I meant she must have done something to convince the police she was a danger to others. At the very least she must have threatened something in the presence of the police. In many of those cases they arrest but don't charge with a crime, since usually the arrest gets the point across just fine, and it saves the perp a criminal record.
So you could say we have innocent even when arrested and guilty;)
Even worse are the "extras" they throw in that get in your way. I want my DVD's to play the movie (and ONLY the movie) on insertion. That means ripping them and discarding the original DVD's. I also want to store DVD's in a binder, so my movie collection isn't a dominant fixture in the room. That means discarding the original cases. Notice how all the materials I paid for end up in the garbage 30 minutes after getting it home?
And don't get me started on Blu-Ray. Unskippable commercials?!! I would rather copy the movie to VHS!
After all the junk mail content, packaging, marketing, distribution, etc, the actual profit on a movie sale has got to be only around $3. So instead of stockpiling landfills, why not just let us download and burn it for $5.00? I'd put up with DRM's for that. If Universal can license their music to iTunes, why can't they do online distribution?
When I saw the title...
on
Blown to Bits
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I was expecting an indepth account of Data's encounter with Tasha Yar...
Folks, in Canada it's one thing to be charged, it's another to be arrested. In the US if the police are convinced you've committed a crime, they arrest you. In Canada, if you're not posing an imminent danger to others, you just get charged. They tell you to come in, do some paperwork, and let you know the pre-trial date etc. She must have been beyond hysterical when the cops arrived, either completely shitfaced or holding a knife, or both. That's what it would take to get arrested in your own home under those circumstances.
the cops outside weren't intimidating enough to stop people who were consciously willing to break the law anyway?
The police knew the protesters were predisposed to ignore warnings and proceed where there were not adequate physical barricades to obstruct them. Look up the legal term "due diligence". The police did not exercise due diligence in preventing the protesters from committing crimes, nor warned them of the consequences. It was clearly a deliberate ploy to abuse their unfamiliarity with the law and advance their otherwise legal motivations into a criminal act.
That is the very nature of entrapment, no different than manipulating the motivations of a lonely man into hiring a prostitute.
... this is how you START them. This coming from someone from Seattle who lived on Capitol Hill during the WTO riots and had police overreact and create a situation when none existed.
Exactly. You may have heard about similar unrest at the APEC summit in Vancouver in 1997, where I was living at the time. The overreaction to protests by police is a distraction tactic.
In Vancouver when Prime Minister Cretien first visited after APEC, again there were protests that turned violent. The police formed a "bike line" about 150' from the entrance to the hotel where Cretien was, meaning police with bicycles stood about 25' apart and ordered everyone not to pass them. Since it was not even remotely intimidating everyone marched right past them. But having done so, they can then be arrested and charged with disobeying a legal police order.
So they had uninhibited access to the hotel front doors, which were recessed from the sidewalk and therefore private property. Once they were on private property, asked to leave, and they did not, they were then trespassing as well. As luck would have it, there just happened to be a legion of police with full riot gear in the hotel lobby to engage the protesters with batons and pepper spray.
Either they were giving out gourmet donuts, or it was a deliberate tactic to entrap the protesters into committing crimes. They report to the press that the protesters had access to areas within vocal range of the Prime Minister, but forced their way through the "barricade" with the intent of engaging the Prime Minister violently, so reciprocal violence was justified.
In the end, the violence upstages the protest, and nothing gets done about the human rights violations they were trying to bring to the public's attention. It's been a popular tactic in North America since the 1960's. Now it appears they're taking preemptive actions to make sure the protesters are going to put on a good show. Makes sense, given the level of apathy these days.
I advise anyone involved in a protest to enlist the aid of people trained in conflict resolution (i.e. bar security staff) to quell any troublemakers among the protesters, and have a lawyer on site to act as a liaison with the police. You're probably going to need one eventually, and you know you'll have to deal with the police. Who deals with the police without a lawyer? Criminals, idiots, or both.
You understand there have been 3 (1 imported from Canada) cases in the US in all of history, right?
The mad cow every American loves to blame on Canada had been at the Mabton WA farm for well over two years, and only spent a few months at the Alberta farm. The likelihood is that the BSE developed on US soil.
There are many Albertan farmers who suspect the USDA of sabotaging their reputation, and the fact that they would take US farmers to court to prevent testing suggests to me that perhaps BSE cases in the US go unreported unless they can blame them on their competitors or negligence of specific individuals. Their control over BSE testing directly conflicts with their economic responsibilities.
As an American, who loves his country, I really think we have reached the point as a culture and government where we deserve to fall miserably from or positions of wealth and power, for our own eventual good. Darwinism can only really be effective when there is hardship, and this country needs some serious darwinistic thinning of the herd.
The only Americans that need a good dose of Darwin are the Bush administration and its puppeteers. I can't imagine why any American would suggest any sacrifice for the sake of those traitors - who are unfortunately going to ride out any economic turmoil in lavish comfort. Too bad there isn't a mad president disease.
Feel free to mod me off-topic and/or flamebait, but I couldn't let that one slide.
By reading this comment, you agree to send me $50 via PayPal and let me sleep with your most attractive female relative over the age of 18. If you do not agree to these terms, do not read this comment.
There will be a $500 fee for processing your claim, and my cousin will probably gladly sleep with you when she's a widowed grandmother.
If you were to take a contract in any major Canadian city, you'd gain the experience of moving to another country and make connections with people of all nationalities that could give you far better insight and direction than a slashdot posting, for example. It would be a great stepping stone towards anything more adventurous, and enough of an adventure in itself to decide how adventurous your next step should be. Get your feet wet before diving in head first.
If you're serious about Europe, you should probably look into Toronto, Ottawa, or Halifax. If you start leaning towards Asia, Vancouver is the ticket.
Ok, I'm not Canadian, but this applies to everyone when their local government is pissing away money for no good reason.
It's one thing for a business to choose the more expensive option, the people making the choices must eventually answer to their stockholders. Well, as a voter, I'm a stockholder in my country. Wasting truckloads of money for no good reason means I'm going to vote your ass off the board of directors.
Most of the time, alternatives such as Openoffice.org are more than adequate for the job (and usually a better choice). Sometimes there are special needs which will allow for an exception, e.g. a large investment in Excel macros that are essential and very expensive to convert.
Local schools seem to be the worse offenders. They constantly bitch and moan about lack of funds, then piss away a pile of cash on a site license for Microsoft Office so they can teach their word processing course. Openoffice.org (and a few others) are perfect for the job. They are free and the cover everything necessary to learn word processing - which should be covering typing skills and how to lay out a well designed document - not how to use a specific product.
I love Quebec, but when it comes to politics, I hang my head. For example, you cannot even put up a poster in english. The stop signs say "arret", french for stop. In France, they say "stop".
I can only imagine what the politics would be like in a school board...
At TD Canada Trust, the have an excellent web interface, where you can customize many aspects.
For example, when I load my profile, my greeting message is "DON'T SAY PLEASE FUCKHEAD!" (a quote from Blue Velvet), my credit card account is called "Devil's Due", and my line of credit is called "Slush Funds".
If Psystar wins this bout and Apple restricts OS X upgrades to iTunes, any efforts to prevent Psystar clones from accessing iTunes would be grounds for another suit, which would probably be easier to win than this first one.
Tech support could be a tricky issue, since there's nothing stopping Apple from limiting its support to Mac owners. Psystar could end up having to provide support for OS X to their customers which would be costly to them, and customers would have to know Apple's support would be more thorough.
Still, I'm in favor of competition. It promotes product diversity. I'd like to see a hybrid Mini/tower platform like Shuttle PC's with quad cores and support for two optical drives, two full-size HDD's, dual monitors, no PCI/AGP etc, all in a silent case. That would be great for home-based audio, graphic, and AV professionals.
Apple has never offered any such product, either you get a huge case with lots of things you don't need, or a tiny box requiring N+1 noisy external cases and a desk covered in cables.
Set me up with an OS X capable mini-ATX mobo that takes an Intel Q6600 and I'll take it from there.
Let's compare housing values in silicon valley vs. detroit to see if you're right.
I think the difference in climate would have a more than slight impact there. While you're at it why not compare housing values between Iceland and Corsica.
A rather paranoid friend of mine suggested that "the secret society behind the Bush administration" is pushing hard to harvest as much profitable data before they lose the ability to do so. He compared them to a whale that can only survive so long without coming up for air. "They took a DEEP breath this time."
If that were true, cyberwarfare would probably be your only defense. But then "they" would be ready for that next time...
The power available to investigators is an indicator like the housing market is for the economy. This isn't the end result of a breakdown in civil rights, it's just the beginning. It's a match, not the inferno that can ensue.
Those powers make "Live free or die" pretty much obsolete. "Leave or get reamed" would seem more appropriate. That's why the Berlin Wall went up. Good luck defending the 49th parallel! Maybe now Canada will get back from the US all the doctors and nurses it paid to train!
We used to leave the blue lights on and there was a beat
Ever since you have been gone it's all caffeine-free
Faux punk fatigues
Said it all before
They try to kick it, their feet fall asleep
Get no harm done no
None of them want to fight me
Combat baby come back baby
Fight off the lethargy
Don't go quietly
Combat baby
Said you would never give up easy
Combat baby come back
Get back in town I wanna paint it black
Wanna get around
Easy living crowd so flat
Said it all before
They try to kick it, their feet fall asleep
I want to be wrong but
No one here wants to fight me like you do
I try to be so nice
Compromise
Who gets it good?
Every mighty mild seventies child
Every mighty mild seventies child
Beats me
How I miss your ranting
Do you miss my all time lows
------------ And that song was released over 5 years ago. The caffeine-free part sure ain't the case anymore thanks to Red Bullsh|t...
As someone who doesn't pirate their software, music, or movies, I object to the idea that I should pay by the GB at the same rate as people committing unenforcible theft.
I would rather see the pricing ramped on a statistical basis. Nobody cries about the discrimination of insurance companies charging huge fees for male drivers under 23. As a demographic, they cost the insurance company X amount in claims that they must recouperate.
Similarly, the typical college student pirates X amount of copyright software and/or multimedia. ISP's can and should spread those losses among the entire demographic, reimburse the copyright holders, and take the same initiatives insurance companies take to reward safe drivers.
Here's a parallel situation. In Canada, performing musicians have to kick something like 3% of their pay to SOCAN, the governing body that disperses royalties to the copyright holders of the original songs. Even if the band plays only their original music, they still have to pay SOCAN, and eventually they get it back. This is a new development, most Canadians aren't aware of it yet, but SOCAN is starting to compel music venues to collect the royalties.
Here's how the parallel breaks down:
musicians = users
venues = ISP's
music = internet content
Bandwidth usage is more proportional to content demand vs size than it is to protocols. The key to properly throttling bandwidth and assessing appropriate fees lies not in the amount of content, but in the value of the content itself. Perhaps a system could be devised where the merit of data determines the cost of downloading it.
For example a 5-rated Slashdot post would cost 30% more to read than a 0. Creepy, yet somehow appropriately Darwinian.
That was a rather unrefined stream-of-consciousness rant, I only hope it spawns further insight. I'm so busy these days I should make that my sig...
Good point. I imagine his relatively amateur acting would conflict with his straight-face comic abilities. For a stand-up comic, acting while the crowd is laughing must be a bitch. Maybe that's why Larry David shot Curb Your Enthusiasm without a live audience.
Oh, had a dastardly idea, gotta put it in another post...
They could buy 4 gigs of RAM for 3 million of their users... at retail prices...
Reminds me of how US federal and state governments spend over $100 million total annually to "boost consumer confidence". How's about cutting taxes instead!
Similarly, I'm not paying Jerry Seinfeld to tell me to buy Vista when everyone knows he's an avid Mac user. It was his show! Those Macs weren't there by fluke!
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe if we all pirate these laws it will reduce the financial incentive of these "artists" to create new works.
But then the Governator will champion the campaign against it.
"Lawster BAAAAD! Gay marriage GOOOOD!"
I had no idea you could identify a male pornstar from their facials. What an odd feature to include in a public photo app...
I meant she must have done something to convince the police she was a danger to others. At the very least she must have threatened something in the presence of the police. In many of those cases they arrest but don't charge with a crime, since usually the arrest gets the point across just fine, and it saves the perp a criminal record.
So you could say we have innocent even when arrested and guilty ;)
Even worse are the "extras" they throw in that get in your way. I want my DVD's to play the movie (and ONLY the movie) on insertion. That means ripping them and discarding the original DVD's. I also want to store DVD's in a binder, so my movie collection isn't a dominant fixture in the room. That means discarding the original cases. Notice how all the materials I paid for end up in the garbage 30 minutes after getting it home?
And don't get me started on Blu-Ray. Unskippable commercials?!! I would rather copy the movie to VHS!
After all the junk mail content, packaging, marketing, distribution, etc, the actual profit on a movie sale has got to be only around $3. So instead of stockpiling landfills, why not just let us download and burn it for $5.00? I'd put up with DRM's for that. If Universal can license their music to iTunes, why can't they do online distribution?
I was expecting an indepth account of Data's encounter with Tasha Yar...
Folks, in Canada it's one thing to be charged, it's another to be arrested. In the US if the police are convinced you've committed a crime, they arrest you. In Canada, if you're not posing an imminent danger to others, you just get charged. They tell you to come in, do some paperwork, and let you know the pre-trial date etc. She must have been beyond hysterical when the cops arrived, either completely shitfaced or holding a knife, or both. That's what it would take to get arrested in your own home under those circumstances.
The police aren't obligated to prevent crime
I needn't read your reply any further.
the cops outside weren't intimidating enough to stop people who were consciously willing to break the law anyway?
The police knew the protesters were predisposed to ignore warnings and proceed where there were not adequate physical barricades to obstruct them. Look up the legal term "due diligence". The police did not exercise due diligence in preventing the protesters from committing crimes, nor warned them of the consequences. It was clearly a deliberate ploy to abuse their unfamiliarity with the law and advance their otherwise legal motivations into a criminal act.
That is the very nature of entrapment, no different than manipulating the motivations of a lonely man into hiring a prostitute.
... this is how you START them. This coming from someone from Seattle who lived on Capitol Hill during the WTO riots and had police overreact and create a situation when none existed.
Exactly. You may have heard about similar unrest at the APEC summit in Vancouver in 1997, where I was living at the time. The overreaction to protests by police is a distraction tactic.
In Vancouver when Prime Minister Cretien first visited after APEC, again there were protests that turned violent. The police formed a "bike line" about 150' from the entrance to the hotel where Cretien was, meaning police with bicycles stood about 25' apart and ordered everyone not to pass them. Since it was not even remotely intimidating everyone marched right past them. But having done so, they can then be arrested and charged with disobeying a legal police order.
So they had uninhibited access to the hotel front doors, which were recessed from the sidewalk and therefore private property. Once they were on private property, asked to leave, and they did not, they were then trespassing as well. As luck would have it, there just happened to be a legion of police with full riot gear in the hotel lobby to engage the protesters with batons and pepper spray.
Either they were giving out gourmet donuts, or it was a deliberate tactic to entrap the protesters into committing crimes. They report to the press that the protesters had access to areas within vocal range of the Prime Minister, but forced their way through the "barricade" with the intent of engaging the Prime Minister violently, so reciprocal violence was justified.
In the end, the violence upstages the protest, and nothing gets done about the human rights violations they were trying to bring to the public's attention. It's been a popular tactic in North America since the 1960's. Now it appears they're taking preemptive actions to make sure the protesters are going to put on a good show. Makes sense, given the level of apathy these days.
I advise anyone involved in a protest to enlist the aid of people trained in conflict resolution (i.e. bar security staff) to quell any troublemakers among the protesters, and have a lawyer on site to act as a liaison with the police. You're probably going to need one eventually, and you know you'll have to deal with the police. Who deals with the police without a lawyer? Criminals, idiots, or both.
You understand there have been 3 (1 imported from Canada) cases in the US in all of history, right?
The mad cow every American loves to blame on Canada had been at the Mabton WA farm for well over two years, and only spent a few months at the Alberta farm. The likelihood is that the BSE developed on US soil.
There are many Albertan farmers who suspect the USDA of sabotaging their reputation, and the fact that they would take US farmers to court to prevent testing suggests to me that perhaps BSE cases in the US go unreported unless they can blame them on their competitors or negligence of specific individuals. Their control over BSE testing directly conflicts with their economic responsibilities.
As an American, who loves his country, I really think we have reached the point as a culture and government where we deserve to fall miserably from or positions of wealth and power, for our own eventual good. Darwinism can only really be effective when there is hardship, and this country needs some serious darwinistic thinning of the herd.
The only Americans that need a good dose of Darwin are the Bush administration and its puppeteers. I can't imagine why any American would suggest any sacrifice for the sake of those traitors - who are unfortunately going to ride out any economic turmoil in lavish comfort. Too bad there isn't a mad president disease.
Feel free to mod me off-topic and/or flamebait, but I couldn't let that one slide.
By reading this comment, you agree to send me $50 via PayPal and let me sleep with your most attractive female relative over the age of 18. If you do not agree to these terms, do not read this comment.
There will be a $500 fee for processing your claim, and my cousin will probably gladly sleep with you when she's a widowed grandmother.
If you were to take a contract in any major Canadian city, you'd gain the experience of moving to another country and make connections with people of all nationalities that could give you far better insight and direction than a slashdot posting, for example. It would be a great stepping stone towards anything more adventurous, and enough of an adventure in itself to decide how adventurous your next step should be. Get your feet wet before diving in head first.
If you're serious about Europe, you should probably look into Toronto, Ottawa, or Halifax. If you start leaning towards Asia, Vancouver is the ticket.
Who knows, you might just want to stay :)
Ok, I'm not Canadian, but this applies to everyone when their local government is pissing away money for no good reason.
It's one thing for a business to choose the more expensive option, the people making the choices must eventually answer to their stockholders. Well, as a voter, I'm a stockholder in my country. Wasting truckloads of money for no good reason means I'm going to vote your ass off the board of directors.
Most of the time, alternatives such as Openoffice.org are more than adequate for the job (and usually a better choice). Sometimes there are special needs which will allow for an exception, e.g. a large investment in Excel macros that are essential and very expensive to convert.
Local schools seem to be the worse offenders. They constantly bitch and moan about lack of funds, then piss away a pile of cash on a site license for Microsoft Office so they can teach their word processing course. Openoffice.org (and a few others) are perfect for the job. They are free and the cover everything necessary to learn word processing - which should be covering typing skills and how to lay out a well designed document - not how to use a specific product.
I love Quebec, but when it comes to politics, I hang my head. For example, you cannot even put up a poster in english. The stop signs say "arret", french for stop. In France, they say "stop".
I can only imagine what the politics would be like in a school board...
At TD Canada Trust, the have an excellent web interface, where you can customize many aspects.
For example, when I load my profile, my greeting message is "DON'T SAY PLEASE FUCKHEAD!" (a quote from Blue Velvet), my credit card account is called "Devil's Due", and my line of credit is called "Slush Funds".
If Psystar wins this bout and Apple restricts OS X upgrades to iTunes, any efforts to prevent Psystar clones from accessing iTunes would be grounds for another suit, which would probably be easier to win than this first one.
Tech support could be a tricky issue, since there's nothing stopping Apple from limiting its support to Mac owners. Psystar could end up having to provide support for OS X to their customers which would be costly to them, and customers would have to know Apple's support would be more thorough.
Still, I'm in favor of competition. It promotes product diversity. I'd like to see a hybrid Mini/tower platform like Shuttle PC's with quad cores and support for two optical drives, two full-size HDD's, dual monitors, no PCI/AGP etc, all in a silent case. That would be great for home-based audio, graphic, and AV professionals.
Apple has never offered any such product, either you get a huge case with lots of things you don't need, or a tiny box requiring N+1 noisy external cases and a desk covered in cables.
Set me up with an OS X capable mini-ATX mobo that takes an Intel Q6600 and I'll take it from there.
Let's compare housing values in silicon valley vs. detroit to see if you're right.
I think the difference in climate would have a more than slight impact there. While you're at it why not compare housing values between Iceland and Corsica.
A rather paranoid friend of mine suggested that "the secret society behind the Bush administration" is pushing hard to harvest as much profitable data before they lose the ability to do so. He compared them to a whale that can only survive so long without coming up for air. "They took a DEEP breath this time."
If that were true, cyberwarfare would probably be your only defense. But then "they" would be ready for that next time...
The power available to investigators is an indicator like the housing market is for the economy. This isn't the end result of a breakdown in civil rights, it's just the beginning. It's a match, not the inferno that can ensue.
Those powers make "Live free or die" pretty much obsolete. "Leave or get reamed" would seem more appropriate. That's why the Berlin Wall went up. Good luck defending the 49th parallel! Maybe now Canada will get back from the US all the doctors and nurses it paid to train!
"Roll up the rim to win" indeed...
Check out Combat Baby by Metric, it's about a former hippy's boredom from a lack of moral activism:
Video
We used to leave the blue lights on and there was a beat
Ever since you have been gone it's all caffeine-free
Faux punk fatigues
Said it all before
They try to kick it, their feet fall asleep
Get no harm done no
None of them want to fight me
Combat baby come back baby
Fight off the lethargy
Don't go quietly
Combat baby
Said you would never give up easy
Combat baby come back
Get back in town I wanna paint it black
Wanna get around
Easy living crowd so flat
Said it all before
They try to kick it, their feet fall asleep
I want to be wrong but
No one here wants to fight me like you do
I try to be so nice
Compromise
Who gets it good?
Every mighty mild seventies child
Every mighty mild seventies child
Beats me
How I miss your ranting
Do you miss my all time lows
------------
And that song was released over 5 years ago. The caffeine-free part sure ain't the case anymore thanks to Red Bullsh|t...
P.S. html-formating song lyrics is a bitch...
If you are dumb enough to fall for one of the oldest fraud methods in existence, you deserve to lose you money, but not your freedom.
Are you suggesting the elderly baby-boom generation has to go back to high school to learn to protect their hard-earned investments?
What's next, needing a license to go online?
As someone who doesn't pirate their software, music, or movies, I object to the idea that I should pay by the GB at the same rate as people committing unenforcible theft.
I would rather see the pricing ramped on a statistical basis. Nobody cries about the discrimination of insurance companies charging huge fees for male drivers under 23. As a demographic, they cost the insurance company X amount in claims that they must recouperate.
Similarly, the typical college student pirates X amount of copyright software and/or multimedia. ISP's can and should spread those losses among the entire demographic, reimburse the copyright holders, and take the same initiatives insurance companies take to reward safe drivers.
Here's a parallel situation. In Canada, performing musicians have to kick something like 3% of their pay to SOCAN, the governing body that disperses royalties to the copyright holders of the original songs. Even if the band plays only their original music, they still have to pay SOCAN, and eventually they get it back. This is a new development, most Canadians aren't aware of it yet, but SOCAN is starting to compel music venues to collect the royalties.
Here's how the parallel breaks down:
musicians = users
venues = ISP's
music = internet content
Bandwidth usage is more proportional to content demand vs size than it is to protocols. The key to properly throttling bandwidth and assessing appropriate fees lies not in the amount of content, but in the value of the content itself. Perhaps a system could be devised where the merit of data determines the cost of downloading it.
For example a 5-rated Slashdot post would cost 30% more to read than a 0. Creepy, yet somehow appropriately Darwinian.
That was a rather unrefined stream-of-consciousness rant, I only hope it spawns further insight. I'm so busy these days I should make that my sig...
Imagine if Apple hired Larry David to refute Seinfeld's Vista campaign! The dialogs he could have with the PC guy...
Good point. I imagine his relatively amateur acting would conflict with his straight-face comic abilities. For a stand-up comic, acting while the crowd is laughing must be a bitch. Maybe that's why Larry David shot Curb Your Enthusiasm without a live audience.
Oh, had a dastardly idea, gotta put it in another post...
They could buy 4 gigs of RAM for 3 million of their users... at retail prices...
Reminds me of how US federal and state governments spend over $100 million total annually to "boost consumer confidence". How's about cutting taxes instead!
Similarly, I'm not paying Jerry Seinfeld to tell me to buy Vista when everyone knows he's an avid Mac user. It was his show! Those Macs weren't there by fluke!