Right... Now, try setting up a kiosk where people can come and you'll tell them where to find drug dealers. O, if they come asking about pharmacies you'll give them that information too, if you happen to have it, but you've gone out of your way to build up a list of drug dealers. That's what you're known for and that's why people come to you.
Suddenly the police will take an interest in you. That is what sets IsoHunt apart from your hypothetical chat room.
Re:What about when Novell starts abusing their
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Novell Wins vs. SCO
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And in what way would that affect Novell's ability to use (or abuse) the UNIX copyrights? With all due respect, unless and until you educate yourself enough to know the difference between a patent and a copyright, your opinion on whether software patents should be allowed is not valid.
"this shows how stupid America pushing IP is... it's just going to bite us back bigtime when India/China compete on the high end"
So... the argument against an IP framework is that those dern ferners might benefit from it too when they're the ones doing the innovative work? That soudns a bit nationalistic to say the least...
This kind of confusion is what comes of seeing a patent that covers a method of doing something that facilitates X, and calling it "the patent on doing X". It's not. There is no such thing as "the patent on multi-touch".
There can be, and probably are, many patents related to multi-touch. It's quite possible, since there's more than one way to implement multi-touch, that you could own a patent related to mullti-touch and I could make multi-touch devices without licesning or infringing your patent.
Really? It's ok to harm someone as long as you consider their sensitivity to that harm to be rare and therefore brand them a "freak"?
Another fascinating moral system.
The use of wireless electronics in your own home is only "law-abiding behavior" because the government has found that it is not harmful to those around you. If your use of those electronics were expected to cause harm to others - even if it were only so for a small percentage of "others" - it would be incumbent on you to remedy that as a condition of using the device.
If you think I'm speaking theoretically, go look up how responibility is assigned to amateur radio operators for the effects of their activity. I'm sure you think that's different, but it's not; the only difference is, consumer devices are currently presumed to have no negative impact on your neighbors (hence no case-by-case ilcensing or remediation is currently required).
I agree, it's a mind-bending idea, largely because it sits entirely outside of human experience.
My grounding in cosmology really isn't sufficient to give definite answers to some of your questions. I can say that when they talk about the size and shape of space, they are not talking merely about observable distance; they really mean "this is what the world is shaped like". When faced with the question "what happens at the boundary of space", I strongly suspect most (if not all) count on the fact that we'll never be able to observe those conditions; when no answer is falsifiable, I guess no answer is needed.
Since he's claiming to be affected by "certain frequencies", you're probably wrong. If house wiring were that noisy in the frequencies used by wireless communications devices, then such devices wouldn't work in the home.
Instead of trying to define away his claims, the proper procedure is to make him define them and prove them. He won't be able to, so quit losing sleep over it.
So your position is that if something is widely enough used, it's ok to keep using it no matter what effect it has on others? Fascinating moral system.
Slippery slope argument are always crap, so I'm not going through yours point by point. I will merely advise you that the complexities of adapting society to a world in which EM sensitivity were real needn't be a concern unless someone demonstrates a real EM sensitivity.
Save yourself some trouble. Focus on the fact that all attempts to document claims of EM sensitivity have been busted.
Why not what? Why isn't it a coherent concept? Because, as I said, location is a property of space. That's what space is, by definition. If you point to some location and say "that's outside of space", then you've defined space incorrectly.
You might as well ask whether a rock is an introvert or an extrovert.
I agree with the premise that this is not "cyberbullying", but rather is "bullying" in a society where some communication occurs online. Depending on details of what was said and done, I think it's questionable whether the physical harassment was worse than the verbal/written part.
But really my question for you is - Do you have knowledge of this case beyond TFA, on which to base the assertion that she was raped? Or are you just working from the fact that statutory rape charges were raised, which TFA doesn't really explain? Keep in mind that statutory rape implies only that she was underage and had sex. Yes it's illegal, yes there's arguably good reason for that, but no that isn't what is meant by the phrase "she was raped".
I'm impressed. There are so many solid arguments against those who claim sensitivity to consumer electronics, I didn't think anyone could possibly come forward asserting such a poor one as yours.
If you tried to apply your "lactose intolerant" analogy, don't you suppose your opponent would point out that the makers of your favorite foods don't project those foods into your home against your wishes?
If these sensitivities were real (though I very much doubt that they are), he would have a point. Just because something has become socially common doesn't mean it's ok to do if it later turns out that it harms others in their own home. The key phrase is if they were real; so this point is moot unless someone can show some credible scientific basis for anything beyond the psychosomatic.
I don't know if this guy really believes he's sensitive or if he's just a complete asshat. It sure looks like he figured he saw a way to make a quick buck by convincing someone he knew uses electronics to move in to the next house over.
I'm not sure what the flaw in your reasoning is, but I can say with reasonable confidence that if it only took a single Congressperson to put any given piece of information in the public eye without repercussion, we'd live in a very different world than we do today.
That's a pretty sweeping statement. You might want to review Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37 of the U.S. code, which in many situations provides criminal penalties for anyone who propagates various categories of sensitive information (not just those entrusted to protect such information).
Government classification isn't like a trade secret, if that's what you're thinking.
Yeah... unfortunately, the behavior of mechanical devices are also dictated by mathematical properties of the world we are living in. You're drawing a distinction where there is no difference.
""According to Ryan, there's about $124 billion in double-counted money in the bill. Assuming his math is correct (and no one I talked to said it wasn't), that's a fair critique. What isn't fair is to suggest that this is about the health-care bill. This is how the government does its accounting."
How is that a "debunking"? It's still an accounting trick that means they are hiding the costs."
Now you're just being willfully dishonest. First by selectively quoting the article out of context, and second by pretending that $124B of double-counting could ever mean the same thing as $500B that you claimed the bill both counts and spends.
Well, as I posted elsewhere that's more or less how I'd have done it.
I later got curious and looked up what they did; that isn't it. If you owe the penalty, you pay it with your return, but it is not considered income tax.
Instead they're justifying it using the Interstate Commerce clause. The idea is, the Supreme Court has already ruled that insurance is interstate commerce, therefore the federal government can regulate it.
And actually, I have a big problem with that rationalization. Saying that you can regulate a certain economic activity is a very different thing from saying that you can pass laws requiring an individual to participate in said activity.
Interstate Commerce is a broadly abused justification for the federal government to take on powers it was never given in the Constitution. I hope the mandate does get struck down by SCOTUS simply because of the terrible precident it would set if this justification were allowed to stand. (Hey, railroads are engaged in interstate commerce, so how 'bout we require every citizen to ride a train every year or pay a penalty?)
If they then want to re-write the mandate as an income tax / tax credit scheme that has the same effect, that might at least make some kind of sense.
The fine is tied to income, with in fact some direct ties to income tax... so I'm not saying they did or didn't implement it this way - I haven't seen the relevant language - but I'll tell you how I'd have done it if I wanted to craft the "mandate" provision without risking 10th amendment issues:
1) An increase in income tax (something we already know the federal government is permitted to do) equal to the amount of the fine
2) A tax credit (also something we already know the federal government is permitted to do), also equal to the amount of the fine, for anyone who obtains qualified coverage (or meets other exemption criteria such as inability to find suitably affordable coverage)
I take it you're not a fan of dental insurance, then.
I've heard convincing arguments either way about the proper role of insurance; but it doesn't matter, because in reality insurance does cover preventative care regardless of whether it should, and anyone deciding to defer health insurance until they're sick ought to be taking that into account.
If you don't make enough money that you have to pay income taxes, you're exempt from the fine. Even then the fine is capped based on your income level.
In other words, the argument of "only if you earn money" argument that you applied to income tax, applies to this fine as well. The idea that you are liable for this fine "the second you become an adult" is incorrect.
"Since now everyone is paying for each other's health, that may give people a "right" to say I can't smoke, I can't ride a bike without a helmet, I can't eat trans fats"
You do realize that private insurance companies have been headed in that direction (enforced by varying premiums) for many years already, right? And this legislation actually puts limits on their ability to do so. (They can still price-discriminate on a few things, including smoking, but only up to a prescribed limit.)
"is anyone worried that these sorts of things may become legislated (more than they might be already)?"
I'm not. I've seen no examples of that sort of over-reaching law WRT medicare or medicaid, which are certainly impacted by personal health/lifestyle choices. If you have an example of it from, say, Europe or Canada (both of which subsidize health care to a greater degree than what this bill is doing), I'd like to hear the details.
"Is it wrong to want to keep certain medical issues out of the hands of certain medical professionals?"
I don't know about "wrong", but it's certainly foolish. Get doctors you can trust, and give them the information they need to do their job. Deciding that you don't think they need to know such-and-such doesn't make a lot of sense. They've been to med school, so you might want to let them decide what medical information is relevant.
So you think you'll wait until your sick to buy insurance. Ok.
If you get a chrnoic illness that requires ongoing treatment, having set aside the money you would've spent on premiums to cover the initial treatments before you can process the purchase of insurance, then I suppose you win. Hope it doesn't happen before you've had time to set aside enough money. For anything serious it's going to take many years of savings on premiums even if you don't spend any of that sweet money you're planning to pocket.
On the other hand, if you get an acute illness, you lose. You'll pay for the treatment on your own because you'll be treated before your coverage becomes effective. Sure, the insurance company can't deny you coverage, but do you really think they're going to pay bills you'd already received? Better think twice.
You're worse off still if you get in an accident. A few years ago I went to the ER because a bicycle had run over me. (After dark, bike had no lights and was on the sidewalk. And I think the cyclist was drunk.) Because I was insured, I paid the hospital $100. If I were uninsured, I wouldn't have had a chance to buy coverage for the emergency treatment I received. Instead, I would've been handed a hospital bill for over $10,000.
Also, insurance covers this thing called "preventative care". It's one of the most effective ways to reduce your odds of getting severely sick. Since your plan is to avoid paying for insurance until you need it, I assume you won't want to erode those savings by getting the preventative care that the insurance would otherwise be covering for you. You might want to consider that while you might pay something like $20 to see your doctor, that isn't what you'll pay to see him if you're uninsured.
If you do eschew preventative care, the odds increase that sooner or later you will get sick enough to (1) be unnecessarily miserable, and (2) have some nasty bills to cover while you scramble to find last-minute coverage.
I don't see any contradiction. They've had years to research Viacom's complaints. As they investigate individual incidents, and find funny business related to some of those individual incidents, they compile them and form the basis for this filing. That's a far cry from being able to produce similar details comprehensively about every upload in real time.
We don't know how long it took to document any given incident. We don't know what expense was involved. We don't know what lucky breaks they needed; it could well be that for every incident they have documented, another - or 10 more, or 100 more, etc. - might exist where they couldn't get any evidence of what really happeend.
I've seen at least one post asserting that there is no database. Based on the facts presented in the story, I can see why a scientific mind might be inclined to conclude this: no database would be necessary to do what was done in this case. I think that's at best inconclusive; let's take a closer look...
They wanted to link this guy to the crime scene. They already had him near the crmie scene. With limited identification from witnesses, that's at best only a start...
They had blood on him, and the relevant use of DNA technology was in showing that this blood matched the blood from the crime scene. They could tell there was both human and dog blood; this doesn't require a database. They could tell that the human DNA on the suspect matched the victim's blood; combined with the other facts, that might be enough to put him at the scene, and it doesn't require a database. If they needed more evidence, they could tell that the dog blood from both samples came from a single animal; again, there should be no need for a database.
I'm not sure what identifying the animal from which the dog blood originated adds to that. ("Wellll, he was covered in the victim's blood and blood from an animal that was at the crime scene, but that doesn't tell us anything... Oh, wait - he also owned the animal in question? Well, then!" If that's the reasoning, I guess the message is "if you're going to use a dog as a weapon, use someone else's dog".) But even then, no need for a database to match the blood sample to the dog since you have access to the dog you suspect it will match.
So I don't doubt that a database exists and was used; but I suspect its use and the subsequent publicity have more to do with someone's political agenda (make DNA databases look like useful tools) and less to do with real investigative techniques or real science.
Slashdot Mirror
Right... Now, try setting up a kiosk where people can come and you'll tell them where to find drug dealers. O, if they come asking about pharmacies you'll give them that information too, if you happen to have it, but you've gone out of your way to build up a list of drug dealers. That's what you're known for and that's why people come to you.
Suddenly the police will take an interest in you. That is what sets IsoHunt apart from your hypothetical chat room.
And in what way would that affect Novell's ability to use (or abuse) the UNIX copyrights? With all due respect, unless and until you educate yourself enough to know the difference between a patent and a copyright, your opinion on whether software patents should be allowed is not valid.
"this shows how stupid America pushing IP is... it's just going to bite us back bigtime when India/China compete on the high end"
So... the argument against an IP framework is that those dern ferners might benefit from it too when they're the ones doing the innovative work? That soudns a bit nationalistic to say the least...
This kind of confusion is what comes of seeing a patent that covers a method of doing something that facilitates X, and calling it "the patent on doing X". It's not. There is no such thing as "the patent on multi-touch".
There can be, and probably are, many patents related to multi-touch. It's quite possible, since there's more than one way to implement multi-touch, that you could own a patent related to mullti-touch and I could make multi-touch devices without licesning or infringing your patent.
Really? It's ok to harm someone as long as you consider their sensitivity to that harm to be rare and therefore brand them a "freak"?
Another fascinating moral system.
The use of wireless electronics in your own home is only "law-abiding behavior" because the government has found that it is not harmful to those around you. If your use of those electronics were expected to cause harm to others - even if it were only so for a small percentage of "others" - it would be incumbent on you to remedy that as a condition of using the device.
If you think I'm speaking theoretically, go look up how responibility is assigned to amateur radio operators for the effects of their activity. I'm sure you think that's different, but it's not; the only difference is, consumer devices are currently presumed to have no negative impact on your neighbors (hence no case-by-case ilcensing or remediation is currently required).
I agree, it's a mind-bending idea, largely because it sits entirely outside of human experience.
My grounding in cosmology really isn't sufficient to give definite answers to some of your questions. I can say that when they talk about the size and shape of space, they are not talking merely about observable distance; they really mean "this is what the world is shaped like". When faced with the question "what happens at the boundary of space", I strongly suspect most (if not all) count on the fact that we'll never be able to observe those conditions; when no answer is falsifiable, I guess no answer is needed.
Since he's claiming to be affected by "certain frequencies", you're probably wrong. If house wiring were that noisy in the frequencies used by wireless communications devices, then such devices wouldn't work in the home.
Instead of trying to define away his claims, the proper procedure is to make him define them and prove them. He won't be able to, so quit losing sleep over it.
So your position is that if something is widely enough used, it's ok to keep using it no matter what effect it has on others? Fascinating moral system.
Slippery slope argument are always crap, so I'm not going through yours point by point. I will merely advise you that the complexities of adapting society to a world in which EM sensitivity were real needn't be a concern unless someone demonstrates a real EM sensitivity.
Save yourself some trouble. Focus on the fact that all attempts to document claims of EM sensitivity have been busted.
Why not what? Why isn't it a coherent concept? Because, as I said, location is a property of space. That's what space is, by definition. If you point to some location and say "that's outside of space", then you've defined space incorrectly.
You might as well ask whether a rock is an introvert or an extrovert.
I agree with the premise that this is not "cyberbullying", but rather is "bullying" in a society where some communication occurs online. Depending on details of what was said and done, I think it's questionable whether the physical harassment was worse than the verbal/written part.
But really my question for you is - Do you have knowledge of this case beyond TFA, on which to base the assertion that she was raped? Or are you just working from the fact that statutory rape charges were raised, which TFA doesn't really explain? Keep in mind that statutory rape implies only that she was underage and had sex. Yes it's illegal, yes there's arguably good reason for that, but no that isn't what is meant by the phrase "she was raped".
Location, and hence words that describe location, like "inside" and "outside", are properties of space. "Outside of space" is not a coherent concept.
I'm impressed. There are so many solid arguments against those who claim sensitivity to consumer electronics, I didn't think anyone could possibly come forward asserting such a poor one as yours.
If you tried to apply your "lactose intolerant" analogy, don't you suppose your opponent would point out that the makers of your favorite foods don't project those foods into your home against your wishes?
If these sensitivities were real (though I very much doubt that they are), he would have a point. Just because something has become socially common doesn't mean it's ok to do if it later turns out that it harms others in their own home. The key phrase is if they were real; so this point is moot unless someone can show some credible scientific basis for anything beyond the psychosomatic.
I don't know if this guy really believes he's sensitive or if he's just a complete asshat. It sure looks like he figured he saw a way to make a quick buck by convincing someone he knew uses electronics to move in to the next house over.
I'm not sure what the flaw in your reasoning is, but I can say with reasonable confidence that if it only took a single Congressperson to put any given piece of information in the public eye without repercussion, we'd live in a very different world than we do today.
That's a pretty sweeping statement. You might want to review Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37 of the U.S. code, which in many situations provides criminal penalties for anyone who propagates various categories of sensitive information (not just those entrusted to protect such information).
Government classification isn't like a trade secret, if that's what you're thinking.
Yeah... unfortunately, the behavior of mechanical devices are also dictated by mathematical properties of the world we are living in. You're drawing a distinction where there is no difference.
""According to Ryan, there's about $124 billion in double-counted money in the bill. Assuming his math is correct (and no one I talked to said it wasn't), that's a fair critique. What isn't fair is to suggest that this is about the health-care bill. This is how the government does its accounting."
How is that a "debunking"? It's still an accounting trick that means they are hiding the costs."
Now you're just being willfully dishonest. First by selectively quoting the article out of context, and second by pretending that $124B of double-counting could ever mean the same thing as $500B that you claimed the bill both counts and spends.
Well, as I posted elsewhere that's more or less how I'd have done it.
I later got curious and looked up what they did; that isn't it. If you owe the penalty, you pay it with your return, but it is not considered income tax.
Instead they're justifying it using the Interstate Commerce clause. The idea is, the Supreme Court has already ruled that insurance is interstate commerce, therefore the federal government can regulate it.
And actually, I have a big problem with that rationalization. Saying that you can regulate a certain economic activity is a very different thing from saying that you can pass laws requiring an individual to participate in said activity.
Interstate Commerce is a broadly abused justification for the federal government to take on powers it was never given in the Constitution. I hope the mandate does get struck down by SCOTUS simply because of the terrible precident it would set if this justification were allowed to stand. (Hey, railroads are engaged in interstate commerce, so how 'bout we require every citizen to ride a train every year or pay a penalty?)
If they then want to re-write the mandate as an income tax / tax credit scheme that has the same effect, that might at least make some kind of sense.
The fine is tied to income, with in fact some direct ties to income tax... so I'm not saying they did or didn't implement it this way - I haven't seen the relevant language - but I'll tell you how I'd have done it if I wanted to craft the "mandate" provision without risking 10th amendment issues:
1) An increase in income tax (something we already know the federal government is permitted to do) equal to the amount of the fine
2) A tax credit (also something we already know the federal government is permitted to do), also equal to the amount of the fine, for anyone who obtains qualified coverage (or meets other exemption criteria such as inability to find suitably affordable coverage)
I take it you're not a fan of dental insurance, then.
I've heard convincing arguments either way about the proper role of insurance; but it doesn't matter, because in reality insurance does cover preventative care regardless of whether it should, and anyone deciding to defer health insurance until they're sick ought to be taking that into account.
Interesting, except one thing.
If you don't make enough money that you have to pay income taxes, you're exempt from the fine. Even then the fine is capped based on your income level.
In other words, the argument of "only if you earn money" argument that you applied to income tax, applies to this fine as well. The idea that you are liable for this fine "the second you become an adult" is incorrect.
"Since now everyone is paying for each other's health, that may give people a "right" to say I can't smoke, I can't ride a bike without a helmet, I can't eat trans fats"
You do realize that private insurance companies have been headed in that direction (enforced by varying premiums) for many years already, right? And this legislation actually puts limits on their ability to do so. (They can still price-discriminate on a few things, including smoking, but only up to a prescribed limit.)
"is anyone worried that these sorts of things may become legislated (more than they might be already)?"
I'm not. I've seen no examples of that sort of over-reaching law WRT medicare or medicaid, which are certainly impacted by personal health/lifestyle choices. If you have an example of it from, say, Europe or Canada (both of which subsidize health care to a greater degree than what this bill is doing), I'd like to hear the details.
"Is it wrong to want to keep certain medical issues out of the hands of certain medical professionals?"
I don't know about "wrong", but it's certainly foolish. Get doctors you can trust, and give them the information they need to do their job. Deciding that you don't think they need to know such-and-such doesn't make a lot of sense. They've been to med school, so you might want to let them decide what medical information is relevant.
So you think you'll wait until your sick to buy insurance. Ok.
If you get a chrnoic illness that requires ongoing treatment, having set aside the money you would've spent on premiums to cover the initial treatments before you can process the purchase of insurance, then I suppose you win. Hope it doesn't happen before you've had time to set aside enough money. For anything serious it's going to take many years of savings on premiums even if you don't spend any of that sweet money you're planning to pocket.
On the other hand, if you get an acute illness, you lose. You'll pay for the treatment on your own because you'll be treated before your coverage becomes effective. Sure, the insurance company can't deny you coverage, but do you really think they're going to pay bills you'd already received? Better think twice.
You're worse off still if you get in an accident. A few years ago I went to the ER because a bicycle had run over me. (After dark, bike had no lights and was on the sidewalk. And I think the cyclist was drunk.) Because I was insured, I paid the hospital $100. If I were uninsured, I wouldn't have had a chance to buy coverage for the emergency treatment I received. Instead, I would've been handed a hospital bill for over $10,000.
Also, insurance covers this thing called "preventative care". It's one of the most effective ways to reduce your odds of getting severely sick. Since your plan is to avoid paying for insurance until you need it, I assume you won't want to erode those savings by getting the preventative care that the insurance would otherwise be covering for you. You might want to consider that while you might pay something like $20 to see your doctor, that isn't what you'll pay to see him if you're uninsured.
If you do eschew preventative care, the odds increase that sooner or later you will get sick enough to (1) be unnecessarily miserable, and (2) have some nasty bills to cover while you scramble to find last-minute coverage.
This still sounding like a good gamble to you?
I don't see any contradiction. They've had years to research Viacom's complaints. As they investigate individual incidents, and find funny business related to some of those individual incidents, they compile them and form the basis for this filing. That's a far cry from being able to produce similar details comprehensively about every upload in real time.
We don't know how long it took to document any given incident. We don't know what expense was involved. We don't know what lucky breaks they needed; it could well be that for every incident they have documented, another - or 10 more, or 100 more, etc. - might exist where they couldn't get any evidence of what really happeend.
I've seen at least one post asserting that there is no database. Based on the facts presented in the story, I can see why a scientific mind might be inclined to conclude this: no database would be necessary to do what was done in this case. I think that's at best inconclusive; let's take a closer look...
They wanted to link this guy to the crime scene. They already had him near the crmie scene. With limited identification from witnesses, that's at best only a start...
They had blood on him, and the relevant use of DNA technology was in showing that this blood matched the blood from the crime scene. They could tell there was both human and dog blood; this doesn't require a database. They could tell that the human DNA on the suspect matched the victim's blood; combined with the other facts, that might be enough to put him at the scene, and it doesn't require a database. If they needed more evidence, they could tell that the dog blood from both samples came from a single animal; again, there should be no need for a database.
I'm not sure what identifying the animal from which the dog blood originated adds to that. ("Wellll, he was covered in the victim's blood and blood from an animal that was at the crime scene, but that doesn't tell us anything... Oh, wait - he also owned the animal in question? Well, then!" If that's the reasoning, I guess the message is "if you're going to use a dog as a weapon, use someone else's dog".) But even then, no need for a database to match the blood sample to the dog since you have access to the dog you suspect it will match.
So I don't doubt that a database exists and was used; but I suspect its use and the subsequent publicity have more to do with someone's political agenda (make DNA databases look like useful tools) and less to do with real investigative techniques or real science.
Citation needed.