has a similar law, and the Hawaii document is blocked, there, too.
Same with the rest of the continental 48 states.
OK, I really want to read this document, but since it's not available through any ISP in the lower 48 states (which are all modeled after the Texas WAP law and, according to you, are all legal) so it's time for me to get a plane ticket and head to Hawaii.
I'm in Hawaii. Dammit, they have the law, too. Time to track this guy down.
Yay, I finally got to read this document by flying from New York to Hawaii, tracking down the author, and visiting him in person to get a printed copy of the document.
Good thing the government didn't try to violate the rights of the author or of myself. Yay!
Since the federal government requires it for schools receiving certain funding, perhaps the same standard is being applied to the public spots because the same school kids could gain access to the public spots?
The courts have always walked a fine line between the Bill of Rights and giving school administrators the ability to teach students effectively. Public school students are subjected to other restrictions on their rights that would be horrible for the public at large. For example, school administrators have the right to randomly search any student's locker, backpack, and even their car, without cause. The courts are debating whether or not the schools are allowed to administer drug tests to any student at any time.
While this would be a horrendous violation of any other citizens' rights, the courts allow it for schools. It has nothing to do with "public spots". If that were the case, any police officer could approach any citizen at any time and root through their car, backpack, purse, briefcase, and force them to take a drug test at the nearest precinct station.
Even public library filtering schemes require that the libraries have a way to remove filters for adults, upon request. If Texas were going the same route, that means that they'd have to provide unfiltered access to truckers upon request, which I'm guessing won't make it into this law.
No material is being withheld from the citizens. Some information is being made available in one extra place.
Again, apples and oranges. Two scenarios:
Me: I'd like some information about Scottish ale, pie, and chips. Gov't Doctor: I'm sorry, we don't have that here. But I'm sure your local pub owner will have that. Me: Thank you. I'll head there now.
Me: I'd like some information about Scottish, ale, pie, and chips. Gov't Doctor: We have that, but I'm not going to give it to you. Me: You didn't even make that manual! My local pub is putting out a leaflet, and I see you have a copy on the desk behind you! Gov't Doctor: I'm sorry, I still can't give it to you. It's for your own good, as decided by our community. I can give you this manual on healthy diets, but I can't give you one of the manuals on the desk behind me. Me: OK, fine, I'll go somewhere else.
Now, which one is content-neutral and which one is content-specific? Which one is actively preventing a citizen from obtaining material that is already there, and which is simply a lack of available resources (i.e., a lack of "bandwidth" on the part of the doctor)?
The government deciding not to provide you with some particular service is not restriction on freedom of speech as that is usually understood.
But that's not what's happening in this case. Here the government has provided the truckers with a given service, and are now attempting to restrict it in a content-specific manner. Material is withheld from the citizens specifically because of what it says or portrays. That's censorship.
As proof, take the extreme case. Assume there is at least one truck stop at which they provide no wifi service at all (for technical or financial reasons). That is a 100% filter on the service provided to people who stop at that stop. I doubt any court would decide that was a first amendment issue.
Apples and oranges. Your "extreme case" is a case of content-neutral filtering. It does not discriminate on any particular basis. All content representing all points of view is being "withheld" regardless of what it says or portrays. What the state is proposing to do is filter based on content, which is a big no-no.
Or take state funded media. Obviously I can't give a Texas example, the UK government recently started broadcasting a channel of professional education programmes for teachers. Imagine Texas did the same. They would not thereby be obliged to broadcast every single possible programme on their channel.
No, they would have to select programs in a way that didn't filter out or censor on any of the grounds that tend to get higher scrutiny from the courts.
The report actually states that hand-counted paper ballots consistently were the most accurate voting method.
No, in a meaningful way, it did not state that.
From the introduction to the report:
The central finding of this investigation is that manually counted paper ballots have the lowest average incidence of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots, followed closely by lever machines and optically scanned ballots. Punchcard methods and systems using direct recording electronic devices (DREs) had significantly higher average rates of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots than any of the other systems.
hand-counted paper ballots, optically scanned paper ballots, and lever machines were the most accurate voting methods. Punchcards and paperless DREs were significantly less accurate.
Yes, punchcards are a problem, but those represent a relatively small minority of the votes in Washington.
The report actually states that hand-counted paper ballots consistently were the most accurate voting method.
Counties that switched to DREs from other methods saw an average increase of undervotes of 1% of the votes cast (i.e., from 2% to 3%, as opposed to 2% to 2.02%).
It seems you're talking about voter error, which is a completely separate issue from counting/tabulation accuracy.
The point was that if you held the population steady but only changed the voting system, the percentage of ballots that recorded votes decreased. The importance of this statistic is that it indicates that the new voting technology was not recording votes that it should (for whatever reason).
The most obvious incident to date is the computer failure resulting in 4500 lost votes in North Carolina. We're actually going to hold a replacement statewide election for one contest -- if the courts or the legislature don't step in again -- since the margin of victory in that race was less than the number of lost votes.
So the CalTech/MIT numbers point to a high likelihood of mis-recorded ballots -- which I consider a counting/tabulation accuracy issue -- for punchcards and DREs, and a decreased likelihood for hand-counted paper ballots, optical scan machines, and lever machines, with hand-counted paper ballots having the lowest indication of this behavior.
what exactly leads you to believe that the machine recounts are so much more accurate than the process used in the so called "hand recount?"
Well, for starters, all the elections officials said so, including the current and previous Secretary of State and Dan Logan, the King County elections director.
I don't place that much faith in those two people (the current SoS and Dean Logan). Besides, King County is apparently "famous" for doing some "fancy footwork" on the election results database. Google for
King county is famous for it
and see what pops up.
Also, you say "people are much better at reading than machines," but that's only true in the sense that people are more *subjective* than machines: that is, if a line is not drawn or bubble not filled perfectly, a human can pick it up perhaps where a machine cannot. This is true, but it necessarily also means that the same people open themselves up to a host of possible mistakes (both false positives and false negatives). i.e., the truth your statement is based on does not help the idea that hand recounts are more accurate any more than it hurts it.
The 2001 CalTech/MIT study of voting errors -- as measured by residual votes -- showed that hand-counted paper ballots, optically scanned paper ballots, and lever machines were the most accurate voting methods. Punchcards and paperless DREs were significantly less accurate. Counties that switched to DREs from other methods saw an average increase of undervotes of 1% of the votes cast (i.e., from 2% to 3%, as opposed to 2% to 2.02%).
Your post refers to the current law, which IMHO is not very fair to the public.
My post wasn't commenting on the fairness of the law, simply that it exists and the rationale behind it.
Besides, authors can have reasons other than money to restrict the distribution of one of their works. What if their earlier writings or music is racist or hateful, but they have a change of heart? They're within their rights (as the copyright holder) to set distribution terms (or lack thereof) as to whether or not to create new copies, and to prevent other people from distributing those works. Now, there could be a fair use exemption, but generally they're within their rights to prevent you from distributing it, especially if they're not distributing it.
Or maybe after you and your wife are dead, your kids will publish the work against your express wishes because you became famous after death and they can make a quick buck.
That, too, is a possibility. Just because someone is going to be an ass about it (i.e., the kids) doesn't mean we should revoke their rights. If we were using a-hole-ness as a basis for rights revokation (sp?), I know a lot of people that would be missing free speech.:)
Now, the duration of the rights is another issue that's tangential to this one. And I agree that it's too long.
That's a very interesting theory. The REALITY is that our dear Congress keeps saying "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further" every few years.
Wow. Straighten up a legal argument on slashdot and see what happens.
Look, I think Congress sold out to Disney and the other copyright cartels, and that the situation needs to change. I agree 100% that the current copyright terms are nothing but a useless power grab. And I agree that there should be reduced or no punishment for distributing a work where the owner cannot be identified or has not passed the work onto any heirs.
However, as long as the author or the rights holder is alive, they (like it or not, right now) have the right to set the terms of distribution, including limited or no distribution. The Courts aren't going to overturn that without an act of Congress, since they'd be going against Congress and their own precedent (look up the Hemingway Estate and MLK Jr. Estate cases).
And the original publication was not in a "limited edition" form; the only limited editions of computer software that I have seen state specifically that the packaging is what is limited availability, the software itself is the same as you'd get some other way.
I, as the author, can choose to stop distributing additional copies of a work whenever I want. See: George Lucas and the original Star Wars movies. You, as the public, can continue enjoy the copies that are already out there, but since I hold the copyright (and therefore distribution rights) on the work, you cannot start distributing a work simply because the original author refuses to do so. "Limited edition" labels on the cover have nothing to do with the legal status of the work.
What I'm saying is that a lot of people here seem to be arguing that copyright should be more trade secret-ish. I only have control over my work as long as I'm actively distributing it and protecting it; if I try to withhold it (for whatever reason), just as long as someone sneaks it out, the public has it and there's nothing I can do about it.
I'm saying copyright is copyright, and authors have a right to not publish. This right only extends as long as the copyright lasts, however, and no matter what I decide, it will become public domain eventually.
U.S. law does not provide "moral rights" protection.
No, but as the creator I have the right to control distribution (with a few exceptions), including the right to withhold a work from the public.
The courts have recognized this right.
One could easily make the argument that when an author refuses to distribute their product, they aren't living up to their side of the deal.
Congress and the courts have explicitly recognized a right to not publish, or publish on their own terms. Copyright is a grant of a limited monopoly, and simply because I'm not publishing a work right now doesn't mean that I'll never do it. The worst case is that you (the public) get to do what you will with it when the copyright expires; the deal is that you get to see it when the copyright expires, not when I don't quote you a price.
Note that this is if the copyright holder can be identified. If I write a crap program and never distribute it because it was a throwaway hack, I'm perfectly within my rights to do so. That doesn't give someone the right to beg, borrow or steal a copy and distribute it, just because I'm not doing it.
For example, I might deem that the creation is so horrible (since I didn't put hard work into it) that if I were to release it, it would harm my reputation as a programmer (or writer, filmmaker, etc). Thus I have the right to keep a lid on it as long as I want. Who knows... in the future I may decide that it's a cute work representing inexperienced naivete that the world should see and laugh at. Just not yet.
County workers broke the water line at Lakeview and North Dale Mabry while trying to repair a break in a sewer line caused by Verizon contractors on Friday. That break left sewage spewing beneath the road, opening a hole that nearly swallowed a car.
Unless you know how to game the system. For example, one could write a CGI script that lets you decide how many counties to rig, how much to win by (to avoid recounts), and the polling margin of error so you can make your results look "real".
While you are claiming that 19 legitimate voters were "tossed" in order to get 1 felon off the list, the USCCR failed to find a single person who actually was not allowed to vote as a result of being incorrectly identified as a felon.
If that's the case, why did the findings include this item:
African Americans had a significantly greater chance of being listed on Florida's mandated purge list. The probability of names of African Americans appearing on the list in error was significantly greater than the likelihood of the names of whites being erroneously included on the purge list.
The state of Florida's use of this purge list, combined with the state law that places the burden on voters to remove themselves from the list, resulted in denying countless African Americans the right to vote.
Florida election law is very clear that voter registration rolls are maintained by the elected County election supervisors. The statewide maintenance list was generated as a result of a law passed by the Florida Legislature (before Jeb Bush was in office, by the way), and was to be sent to county election supervisors for action.
Translation: we [the Gov. and SecOfState] can fuck up as much as we want, and blow a few million of taxpayer's money, because it's the counties fault if they actually use the list we give them.
Brilliant defense, there.
Wait. You are faulting Jeb Bush in the 2000 election because Florida did not follow a law that went into effect 3 years after the 2000 election?
No, I was countering the argument that the sole responsibility for maintaining voter rolls is on the counties. Federal law places the responsibility on the state, not the county. It doesn't matter what Florida law says anymore, since it's been pre-empted by federal law.
Greg Palast claims that Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris "stole" the election for G.W. Bush. The commission found:
The report does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred
Very clever of you to quote from the dissent, there. You know... the/losing/ argument. The conclusion of the majority report stated
While some of those denied the right to vote in the November 2000 election no doubt were legally denied that right, others who should have been legally entitled to vote were also denied that right. Indeed as this report demonstrates, Florida state law in some instances virtually guaranteed that some citizens who were legally entitled to vote would be denied that right. The statute's silence on other instances provided tacit approval for the denial of some to vote. Not all voices were heard on Election Day, and the law provides no meaningful way for their voices to now be heard.
My comments were miles better than the blantant misrepresentation of those comments you came up with. Pop quiz: Zell Miller, Democrat or Republican? I'm going to say 'Republican', since he supports Bush, was a keynote speaker at the RNC, and has viciously attacked most major Democrats out there in the last year. He's not a Democrat, he's a Republican, regardless of what he's registered as.
Actions speak louder than words. Unless you're one of those people that applies a label to someone and believes that label, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary.
Ms. LePore's recent actions show she's on the side of the Republicans. The butterfly ballot wasn't a conspiracy, it was incompetence, but let's quit repeating the illusion that she's a Democrat.
I note that despite your spin LePore was in fact a Dem during the years in question.
I note that despite your spin, you don't have to take a lie-detector test when you register to be a member of a certain party. In areas that lean heavily towards one side or the other, that party's primary essentially decides who will win the race, so a lot of people who are from the other party register as members of the dominant party so they have a say in who gets elected.
Translation: registered party affiliation proves nothing. Actions speak way louder than words, and LePore has all but screamed that she's a Republican.
Skeptical of the list's accuracy, elections supervisors in 20 counties (including Palm Beach) ignored it altogether, thereby allowing thousands of felons to vote.
Conversely,
Convinced of the list's accuracy, elections supervisors in many counties followed it to the 'T', thereby preventing thousands of legal voters from casting a ballot.
They're both a violation of the law. Which is worse? I'm going to go with the latter.
That dog won't hunt.
Rrrrrrright. Sorry, simply asserting you're right doesn't make it so. Trying to assert using a colloquialism still doesn't make you right.
Like it or not, felons who have not received clemancy are not allowed to vote in Florida. You cannot fault Florida election officials for trying to enforce a law that has been on the books for decades.
Actually, yes. Yes I can. Let's replace "Florida election officials" with "the RIAA and MPAA", "felons who have not received clemency" with "consumers without a distribution license" and "vote in Florida" with "share copyrighted songs on the Internet".
Say to yourself "the ends do not justify the means". Now say it again. Try it a few more times until it sinks in. If I toss out 19 legitimate voters for every 1 felon, that's not even close to making a halfway decent effort. I can fault them for being wrong 95% of the time. If you're wrong in school 95% of the time, you don't even come close to passing. You fail. And I can fault them for foisting a failure of a list onto county officials.
Florida Election Laws clearly place the responsibility of maintaining county voter registration rolls on the county election officials. There was no legal way for Jeb Bush or Catherine Harris to remove registered voters from the rolls.
OK, if it's not the responsibility of the state to maintain voter rolls, what the hell were they doing spending $2.3 million of taxpayer money to make a list of people that shouldn't have been on the county rolls? The sure sounds like the state trying to have its say in maintaining the voter lists. And even if that was the case in 2000, it's no longer true. The Help America Vote Act requires states to centralize their voter database as of 01/2004.
The only "references" you provided were from Greg Palast, whose assertions were thoroughly debunked by the US Civil Commission on Civil Rights.
During Florida's 2000 presidential election, restrictive statutory provisions, wide-ranging errors, and inadequate resources in the Florida election process denied countless Floridians of their right to vote.
The state of Florida's use of this purge list, combined with the state law that places the burden on voters to remove themselves from the list, resulted in denying countless African Americans the right to vote.
There were no clear guidelines from the governor, the secretary of state, or the director of the Division of Elections to subordinates to employ list maintenance strategies that would protect eligible voters, particularly historically disenfranchised populations, from being wrongfully removed from the voter registration rolls.
An official of the Division of Elections dictated to representatives of the private firm to employ a strategy that resulted in a disproportionate number of eligible African American voters being removed from the voter registration rolls in error.
Supervisors of elections had no uniform method to verify the information on the exclusion lists.
There is no evidence that in preparation for the 2000 presidential election, the director of the Division of Elections took proper steps to ensure that supervisors of elections were informed about the errors in the exclusion lists.
Recommendations include
The U.S. Department of Justice should immediately initiate the litigation process against the governor, secretary of state, director of the Division of Elections, specific supervisors of elections, and other state and local officials responsible for the execution of election laws, practices, and procedures[...]
The U.S. Department of Justice should immediately initiate the litigation process against Florida state officials whose list maintenance activities during the 2000 presidential election discriminated against people of color in violation of federal law or resulted in the denial of people of color to have equal access to the
The infamous "butterfly ballot" was designed by a Democrat.
You mean Theresa LaPore, the former Republican who was a Democrat for all of six years (1996 - 2002), before she switched back to an "Independent", and is now working with the Republicans again? That Democrat?
All the counties that Gore requested recounts in were run by Democrats.
And thanks to the tireless efforts of those crooked Democrats, President Gore has done a fine job.
It is estimated that there were still many thousands of illegal votes placed by felons in the 2000 election in Florida.
Ah, yes, those spooooky felons trying to cast votes. The reason for the big crackdown? It turns out that felons cast about
100 votes in the 1997 Miami Mayoral election, out of a few hundred thousand cast.
The "felon roll" was a list created by the state but it was up to the individual counties to decide what to do with the list.
This response makes it clear that you either DO NOT read the NY times, or you are so partisan, that anything they say is fine with you.
Yet your response doesn't cite any sources, merely makes assertions.
The Times is so heavily in support of the DNC and the Democratic party that sometimes I wonder if those 'talking points' faxes actually exist.
What, like the talking points handed down from on-high by Fox News? I've never heard of the NYT doing that, but feel free to provide citations.
The times has on a number of occasions printed statements by people critical of Bush that were in fact never said. Furthermore, just what was that big pulitzer prize for? The one they're always trumpeting?
You're going to have to be specific, since the NYT has won 90 Pulitzers, more than any other paper, and 11 in the last three years.
The times is highly biased towards the left. Always has been. And again, the nuclear program was only one of several reasons. The only reason for this article is to help their candidate.
The reason the administration needs to come up with "explanation after explanation" is that each explanation seems to keep exploding in their faces. And your response fits in perfectly with the two-step process this administration uses for damage control:
Claim they never heard about X, where X is: Abu Gharib, the $560B cost of Medicare expansions, the aluminum tubes, warnings about the 9/11 attacks, etc, etc,
Paint the messenger as being a biased partisan attack dog for the other side, even if said person is a former employee of theirs (i.e., Paul O'Neil, Richard Clarke, General Zinni, etc, etc).
I still haven't seen any credible claims that the Times manipulates the news; their editorial page isn't for Bush, but I haven't seen that played out in the news sections.
Feel free to prove me wrong. Vague assertions don't count.
OK, so Jayson Blair pulled the wool over their eyes, and they took a credibility hit. But with regard to the Bush White House, the only thing the NYT admitted to doing wrong is saying that they didn't question the Administration enough before going to war.
That's right. They retracted agreeing with the President.
Oops.
Enough with this "The NYT and Washington Post are dirty liberal rags that print 'news' that is actually lies!" BS.
I read this story Saturday evening and the tubes that Iraq was shopping for were of a much greater tolerance than needed for their small artilery rockets.
Wrong wrong wrong WRONG!!!!
From the story:
It turned out, they reported, that Iraq had for years used high-strength aluminum tubes to make combustion chambers for slim rockets fired from launcher pods. Back in 1996, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had even examined some of those tubes, also made of 7075-T6 aluminum, at a military complex, the Nasser metal fabrication plant in Baghdad, where the Iraqis acknowledged making rockets. According to the international agency, the rocket tubes, some 66,000 of them, were 900 millimeters in length, with a diameter of 81 millimeters and walls 3.3 millimeters thick.
The tubes now sought by Iraq had precisely the same dimensions - a perfect match.
That finding was published May 9, 2001, in the Daily Intelligence Highlight, a secret Energy Department newsletter published on Intelink, a Web site for the intelligence community and the White House.
[...]
But that made no sense, they argued in a new report, because Iraq wanted tubes made at tolerances that "far exceed any known conventional weapons." In other words, Iraq was demanding a level of precision craftsmanship unnecessary for ordinary mass-produced rockets.
More to the point, those analysts had hit on a competing theory: that the tubes' dimensions matched those used in an early uranium centrifuge developed in the 1950's by a German scientist, Gernot Zippe.
[...]
Over and over, the reports restated Joe's main conclusions for the C.I.A. - that the tubes matched the 1950's Zippe centrifuge design and were built to specifications that "exceeded any known conventional weapons application." They did not state what Energy Department experts had noted - that many common industrial items, even aluminum cans, were made to specifications as good or better than the tubes sought by Iraq. Nor did the reports acknowledge a significant error in Joe's claim - that the tubes "matched" those used in a Zippe centrifuge.
The tubes sought by Iraq had a wall thickness of 3.3 millimeters. When Energy Department experts checked with Dr. Zippe, a step Joe did not take, they learned that the walls of Zippe tubes did not exceed 1.1 millimeters, a substantial difference.
To sum up: a low-level analyst found an old centrifuge design that he thought the Iraqis were copying. He ignored the fact that the tubes were an exact match of rockets the Iraqis used earlier, and didn't even bother to ask the inventor of the original centrifuge whether or not the tubes could be used in that centrifuge.
End of story, WRT the "much greater tolerance" line.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider the alternative - Send people who dislike the president out to do diplomatic work?
Or you could just send the best people to do the job.
Remember the media fiasco when Powell and President Bush merely made conflicting statements?
Yes, because they were discussing whether or not the country was going to !@$@!# go to war!
It is simply not a good idea to look divided on issues when speaking on the international stage.
From the article:
Yes, because if you give a paltry $250 to a Presidential campaign, you're going to create an international fiasco when you say that VoIP should have access to traditional 911 systems, or something like that. The President isn't going to be making any pronouncements from on high about these issues, so let's not get all breathless.
Let's call this for what it is: an administration that values loyalty first and actual job performance second, and has the time and energy to be really childish and petty about the issue.
Another word for that? "Pathetic"
-jdm
If I publish a webpage and the state of Texas tells people that they are forbidden from using government-funded equipment to read my document because the state finds the content of my speech to be offensive, the state has abridged my First Amendment rights.
That is both false [...]
Wrong: Internet speech that is merely critical, annoying, offensive or demeaning enjoys constitutional protection.
and not relevent to what we were discussing.
See the supreme court decision about filters in libraries [cnn.com].
Right. How about linking to the Court decision itself rather than a half-assed CNN writeup? Two prior attempts to implement Internet filtering failed, in large part because they imposed child-like standards on all citizens. This law succeeded in large part because
And it's irrelevant because they have not made any claim about the blocked content being offensive. Read the bill.
I did. It's short. And it imposed unconstitutional restraints on access to free speech. Similar laws have failed in other states. This is politicking, plain and simple.
Your sequence of steps fails at step two where they impose a restriction on what someone else can distribute. That is censorship.
"Censorship" ... you keep using that word ... I do not think it means what you think it means. And step #2 is merely imposing the same restrictions on companies as they place on government-operated ISPs (in my example). The work in my example originates in and around Hawaii, and is distributed from there. Therefore, by your logic, unless the government shuts down the source of distribution (i.e., the hosting center in Hawaii) they can prevent every other ISP in the U.S. from accessing that one ISP and not actually "censor" anything. By your logic, the government could actually take down that ISP, as long as there's a paper copy of the work somewhere. After all, (by your logic) they're not imposing a restriction on what that person is distributing, merely how they distribute their work.
-jdm
You seem to want to force every bad/stupid/evil action by the state into the `censorship' box. This massively undrestimates the power of the state to be obnoxious.
You poor, naive person you. Since you're not American, though, and the topic under discussion is a subtlety of American law, I suppose it's understandable. See, here we have this thing called the Constitution. The first ten Amendments to that document are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment to our Constitution states
If I publish a webpage and the state of Texas tells people that they are forbidden -- not just unable, but able although explicitly forbidden -- from using government-funded equipment to read my document because the state finds the content of my speech to be offensive, the state has abridged by First Amendment rights.
If the state wants to put bandwidth caps on their equipment to keep down costs, that is a content-neutral way of limiting costs without violating the First Amendment. However, the second the state starts telling people that, although the content is available, the state is going to prohibit them from viewing that content using publically funded infrastructure, that's a violation of those rights.
Your simplistic view of "it's only censorship if the government prohibits or destroys all known copies from being distributed" is at odds with our Constitution. For example, let's say I'm in New York, and someone in Hawaii publishes a document that is an off-color critisism of the east cost of the U.S. At what point is it censorship if:
Good thing the government didn't try to violate the rights of the author or of myself. Yay!
-jdm
Since the federal government requires it for schools receiving certain funding, perhaps the same standard is being applied to the public spots because the same school kids could gain access to the public spots?
The courts have always walked a fine line between the Bill of Rights and giving school administrators the ability to teach students effectively. Public school students are subjected to other restrictions on their rights that would be horrible for the public at large. For example, school administrators have the right to randomly search any student's locker, backpack, and even their car, without cause. The courts are debating whether or not the schools are allowed to administer drug tests to any student at any time.
While this would be a horrendous violation of any other citizens' rights, the courts allow it for schools. It has nothing to do with "public spots". If that were the case, any police officer could approach any citizen at any time and root through their car, backpack, purse, briefcase, and force them to take a drug test at the nearest precinct station.
Even public library filtering schemes require that the libraries have a way to remove filters for adults, upon request. If Texas were going the same route, that means that they'd have to provide unfiltered access to truckers upon request, which I'm guessing won't make it into this law.
-jdm
No material is being withheld from the citizens. Some information is being made available in one extra place.
Again, apples and oranges. Two scenarios:
Me: I'd like some information about Scottish ale, pie, and chips.
Gov't Doctor: I'm sorry, we don't have that here. But I'm sure your local pub owner will have that.
Me: Thank you. I'll head there now.
Me: I'd like some information about Scottish, ale, pie, and chips.
Gov't Doctor: We have that, but I'm not going to give it to you.
Me: You didn't even make that manual! My local pub is putting out a leaflet, and I see you have a copy on the desk behind you!
Gov't Doctor: I'm sorry, I still can't give it to you. It's for your own good, as decided by our community. I can give you this manual on healthy diets, but I can't give you one of the manuals on the desk behind me.
Me: OK, fine, I'll go somewhere else.
Now, which one is content-neutral and which one is content-specific? Which one is actively preventing a citizen from obtaining material that is already there, and which is simply a lack of available resources (i.e., a lack of "bandwidth" on the part of the doctor)?
-jdm
The government deciding not to provide you with some particular service is not restriction on freedom of speech as that is usually understood.
But that's not what's happening in this case. Here the government has provided the truckers with a given service, and are now attempting to restrict it in a content-specific manner. Material is withheld from the citizens specifically because of what it says or portrays. That's censorship.
As proof, take the extreme case. Assume there is at least one truck stop at which they provide no wifi service at all (for technical or financial reasons). That is a 100% filter on the service provided to people who stop at that stop. I doubt any court would decide that was a first amendment issue.
Apples and oranges. Your "extreme case" is a case of content-neutral filtering. It does not discriminate on any particular basis. All content representing all points of view is being "withheld" regardless of what it says or portrays. What the state is proposing to do is filter based on content, which is a big no-no.
Or take state funded media. Obviously I can't give a Texas example, the UK government recently started broadcasting a channel of professional education programmes for teachers. Imagine Texas did the same. They would not thereby be obliged to broadcast every single possible programme on their channel.
No, they would have to select programs in a way that didn't filter out or censor on any of the grounds that tend to get higher scrutiny from the courts.
-jdm
The report actually states that hand-counted paper ballots consistently were the most accurate voting method.
No, in a meaningful way, it did not state that.
From the introduction to the report:
-jdm
hand-counted paper ballots, optically scanned paper ballots, and lever machines were the most accurate voting methods. Punchcards and paperless DREs were significantly less accurate.
Yes, punchcards are a problem, but those represent a relatively small minority of the votes in Washington.
The report actually states that hand-counted paper ballots consistently were the most accurate voting method.
Counties that switched to DREs from other methods saw an average increase of undervotes of 1% of the votes cast (i.e., from 2% to 3%, as opposed to 2% to 2.02%).
It seems you're talking about voter error, which is a completely separate issue from counting/tabulation accuracy.
The point was that if you held the population steady but only changed the voting system, the percentage of ballots that recorded votes decreased. The importance of this statistic is that it indicates that the new voting technology was not recording votes that it should (for whatever reason).
The most obvious incident to date is the computer failure resulting in 4500 lost votes in North Carolina. We're actually going to hold a replacement statewide election for one contest -- if the courts or the legislature don't step in again -- since the margin of victory in that race was less than the number of lost votes.
So the CalTech/MIT numbers point to a high likelihood of mis-recorded ballots -- which I consider a counting/tabulation accuracy issue -- for punchcards and DREs, and a decreased likelihood for hand-counted paper ballots, optical scan machines, and lever machines, with hand-counted paper ballots having the lowest indication of this behavior.
Cheers.
-jdm
what exactly leads you to believe that the machine recounts are so much more accurate than the process used in the so called "hand recount?"
Well, for starters, all the elections officials said so, including the current and previous Secretary of State and Dan Logan, the King County elections director.
I don't place that much faith in those two people (the current SoS and Dean Logan). Besides, King County is apparently "famous" for doing some "fancy footwork" on the election results database. Google for
King county is famous for it
and see what pops up.
Also, you say "people are much better at reading than machines," but that's only true in the sense that people are more *subjective* than machines: that is, if a line is not drawn or bubble not filled perfectly, a human can pick it up perhaps where a machine cannot. This is true, but it necessarily also means that the same people open themselves up to a host of possible mistakes (both false positives and false negatives). i.e., the truth your statement is based on does not help the idea that hand recounts are more accurate any more than it hurts it.
The 2001 CalTech/MIT study of voting errors -- as measured by residual votes -- showed that hand-counted paper ballots, optically scanned paper ballots, and lever machines were the most accurate voting methods. Punchcards and paperless DREs were significantly less accurate. Counties that switched to DREs from other methods saw an average increase of undervotes of 1% of the votes cast (i.e., from 2% to 3%, as opposed to 2% to 2.02%).
Just trying to lay out the facts.
-jdm
Your post refers to the current law, which IMHO is not very fair to the public.
My post wasn't commenting on the fairness of the law, simply that it exists and the rationale behind it.
Besides, authors can have reasons other than money to restrict the distribution of one of their works. What if their earlier writings or music is racist or hateful, but they have a change of heart? They're within their rights (as the copyright holder) to set distribution terms (or lack thereof) as to whether or not to create new copies, and to prevent other people from distributing those works. Now, there could be a fair use exemption, but generally they're within their rights to prevent you from distributing it, especially if they're not distributing it.
-jdm
Or maybe after you and your wife are dead, your kids will publish the work against your express wishes because you became famous after death and they can make a quick buck.
That, too, is a possibility. Just because someone is going to be an ass about it (i.e., the kids) doesn't mean we should revoke their rights. If we were using a-hole-ness as a basis for rights revokation (sp?), I know a lot of people that would be missing free speech. :)
Now, the duration of the rights is another issue that's tangential to this one. And I agree that it's too long.
-jdm
That's a very interesting theory. The REALITY is that our dear Congress keeps saying "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further" every few years.
Wow. Straighten up a legal argument on slashdot and see what happens.
Look, I think Congress sold out to Disney and the other copyright cartels, and that the situation needs to change. I agree 100% that the current copyright terms are nothing but a useless power grab. And I agree that there should be reduced or no punishment for distributing a work where the owner cannot be identified or has not passed the work onto any heirs.
However, as long as the author or the rights holder is alive, they (like it or not, right now) have the right to set the terms of distribution, including limited or no distribution. The Courts aren't going to overturn that without an act of Congress, since they'd be going against Congress and their own precedent (look up the Hemingway Estate and MLK Jr. Estate cases).
-jdm
And the original publication was not in a "limited edition" form; the only limited editions of computer software that I have seen state specifically that the packaging is what is limited availability, the software itself is the same as you'd get some other way.
I, as the author, can choose to stop distributing additional copies of a work whenever I want. See: George Lucas and the original Star Wars movies. You, as the public, can continue enjoy the copies that are already out there, but since I hold the copyright (and therefore distribution rights) on the work, you cannot start distributing a work simply because the original author refuses to do so. "Limited edition" labels on the cover have nothing to do with the legal status of the work.
-jdm
You want trade secret law, not copyright law.
What I'm saying is that a lot of people here seem to be arguing that copyright should be more trade secret-ish. I only have control over my work as long as I'm actively distributing it and protecting it; if I try to withhold it (for whatever reason), just as long as someone sneaks it out, the public has it and there's nothing I can do about it.
I'm saying copyright is copyright, and authors have a right to not publish. This right only extends as long as the copyright lasts, however, and no matter what I decide, it will become public domain eventually.
U.S. law does not provide "moral rights" protection.
No, but as the creator I have the right to control distribution (with a few exceptions), including the right to withhold a work from the public. The courts have recognized this right.
-jdm
One could easily make the argument that when an author refuses to distribute their product, they aren't living up to their side of the deal.
Congress and the courts have explicitly recognized a right to not publish, or publish on their own terms. Copyright is a grant of a limited monopoly, and simply because I'm not publishing a work right now doesn't mean that I'll never do it. The worst case is that you (the public) get to do what you will with it when the copyright expires; the deal is that you get to see it when the copyright expires, not when I don't quote you a price.
Note that this is if the copyright holder can be identified. If I write a crap program and never distribute it because it was a throwaway hack, I'm perfectly within my rights to do so. That doesn't give someone the right to beg, borrow or steal a copy and distribute it, just because I'm not doing it.
For example, I might deem that the creation is so horrible (since I didn't put hard work into it) that if I were to release it, it would harm my reputation as a programmer (or writer, filmmaker, etc). Thus I have the right to keep a lid on it as long as I want. Who knows ... in the future I may decide that it's a cute work representing inexperienced naivete that the world should see and laugh at. Just not yet.
-jdm
County workers broke the water line at Lakeview and North Dale Mabry while trying to repair a break in a sewer line caused by Verizon contractors on Friday. That break left sewage spewing beneath the road, opening a hole that nearly swallowed a car.
Whoops. :) Way to go there, guys.
-jdm
Unless you know how to game the system. For example, one could write a CGI script that lets you decide how many counties to rig, how much to win by (to avoid recounts), and the polling margin of error so you can make your results look "real".
But that's impossible, surely. :)
-jdm
While you are claiming that 19 legitimate voters were "tossed" in order to get 1 felon off the list, the USCCR failed to find a single person who actually was not allowed to vote as a result of being incorrectly identified as a felon.
If that's the case, why did the findings include this item:
Florida election law is very clear that voter registration rolls are maintained by the elected County election supervisors. The statewide maintenance list was generated as a result of a law passed by the Florida Legislature (before Jeb Bush was in office, by the way), and was to be sent to county election supervisors for action.
Translation: we [the Gov. and SecOfState] can fuck up as much as we want, and blow a few million of taxpayer's money, because it's the counties fault if they actually use the list we give them.
Brilliant defense, there.
Wait. You are faulting Jeb Bush in the 2000 election because Florida did not follow a law that went into effect 3 years after the 2000 election?
No, I was countering the argument that the sole responsibility for maintaining voter rolls is on the counties. Federal law places the responsibility on the state, not the county. It doesn't matter what Florida law says anymore, since it's been pre-empted by federal law.
Greg Palast claims that Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris "stole" the election for G.W. Bush. The commission found:
Very clever of you to quote from the dissent, there. You know ... the /losing/ argument. The conclusion of the majority report stated
-jdm
My comments were miles better than the blantant misrepresentation of those comments you came up with. Pop quiz: Zell Miller, Democrat or Republican? I'm going to say 'Republican', since he supports Bush, was a keynote speaker at the RNC, and has viciously attacked most major Democrats out there in the last year. He's not a Democrat, he's a Republican, regardless of what he's registered as.
Actions speak louder than words. Unless you're one of those people that applies a label to someone and believes that label, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary.
Ms. LePore's recent actions show she's on the side of the Republicans. The butterfly ballot wasn't a conspiracy, it was incompetence, but let's quit repeating the illusion that she's a Democrat.
-jdm
I note that despite your spin LePore was in fact a Dem during the years in question.
I note that despite your spin, you don't have to take a lie-detector test when you register to be a member of a certain party. In areas that lean heavily towards one side or the other, that party's primary essentially decides who will win the race, so a lot of people who are from the other party register as members of the dominant party so they have a say in who gets elected.
Translation: registered party affiliation proves nothing. Actions speak way louder than words, and LePore has all but screamed that she's a Republican.
Skeptical of the list's accuracy, elections supervisors in 20 counties (including Palm Beach) ignored it altogether, thereby allowing thousands of felons to vote.
Conversely,
They're both a violation of the law. Which is worse? I'm going to go with the latter.
That dog won't hunt.
Rrrrrrright. Sorry, simply asserting you're right doesn't make it so. Trying to assert using a colloquialism still doesn't make you right.
-jdm
Like it or not, felons who have not received clemancy are not allowed to vote in Florida. You cannot fault Florida election officials for trying to enforce a law that has been on the books for decades.
Actually, yes. Yes I can. Let's replace "Florida election officials" with "the RIAA and MPAA", "felons who have not received clemency" with "consumers without a distribution license" and "vote in Florida" with "share copyrighted songs on the Internet".
Say to yourself "the ends do not justify the means". Now say it again. Try it a few more times until it sinks in. If I toss out 19 legitimate voters for every 1 felon, that's not even close to making a halfway decent effort. I can fault them for being wrong 95% of the time. If you're wrong in school 95% of the time, you don't even come close to passing. You fail. And I can fault them for foisting a failure of a list onto county officials.
Florida Election Laws clearly place the responsibility of maintaining county voter registration rolls on the county election officials. There was no legal way for Jeb Bush or Catherine Harris to remove registered voters from the rolls.
OK, if it's not the responsibility of the state to maintain voter rolls, what the hell were they doing spending $2.3 million of taxpayer money to make a list of people that shouldn't have been on the county rolls? The sure sounds like the state trying to have its say in maintaining the voter lists. And even if that was the case in 2000, it's no longer true. The Help America Vote Act requires states to centralize their voter database as of 01/2004.
The only "references" you provided were from Greg Palast, whose assertions were thoroughly debunked by the US Civil Commission on Civil Rights.
What, these findings? Ones that say things like
Recommendations include
The infamous "butterfly ballot" was designed by a Democrat.
You mean Theresa LaPore, the former Republican who was a Democrat for all of six years (1996 - 2002), before she switched back to an "Independent", and is now working with the Republicans again? That Democrat?
All the counties that Gore requested recounts in were run by Democrats.
And thanks to the tireless efforts of those crooked Democrats, President Gore has done a fine job.
It is estimated that there were still many thousands of illegal votes placed by felons in the 2000 election in Florida.
Ah, yes, those spooooky felons trying to cast votes. The reason for the big crackdown? It turns out that felons cast about 100 votes in the 1997 Miami Mayoral election, out of a few hundred thousand cast.
The "felon roll" was a list created by the state but it was up to the individual counties to decide what to do with the list.
Ah, the "pass the buck" game. "We're going to make this list of tens of thousands of felons, and you have to guess which ones are actually felons!" Bullshit. If the state is going to spend 2.3 million dollars for a list that's 95% wrong, it is squarely the fault of the people who paid for that list. And if she tries to make a list for 2002, even when the FL legislature passed a law saying she couldn't, I imagine that's the fault of the Democrats, too?
The facts are far too challenging.
The facts are far too challenging for you? I've noticed. That's probably why you didn't have any references, just assertions.
-jdm
This response makes it clear that you either DO NOT read the NY times, or you are so partisan, that anything they say is fine with you.
Yet your response doesn't cite any sources, merely makes assertions.
The Times is so heavily in support of the DNC and the Democratic party that sometimes I wonder if those 'talking points' faxes actually exist.
What, like the talking points handed down from on-high by Fox News? I've never heard of the NYT doing that, but feel free to provide citations.
The times has on a number of occasions printed statements by people critical of Bush that were in fact never said. Furthermore, just what was that big pulitzer prize for? The one they're always trumpeting?
You're going to have to be specific, since the NYT has won 90 Pulitzers, more than any other paper, and 11 in the last three years.
The times is highly biased towards the left. Always has been. And again, the nuclear program was only one of several reasons. The only reason for this article is to help their candidate.
The reason the administration needs to come up with "explanation after explanation" is that each explanation seems to keep exploding in their faces. And your response fits in perfectly with the two-step process this administration uses for damage control:
I still haven't seen any credible claims that the Times manipulates the news; their editorial page isn't for Bush, but I haven't seen that played out in the news sections.
Feel free to prove me wrong. Vague assertions don't count.
-jdm
OK, so Jayson Blair pulled the wool over their eyes, and they took a credibility hit. But with regard to the Bush White House, the only thing the NYT admitted to doing wrong is saying that they didn't question the Administration enough before going to war.
That's right. They retracted agreeing with the President.
Oops.
Enough with this "The NYT and Washington Post are dirty liberal rags that print 'news' that is actually lies!" BS.
-jdm
I read this story Saturday evening and the tubes that Iraq was shopping for were of a much greater tolerance than needed for their small artilery rockets.
Wrong wrong wrong WRONG!!!!
From the story:
To sum up: a low-level analyst found an old centrifuge design that he thought the Iraqis were copying. He ignored the fact that the tubes were an exact match of rockets the Iraqis used earlier, and didn't even bother to ask the inventor of the original centrifuge whether or not the tubes could be used in that centrifuge.
End of story, WRT the "much greater tolerance" line.
-jdm