Egads. You say 'big business doesn't give a rat's ass about emissions', then you say all they care about is what they are legally required to do. Well, guess what? Vehicle manufacturers are legally required to care about emissions! They have to make sure that their vehicles are compliant when they are built, and they are required by federal law to provide warrantee service on emissions devices. So yes, they do very much care about emissions, and they certainly care very much about some putz 'tweaking' the ECU and causing the failure of an emission control device which they are then on the hook to fix.
Small engines (lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc) do not have these legal emissions requirements, so any comparison to them is completely invalid.
The IBM consent decree (1956) was a corrective action taken because of a classic anti-trust violation. IBM was using it's dominance in one area (making tabulating machines) to get an unfair advantage in another area (servicing tabulating machines). Note that this decision did not spell the end of IBM. Instead of charging high rates for service, they switched to charging higher prices for the machine itself.
The same thing will happen here. As soon as there is a law requiring manufacturers to open up their systems (cutting off a source of revenue), they will just bake that lost revenue into the price of the car. In the end, the manufacturers will wind up with just as much (if not more) revenue, the car owner will spend more money (especially if they don't keep the car after the warrantee period) overall, and a handful of people who think they could do their own work if only they had that information will find out they can't.
Red Hat does not sell software, they sell support. Software needs support because it is complex and buggy. Books, not so much. Because Red Hat makes enough money selling support (and much of the software is created by others anyway), they can afford to give away unsupported software. That does not prove 'free' is a viable business model.
Radiohead made a ton of money selling albums the traditional way. The fact that they can afford to give one away for free is no more proof that 'free' is a viable business model than anyone else donating their time to something is proof that free is a viable business model.
Obviously your keen legal mind is just too good for me. Or maybe you are just too stupid. I think I'll go with the second option.
First, anonymous does not mean 'unknown to the government', it means 'unknown'. Period. If ANYBODY knows your identity then you are not anonymous. The government can not compel anyone to say that which is not known.
It is certainly possible to make an anonymous speech. It may not be easy, but it is possible. There is no law against it. You have that right.
I suppose you also think the Miranda warning proves that you have no right not to witness against yourself. After all, the first line says 'You have the right to remain silent', but the second line says 'Anything you say can be used against you'. Well, WTF, if anything you say (including to people who are not the government) can be used against you, then obviously you have no right to not witness against yourself, right?
I think you should tell the government they need to rewrite the Miranda warning and call it the CowTipperGore Statement of Stupidity. It will read like this: "You have the right to not witness against yourself. This means that nothing you say, to the government or anyone else can ever be used against you. The government can not ask you any questions. If you start speaking, the government will puts it's fingers in it's ears and say la-la-la-I-cant-hear-you. The government can not ask any witnesses, accomplices, acquaintances, or cellmates about anything you said to them. If anyone should volunteer information that you told them it will not be used."
Back on earth, none of that is true. The fifth amendment means exactly what it says - you can not be forced to talk, but if you do or did (to anybody) your own words can and will be used against you. Just like if you want to remain anonymous you must actually BE anonymous.
How damn dense are you? There is NO LAW that says you can't make an anonymous speech. That is what the case referenced was about. However, (and this is the part you are apparently too dense to grasp) there is also NO LAW (including the Constitution) that in any way prohibits the government from asking OTHER people who you are should you care to divulge that information (by oh say, posting on somebody else's website).
I don't know where you got this incredibly naive idea that just because you wish to be anonymous anyone, including the government, has to respect that wish. It just isn't true, not in the slightest.
The only protection you have against the government looking or asking for things is: they must have a search warrant to search YOUR property (not applicable in this case), and they can't compel you to testify that you made the speech (again not applicable).
Again, you are free to make any anonymous speech you want. As soon as anyone knows who you are all bets are off. Nobody, including the government, is required to somehow respect your wishes.
Again, that ruling affirms that you have the right to make an anonymous speech. It does not in any way shape or form say that, having made a non-anonymous speech, you have some kind of right to become anonymous.
Protecting your anonymity is 100% your responsibility. No body else, including the government, the law, and the Constitution, is responsible for it. If it is important to you, then YOU must protect it.
No, Apple is NOT asking to pay the same price as everyone else. Everyone else is cross-licensing, which Apple refuses to do. So if Samsung (for example) is giving Motorola licenses which would add up to 2.25% of the device if they were paid for in cash, then it is entirely fair and reasonable to expect Apple to cough up 2.25% in cash.
And again, you are completely wrong. If you don't want anyone to know who you are, then don't tell ANYONE. Similarly, if you want something to remain private, don't tell ANYONE. Once anyone else knows the information you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy or anonymity. With very limited exceptions, the only person who can't be compelled to testify against you is yourself.
It is not a newspaper's (or anyone else's) responsibility to protect you.
Repersussions from violating a law are different than repercussions from speech, that is the whole point. I would have thought that was obvious. If you are told (by the government) "don't say x", and you go ahead and say x anyway, you have violated a law and may be punished accordingly.
There is no long saying you can't declare yourself an atheist. You will suffer no legal repercussions.
Freedom of speech does not, and never has, meant freedom from repercussions. It ONLY means that the government can not stop your speech.
If you want to make an anonymous speech go ahead and do it. But don't expect someone else to make your speech for you and keep your little secret (which is exactly what posting on someone else's web site it).
Nope, you're wrong. Exercise of your rights does not put requirements on anyone else. Yes, you have a right to make anonymous speech. No, nobody has to provide a venue for you to do so. Exercising your rights is entirely up to you, and nobody else.
If you tell a newspaper (intentionally or not), "Hi. I am Joe. Please publish this for me" you are not anonymous. They know who you are - you told them. What you are suggesting is that it is now the newpaper's responsibility to provide some anonymity for you - it is not. They have their own set of rights just like you (including freedom of the press).
As for his 'constitutional rights' - oh please. The constituion puts limits on what the goverment can do. Period. It does not put limits on what individuals do.
Yes, but that all goes out the window if you are not really anonymous. Wishing you were anonymous and actual being anonymous are two different things. If the paper has the requested information, then he isn't anonymous.
There is no law that says anyone must respect anyone else's wish to be anonymous.
Certainly there are criticial datacenters that have been impacted. Exactly what criticial services are on Peer1 (which is where they are carrying fuel through emergency stairwells)?
You are making a lot of assumptions there, starting with the assumption that what you are suggesting is even legal. Next is that the people in charge of the building are also the people in charge of the datacenter (unlikely), and that the people in charge of the building rank your datacenter as a higher priority than everything and everyone else in the building.
This is not some sort of heroic lifesaving operation where 'do anything possible' applies. It is just very bad disaster preparedness on the part of the data center operators. "Get a backup generator running onsite" should not be part of a disaster recovery plan, ever. What if the building is on fire? Is that still your plan?
If these datacenters are important enough where they are willing to put peoples lives at risk (hauling fuel up firewells or the outside of the building!) then they should have switched over to their alternate site (far from NYC) days ago. If they are no important enough to have alternate sites, then they should do what every other person and business impacted is doing: wait until it is safe, then start your cleanup.
If any of these data centers are really as important as you claim, they should have been switched to their alternate sites (far from NYC) days ago. If these sites are not important enough to have real disaster recovery plans including alternate sites then they simply are not critical. Just being a datacenter does not make them any more important than the thousands of other businesses (stores, restaurants, you name it) that are also 'offline' because they are flooded.
I would like to point out that last year most of the devastation from Irene (and again during the Halloween snowstorm) occurred 'in the mountains somewhere'. And then all the second-guessers were yelling 'why is that critical infrastructure exposed like that - put it underground where it belongs!'
Getting several feet of snow in one day is not all that unusual in Buffalo. What do you think would happen to New Orleans if that happened there? An average cold winter's day where I live has a low temp of about 0F. Think New Orleans could take that for a few weeks at a time? The tidal change in the Bay of Fundy is something like 40ft - think New Orleans could take it? Sure, you get winds over 100MPH in New Orleans, but Mt Washington, NH recorded over 230MPH. Think you could take it?
Comparing things like wind speed and storm surge and temperature between different regions is a fools game. What really matters is deviation from normal, and this was a very large deviation from normal. Yes, the storm surge was 'only' 13 feet, but the last time it was that high in NY was - unknown. The previous recorded max was in 1830 something, and this beat it. No, 70MPH winds are not that high in absolute terms, but tell that to the trees that couldn't take it (because normally they are only subjected to 50MPH winds).
In short, get over yourself. The fact that you have experienced similar absolute numbers without devastation does not in any way mean that the same conditions are not devastating elsewhere, or that they shouldn't be devastating. No matter where you live, someone else is living with conditions that you would consider devastating.
"Be better prepared" - than what? The storm surge that flooded lower Manhattan beat the previous record by 2 feet, and that record was set almost 200 years ago. The fact that there were only 38 people killed in the entire region shows just how well prepared they were. Nobody was drowned in the subways, because they stopped the subways before they got flooded. Nobody was stuck in elevators, because they turned off the elevators before the power was shut down.
What is it with all these people saying 'it was not that bad a storm'. It was that bad a storm for the area. It was record flooding. From what I understand, Category 5 hurricanes are 'not that bad a storm' compared to the storms on Jupiter - pretty meaningless comparison, isn't it?
Let me paraphrase your stupidity for you: Many trees were toppled yesterday. Most people stayed inside and were not killed by falling trees. One guy, however, was killed when a tree fell on his house. Therefore, since approximately infinitely more people were killed inside their houses, OBVIOUSLY the correct thing to do in a storm is stay outside.
Just because ONE ship (of the very many) that left port had a problem, and ONE ship that broke free did not kill someone, does not in any way mean that OVERALL it is safer for everyone if the ships are at sea and not in port. No, I do think you are intelligent enough to understand this.
Don't worry, no engineer would work for someone as stupid as you.
First, you seem to be too stupid to know that mooring a ship in a storm doesn't mean it is going to stay moored.
Second, you seem blissfully unaware that an unmoored ship in a storm poses a very large hazard. You don't know where it will go or what it will hit. You don't know how dangerous it will be to attempt to bring it under control again. You don't know what it will spill. In fact, you don't really know anything at all except you have a very large problem to deal with.
Third, you appear to only look at things through a very small lens, and only in hindsight.
Instead, you focus on the ONE instance where something went wrong while attempting to get away from the storm. What about all the other ships that successfully got away (and there were many). Can you state, with certainty, that not a single life would have been lost directly or indirectly if ALL of those ships stayed in port? Not one person would have been killed by any floating or flying debris or the ship itself? Nobody would have been killed trying to rescue the ship? Nobody would have been killed if fuel had been spilled into flooded residential streets?
What a lot of you people can't seem to grasp is that there is more than 'the ship' at stake when it is in port. There is also everything the ship might come in contact with (including people) if it breaks free (which they do). There is anything that floating or flying debris might come into contact with. There are the people who will have to go and try to get it back under control (not on the open seas, but in dangerous shallow waters close to shore).
Slashdot Mirror
Egads. You say 'big business doesn't give a rat's ass about emissions', then you say all they care about is what they are legally required to do. Well, guess what? Vehicle manufacturers are legally required to care about emissions! They have to make sure that their vehicles are compliant when they are built, and they are required by federal law to provide warrantee service on emissions devices. So yes, they do very much care about emissions, and they certainly care very much about some putz 'tweaking' the ECU and causing the failure of an emission control device which they are then on the hook to fix.
Small engines (lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc) do not have these legal emissions requirements, so any comparison to them is completely invalid.
The IBM consent decree (1956) was a corrective action taken because of a classic anti-trust violation. IBM was using it's dominance in one area (making tabulating machines) to get an unfair advantage in another area (servicing tabulating machines). Note that this decision did not spell the end of IBM. Instead of charging high rates for service, they switched to charging higher prices for the machine itself.
The same thing will happen here. As soon as there is a law requiring manufacturers to open up their systems (cutting off a source of revenue), they will just bake that lost revenue into the price of the car. In the end, the manufacturers will wind up with just as much (if not more) revenue, the car owner will spend more money (especially if they don't keep the car after the warrantee period) overall, and a handful of people who think they could do their own work if only they had that information will find out they can't.
Red Hat does not sell software, they sell support. Software needs support because it is complex and buggy. Books, not so much. Because Red Hat makes enough money selling support (and much of the software is created by others anyway), they can afford to give away unsupported software. That does not prove 'free' is a viable business model.
Radiohead made a ton of money selling albums the traditional way. The fact that they can afford to give one away for free is no more proof that 'free' is a viable business model than anyone else donating their time to something is proof that free is a viable business model.
Obviously your keen legal mind is just too good for me. Or maybe you are just too stupid. I think I'll go with the second option.
First, anonymous does not mean 'unknown to the government', it means 'unknown'. Period. If ANYBODY knows your identity then you are not anonymous. The government can not compel anyone to say that which is not known.
It is certainly possible to make an anonymous speech. It may not be easy, but it is possible. There is no law against it. You have that right.
I suppose you also think the Miranda warning proves that you have no right not to witness against yourself. After all, the first line says 'You have the right to remain silent', but the second line says 'Anything you say can be used against you'. Well, WTF, if anything you say (including to people who are not the government) can be used against you, then obviously you have no right to not witness against yourself, right?
I think you should tell the government they need to rewrite the Miranda warning and call it the CowTipperGore Statement of Stupidity. It will read like this:
"You have the right to not witness against yourself. This means that nothing you say, to the government or anyone else can ever be used against you. The government can not ask you any questions. If you start speaking, the government will puts it's fingers in it's ears and say la-la-la-I-cant-hear-you. The government can not ask any witnesses, accomplices, acquaintances, or cellmates about anything you said to them. If anyone should volunteer information that you told them it will not be used."
Back on earth, none of that is true. The fifth amendment means exactly what it says - you can not be forced to talk, but if you do or did (to anybody) your own words can and will be used against you. Just like if you want to remain anonymous you must actually BE anonymous.
Petulant
How damn dense are you? There is NO LAW that says you can't make an anonymous speech. That is what the case referenced was about. However, (and this is the part you are apparently too dense to grasp) there is also NO LAW (including the Constitution) that in any way prohibits the government from asking OTHER people who you are should you care to divulge that information (by oh say, posting on somebody else's website).
I don't know where you got this incredibly naive idea that just because you wish to be anonymous anyone, including the government, has to respect that wish. It just isn't true, not in the slightest.
The only protection you have against the government looking or asking for things is: they must have a search warrant to search YOUR property (not applicable in this case), and they can't compel you to testify that you made the speech (again not applicable).
Again, you are free to make any anonymous speech you want. As soon as anyone knows who you are all bets are off. Nobody, including the government, is required to somehow respect your wishes.
Again, that ruling affirms that you have the right to make an anonymous speech. It does not in any way shape or form say that, having made a non-anonymous speech, you have some kind of right to become anonymous.
Protecting your anonymity is 100% your responsibility. No body else, including the government, the law, and the Constitution, is responsible for it. If it is important to you, then YOU must protect it.
No, Apple is NOT asking to pay the same price as everyone else. Everyone else is cross-licensing, which Apple refuses to do. So if Samsung (for example) is giving Motorola licenses which would add up to 2.25% of the device if they were paid for in cash, then it is entirely fair and reasonable to expect Apple to cough up 2.25% in cash.
And again, you are completely wrong. If you don't want anyone to know who you are, then don't tell ANYONE. Similarly, if you want something to remain private, don't tell ANYONE. Once anyone else knows the information you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy or anonymity. With very limited exceptions, the only person who can't be compelled to testify against you is yourself.
It is not a newspaper's (or anyone else's) responsibility to protect you.
Repersussions from violating a law are different than repercussions from speech, that is the whole point. I would have thought that was obvious. If you are told (by the government) "don't say x", and you go ahead and say x anyway, you have violated a law and may be punished accordingly.
There is no long saying you can't declare yourself an atheist. You will suffer no legal repercussions.
Freedom of speech does not, and never has, meant freedom from repercussions. It ONLY means that the government can not stop your speech.
If you want to make an anonymous speech go ahead and do it. But don't expect someone else to make your speech for you and keep your little secret (which is exactly what posting on someone else's web site it).
Nope, you're wrong. Exercise of your rights does not put requirements on anyone else. Yes, you have a right to make anonymous speech. No, nobody has to provide a venue for you to do so. Exercising your rights is entirely up to you, and nobody else.
If you tell a newspaper (intentionally or not), "Hi. I am Joe. Please publish this for me" you are not anonymous. They know who you are - you told them. What you are suggesting is that it is now the newpaper's responsibility to provide some anonymity for you - it is not. They have their own set of rights just like you (including freedom of the press).
As for his 'constitutional rights' - oh please. The constituion puts limits on what the goverment can do. Period. It does not put limits on what individuals do.
Nowhere does it say that. It says they were not able to find him guilty. It has to be unanimous to either find innocent or guilty, and it wasn't.
It doesn't say they found him innocent, it says they were unable to find him guilty. In other words, a hung jury.
Yes, but that all goes out the window if you are not really anonymous. Wishing you were anonymous and actual being anonymous are two different things. If the paper has the requested information, then he isn't anonymous.
There is no law that says anyone must respect anyone else's wish to be anonymous.
Certainly there are criticial datacenters that have been impacted. Exactly what criticial services are on Peer1 (which is where they are carrying fuel through emergency stairwells)?
You are making a lot of assumptions there, starting with the assumption that what you are suggesting is even legal. Next is that the people in charge of the building are also the people in charge of the datacenter (unlikely), and that the people in charge of the building rank your datacenter as a higher priority than everything and everyone else in the building.
This is not some sort of heroic lifesaving operation where 'do anything possible' applies. It is just very bad disaster preparedness on the part of the data center operators. "Get a backup generator running onsite" should not be part of a disaster recovery plan, ever. What if the building is on fire? Is that still your plan?
If these datacenters are important enough where they are willing to put peoples lives at risk (hauling fuel up firewells or the outside of the building!) then they should have switched over to their alternate site (far from NYC) days ago. If they are no important enough to have alternate sites, then they should do what every other person and business impacted is doing: wait until it is safe, then start your cleanup.
If any of these data centers are really as important as you claim, they should have been switched to their alternate sites (far from NYC) days ago. If these sites are not important enough to have real disaster recovery plans including alternate sites then they simply are not critical. Just being a datacenter does not make them any more important than the thousands of other businesses (stores, restaurants, you name it) that are also 'offline' because they are flooded.
A winch or window washing lift powered by what?
I would like to point out that last year most of the devastation from Irene (and again during the Halloween snowstorm) occurred 'in the mountains somewhere'. And then all the second-guessers were yelling 'why is that critical infrastructure exposed like that - put it underground where it belongs!'
Getting several feet of snow in one day is not all that unusual in Buffalo. What do you think would happen to New Orleans if that happened there? An average cold winter's day where I live has a low temp of about 0F. Think New Orleans could take that for a few weeks at a time? The tidal change in the Bay of Fundy is something like 40ft - think New Orleans could take it? Sure, you get winds over 100MPH in New Orleans, but Mt Washington, NH recorded over 230MPH. Think you could take it?
Comparing things like wind speed and storm surge and temperature between different regions is a fools game. What really matters is deviation from normal, and this was a very large deviation from normal. Yes, the storm surge was 'only' 13 feet, but the last time it was that high in NY was - unknown. The previous recorded max was in 1830 something, and this beat it. No, 70MPH winds are not that high in absolute terms, but tell that to the trees that couldn't take it (because normally they are only subjected to 50MPH winds).
In short, get over yourself. The fact that you have experienced similar absolute numbers without devastation does not in any way mean that the same conditions are not devastating elsewhere, or that they shouldn't be devastating. No matter where you live, someone else is living with conditions that you would consider devastating.
"Be better prepared" - than what? The storm surge that flooded lower Manhattan beat the previous record by 2 feet, and that record was set almost 200 years ago. The fact that there were only 38 people killed in the entire region shows just how well prepared they were. Nobody was drowned in the subways, because they stopped the subways before they got flooded. Nobody was stuck in elevators, because they turned off the elevators before the power was shut down.
What is it with all these people saying 'it was not that bad a storm'. It was that bad a storm for the area. It was record flooding. From what I understand, Category 5 hurricanes are 'not that bad a storm' compared to the storms on Jupiter - pretty meaningless comparison, isn't it?
38 dead from the storm, not total.
Let me paraphrase your stupidity for you: Many trees were toppled yesterday. Most people stayed inside and were not killed by falling trees. One guy, however, was killed when a tree fell on his house. Therefore, since approximately infinitely more people were killed inside their houses, OBVIOUSLY the correct thing to do in a storm is stay outside.
Just because ONE ship (of the very many) that left port had a problem, and ONE ship that broke free did not kill someone, does not in any way mean that OVERALL it is safer for everyone if the ships are at sea and not in port. No, I do think you are intelligent enough to understand this.
Don't worry, no engineer would work for someone as stupid as you.
First, you seem to be too stupid to know that mooring a ship in a storm doesn't mean it is going to stay moored.
Second, you seem blissfully unaware that an unmoored ship in a storm poses a very large hazard. You don't know where it will go or what it will hit. You don't know how dangerous it will be to attempt to bring it under control again. You don't know what it will spill. In fact, you don't really know anything at all except you have a very large problem to deal with.
Third, you appear to only look at things through a very small lens, and only in hindsight.
Instead, you focus on the ONE instance where something went wrong while attempting to get away from the storm. What about all the other ships that successfully got away (and there were many). Can you state, with certainty, that not a single life would have been lost directly or indirectly if ALL of those ships stayed in port? Not one person would have been killed by any floating or flying debris or the ship itself? Nobody would have been killed trying to rescue the ship? Nobody would have been killed if fuel had been spilled into flooded residential streets?
What a lot of you people can't seem to grasp is that there is more than 'the ship' at stake when it is in port. There is also everything the ship might come in contact with (including people) if it breaks free (which they do). There is anything that floating or flying debris might come into contact with. There are the people who will have to go and try to get it back under control (not on the open seas, but in dangerous shallow waters close to shore).