If they could've arrested him as a material witness they should've. And there is a story, harassment. If they don't have the evidence to arrest him, he should be free to go, and if they do, they should arrest him.
I don't know what the exact rules are on detaining people, but I suspect they would never get away with this anywhere other than the border. I don't think the police are allowed to detain you to try to get you to answer questions. I think they can if they have enough evidence for it to be possible that you were directly involved in a crime and so can arrest you, but otherwise I think they can only take the time you volunteer to give them.
The rules for what is and isn't allowed to be done to US citizens by the government shouldn't change just because said citizen is re-entering the country with a valid passport.
This kind of fishing expedition by government agents is basically harassment, and if it's legal it should be made illegal.
It seems to me that this Eddington limit idea depends on all the matter that's gravitationally bound to the star's atmosphere participate in the fusion reactions at the core of the star. What about matter that doesn't participate in those kinds of reactions? Wouldn't a preponderance of dark matter allow a star to form that's much bigger than the Eddington limit since the dark matter wouldn't be participating in energy releasing fusion reactions?
And why isn't it possible that this star is one such?
Why can't the pulse compression technology that's used for lasic lasers be used for military lasers?
If the problem is painting the same spot on a missile for a second or so, wouldn't it be a lot easier if a 0.1 second pulse is compressed down to a femtosecond so all the energy put into the laser over the course of 0.1 seconds is delivered in 0.000000000000001 seconds?
I would like to go back and compile a list of the things that have changed at my former HS. I bet I would find a lot has changed. And my former HS was one of the best public schools in the area. We lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and they almost invariably voted for ballot measures that increased school funding.
But you are right, there is a lack of evidence. I do know that a lot of the silly 'zero-tolerance' policies and suspicion of anybody who seems 'deviant' didn't seem nearly as strong or prevalent. But that's possibly also because the Internet didn't exist to spread the stories.
Slashdot would not be complete without someone blaming "authoritarianism" for our ills. Truth is, we're far less authoritarian than we've ever been.
My impression has been the exact opposite. Most especially in schools.
But that doesn't mean I disagree with you about parents parenting their children. And I think that has been an impetus (but not the only one) towards more authoritarianism in schools.
I think that currently the most frequently bumped against limits are limits imposed by structures of authority. Frequently these limits are arbitrary, capricious and imposed post-hoc, and their violation comes with severe punishments. I think those kinds of limits are dampening rather than inspirational.
I have noticed a distinct trend towards authoritarianism in American culture in the past 20 years. And this has been most especially pronounced in schools. Authoritarianism and creativity are at direct odds with each other.
My own HS started making changes shortly after I graduated in 1989. They started restricting student's ability to go off campus during the day. And I haven't really gone back to find out what else has changed, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more locked down than when I went.
I think America became afraid of its young people. There was this idea that young people were becoming increasingly violent and uncontrollable. For example, stories of cold-blooded killings and gang membership became the impetus for changing the laws so it was much more likely juveniles would be prosecuted as adults.
But I think there was more to it than that, and I'm not completely sure where the wrong turn was taken or what it was.
That's right. It was so much better when it was a blood thirsty dictatorship put in place by the British and US governments than it is as a democratically elected government.
While I do not deny our culpability in the unpleasantness of the overthrown dictatorship, I do not feel that the current Iranian government qualifies as democratically elected. I believe there were huge protests in Iran over this in the past year or two.
One thing I have noticed about violence as a means to political change is that it frequently puts worse people in charge than you had to start with. The American Revolution was a huge rarity in that regard.
Though, the really important acts of the revolution happened without a drop of violence. The subsequent violence could be called 'defending your homeland from an external agressor', which is a case in which I think violence has a better chance of being effective.
But the actual act of creating the idea of a 'homeland' that needed defending was done without violence.
In India, Great Britain was no longer an external agressor. They were already part of the main political process of India. So I suspect the 'defend your homeland form and external agressor' justification wouldn't have worked.
One thing I've heard is that antiparticles are mathematically equivalent to normal particles moving backward through time if you work the equations all through. If you have an antineutrino that has a different mass than the corresponding ordinary neutrino that means this no longer works. Things shouldn't change mass if you have them travel in the opposite direction through time.
It seems to me that general and special relativity, which deal with the relationship between mass, energy, space and time, wouldn't work very well if some base invariant like that was violated. I don't know enough physics or math to work through all the details though, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
You seem to have this weird idea that people don't know what's going on when they buy the phone. Like they're being defrauded. They were promised a porn-phone and they got a locked-down puritan-phone. That's simply not the case.
Except that it is. At one point the iPhone was a porn phone, and then all those apps disappeared. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that those apps disappeared from people's phones as well, ala Amazon kindle "1984".
Now, I might be mistaken about this, but from what I know the only way to distribute an application for the iPhone over the Internet to other people is to use Apple's app store. You can't set up your own download site for i(Phone/Pad/Product) apps and allow people to use your app for free.
The Firefox example doesn't apply because I can easily make Firefox do those things in any number of ways. I can go to some random add-on site and download their add-on for allowing arbitrary code execution if I so choose.
People who buy Apple's iProducts are forced to do something potentially illegal to their devices in order to accomplish the same thing (unless they write the app themselves). They don't really own their devices, Apple controls them post-sale.
I agree and disagree with this. Phoning in fake bomb threats, for example, would fall squarely into this category, but sending email with keywords would not. There is a line between provoking a way overly twitchy security apparatus into overreacting to something innocuous and doing something that should obviously break it.
If we are to have any civil liberties at all, we have to be extremely liberal in what we allow people to do in the way of provoking. Only things that are as obvious and straightforward as a fake bomb threat or false fire report should count as malicious.
I was, possibly, slightly harsh in my use of the term stupid. I feel, a lot of the time, that I'm arguing against people who think our military should be untouchable and beyond reproach of any kind whatsoever. So, it's hard not to choose language that lashes out.
Ahh, but see, I have lots of choices for browsers. I can use Lynx, Chrome, Firefox, Opera... the choices are endless. HTML is a truly open standard.
Flash is not. The existence of a specification does not a standard make. My criteria for the existence of a 'standard' is a mostly completely interoperable Open Source implementation.
Well, at the time it wasn't easy to find the full video unless the mainstream news media showed it to you. I think the mainstream media was irresponsible for not showing it.
Now, that's not so much the case. Wikileaks is not the only source of information. Information is easy to come by. Anybody who wants to comment and claim the video lacks essential context can go and link to the essential context if they so choose.
And an increasing number of websites don't work without it.
Flash from Adobe is worth a negative amount of money to me. In order to participate in larger society effectively I am forced to use something that's of negative value to me. That isn't OK.
I'm telling you that your choice to get it is a stupid mistake, and that almost anybody's choice to get it is a stupid mistake. It costs more than you pay for it.
There are things that are worth a negative amount of money. Most software at no cost that isn't Open Source falls into that category. I would put Flash from Adobe in that category.
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If they could've arrested him as a material witness they should've. And there is a story, harassment. If they don't have the evidence to arrest him, he should be free to go, and if they do, they should arrest him.
I don't know what the exact rules are on detaining people, but I suspect they would never get away with this anywhere other than the border. I don't think the police are allowed to detain you to try to get you to answer questions. I think they can if they have enough evidence for it to be possible that you were directly involved in a crime and so can arrest you, but otherwise I think they can only take the time you volunteer to give them.
The rules for what is and isn't allowed to be done to US citizens by the government shouldn't change just because said citizen is re-entering the country with a valid passport.
This kind of fishing expedition by government agents is basically harassment, and if it's legal it should be made illegal.
It seems to me that this Eddington limit idea depends on all the matter that's gravitationally bound to the star's atmosphere participate in the fusion reactions at the core of the star. What about matter that doesn't participate in those kinds of reactions? Wouldn't a preponderance of dark matter allow a star to form that's much bigger than the Eddington limit since the dark matter wouldn't be participating in energy releasing fusion reactions?
And why isn't it possible that this star is one such?
This is an excellent idea.
We just need a way to extract a lot of metal from seawater. That would solve a ton of logistics problems as well. :-)
Why can't the pulse compression technology that's used for lasic lasers be used for military lasers?
If the problem is painting the same spot on a missile for a second or so, wouldn't it be a lot easier if a 0.1 second pulse is compressed down to a femtosecond so all the energy put into the laser over the course of 0.1 seconds is delivered in 0.000000000000001 seconds?
I would like to go back and compile a list of the things that have changed at my former HS. I bet I would find a lot has changed. And my former HS was one of the best public schools in the area. We lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and they almost invariably voted for ballot measures that increased school funding.
But you are right, there is a lack of evidence. I do know that a lot of the silly 'zero-tolerance' policies and suspicion of anybody who seems 'deviant' didn't seem nearly as strong or prevalent. But that's possibly also because the Internet didn't exist to spread the stories.
Slashdot would not be complete without someone blaming "authoritarianism" for our ills. Truth is, we're far less authoritarian than we've ever been.
My impression has been the exact opposite. Most especially in schools.
But that doesn't mean I disagree with you about parents parenting their children. And I think that has been an impetus (but not the only one) towards more authoritarianism in schools.
I know what you mean there, and I agree with you.
I think that currently the most frequently bumped against limits are limits imposed by structures of authority. Frequently these limits are arbitrary, capricious and imposed post-hoc, and their violation comes with severe punishments. I think those kinds of limits are dampening rather than inspirational.
I have noticed a distinct trend towards authoritarianism in American culture in the past 20 years. And this has been most especially pronounced in schools. Authoritarianism and creativity are at direct odds with each other.
My own HS started making changes shortly after I graduated in 1989. They started restricting student's ability to go off campus during the day. And I haven't really gone back to find out what else has changed, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more locked down than when I went.
I think America became afraid of its young people. There was this idea that young people were becoming increasingly violent and uncontrollable. For example, stories of cold-blooded killings and gang membership became the impetus for changing the laws so it was much more likely juveniles would be prosecuted as adults.
But I think there was more to it than that, and I'm not completely sure where the wrong turn was taken or what it was.
That's right. It was so much better when it was a blood thirsty dictatorship put in place by the British and US governments than it is as a democratically elected government.
While I do not deny our culpability in the unpleasantness of the overthrown dictatorship, I do not feel that the current Iranian government qualifies as democratically elected. I believe there were huge protests in Iran over this in the past year or two.
One thing I have noticed about violence as a means to political change is that it frequently puts worse people in charge than you had to start with. The American Revolution was a huge rarity in that regard.
Though, the really important acts of the revolution happened without a drop of violence. The subsequent violence could be called 'defending your homeland from an external agressor', which is a case in which I think violence has a better chance of being effective.
But the actual act of creating the idea of a 'homeland' that needed defending was done without violence.
In India, Great Britain was no longer an external agressor. They were already part of the main political process of India. So I suspect the 'defend your homeland form and external agressor' justification wouldn't have worked.
I like their laptops just fine. It's their Jobs-inside iProducts I can't stand.
One thing I've heard is that antiparticles are mathematically equivalent to normal particles moving backward through time if you work the equations all through. If you have an antineutrino that has a different mass than the corresponding ordinary neutrino that means this no longer works. Things shouldn't change mass if you have them travel in the opposite direction through time.
It seems to me that general and special relativity, which deal with the relationship between mass, energy, space and time, wouldn't work very well if some base invariant like that was violated. I don't know enough physics or math to work through all the details though, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
You seem to have this weird idea that people don't know what's going on when they buy the phone. Like they're being defrauded. They were promised a porn-phone and they got a locked-down puritan-phone. That's simply not the case.
Except that it is. At one point the iPhone was a porn phone, and then all those apps disappeared. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that those apps disappeared from people's phones as well, ala Amazon kindle "1984".
Now, I might be mistaken about this, but from what I know the only way to distribute an application for the iPhone over the Internet to other people is to use Apple's app store. You can't set up your own download site for i(Phone/Pad/Product) apps and allow people to use your app for free.
The Firefox example doesn't apply because I can easily make Firefox do those things in any number of ways. I can go to some random add-on site and download their add-on for allowing arbitrary code execution if I so choose.
People who buy Apple's iProducts are forced to do something potentially illegal to their devices in order to accomplish the same thing (unless they write the app themselves). They don't really own their devices, Apple controls them post-sale.
I agree and disagree with this. Phoning in fake bomb threats, for example, would fall squarely into this category, but sending email with keywords would not. There is a line between provoking a way overly twitchy security apparatus into overreacting to something innocuous and doing something that should obviously break it.
If we are to have any civil liberties at all, we have to be extremely liberal in what we allow people to do in the way of provoking. Only things that are as obvious and straightforward as a fake bomb threat or false fire report should count as malicious.
I was, possibly, slightly harsh in my use of the term stupid. I feel, a lot of the time, that I'm arguing against people who think our military should be untouchable and beyond reproach of any kind whatsoever. So, it's hard not to choose language that lashes out.
Ahh, but see, I have lots of choices for browsers. I can use Lynx, Chrome, Firefox, Opera... the choices are endless. HTML is a truly open standard.
Flash is not. The existence of a specification does not a standard make. My criteria for the existence of a 'standard' is a mostly completely interoperable Open Source implementation.
Well, at the time it wasn't easy to find the full video unless the mainstream news media showed it to you. I think the mainstream media was irresponsible for not showing it.
Now, that's not so much the case. Wikileaks is not the only source of information. Information is easy to come by. Anybody who wants to comment and claim the video lacks essential context can go and link to the essential context if they so choose.
Yes, both Apple's iProducts and Adobe Flash fall into the same category as far as I'm concerned. :-)
And an increasing number of websites don't work without it.
Flash from Adobe is worth a negative amount of money to me. In order to participate in larger society effectively I am forced to use something that's of negative value to me. That isn't OK.
I'm telling you that your choice to get it is a stupid mistake, and that almost anybody's choice to get it is a stupid mistake. It costs more than you pay for it.
There are things that are worth a negative amount of money. Most software at no cost that isn't Open Source falls into that category. I would put Flash from Adobe in that category.
And more importantly, how many horrible security holes does Adobe's bad, sloppy programming introduce?