Legally we need analogies because past cases dictate future decisions and past cases can't possibly be written with the future in mind.
There's a first time for everything. Why can't novel situations produce a novel body of laws based on consideration of the actual harm actually caused by those novel situations per se, rather than a derivative body of laws based on some poorly-conceived and thoroughly inaccurate analogy?
A man's life is not analagous to his property. We don't use property law to try homicide cases.
And why not be literal? Are the basics of computer networking too difficult for judges and lawyers to understand on their own terms? Let's take a literal look at bandwidth "stealing" for example:
When I "steal" you bandwith, what is literally happening is that my device is making a request to your device. Your device, configured by you, activated by you, either approves or denies my request. If it approves my request, there is literally no theft--I have your written permission, recorded in the configuration of your device, to use your bandwidth. And if it denies my request, there is literally no theft, because I cannot use your bandwidth. That's the way the protocol is written, that's the way the protocol is enforced. It's literally that simple and straightforward. No need for analogies. The thing is completely understandable in terms of itself.
Some things really just need to be explained in terms of themselves. Computer networks are not highway systems. They're not houses. They're not cars, or floor waxes, or dishwashing detergents. They do a totally unique thing, using technologies and paradigms that didn't even exist before computers were invented to make use of them.
We already have hear of that the extremly abrasive qualities of the lunar soil. That soil that will find its way into the telescope (especially bad for any moving parts.)
Too bad we don't know how to design and build phased-array radars... oh, wait.
Radio telescopes receive other wavelengths that are at least as interesting to astronomers and astrophysicists as optical telescopes.
And--if you'd bothered to read the article--the effectiveness of Earth-bound radio telescopes is limited by the RF properties of the ionosphere and the background noise from Earth-bound radio broadcasts.
He was a big boy. He was a producer at CNN. Did he really need to be warned that publishing controversial, offensive, and extremist opinions in contravention of CNN policy might annoy CNN?
And if he does need to be warned about such a thing, as if he's a little child, then why would CNN want to keep such a childish, thoughtless person in a position of responsibility anyway?
I love how blogs are a revolutionary new form of news reporting and editorializing that will take on and bring down the increasingly-obsolete mainstream media in a perfect storm of individual private journalism... except when the mainstream media actually starts treating blogs like competitors, and then they're just irrelevant little things that can't possibly compare to the reporting and editorializing done by big news corporations.
I'm not sure the problem is the Blackberry. I have one, and far from being addicted to it, I ignore the motherfucker as much as possible.
Maybe we should just affix a single, generic warning label to everything. "Health Warning: Due to the possibility that you are a thoughtless jackass, unthinking jackassery on your part might arise from use of this object. On the other hand, if you actually are a thoughtless jackass, you probably won't read this warning, or care about it if you do read it. Luckily, it's pretty much a free country, so jackass or not, do whatever you like with this object."
In fact, CNN doesn't like the competition so much that their employment contracts prohibit CNN employees from publishing material except through CNN.
A low-key blog on an uncontroversial topic like trainspotting probably would've gone unpunished. But a high-profile blog with extremist and offensive political content, under the name of a CNN producer?
The real tragedy is that CNN is will probably now have to crack down on innocuous little blogs about knitting tea cozies, just to avoid lawsuits from asshats like this Producer for showing favoritism.
On paper, this guy is getting fired for breach of contract. I think the real reason he's getting fired is for showing a profound lack of judgement and restraint while holding a position of responsibility at CNN. The political extremists and conspiracy theorists will no doubt assume that the whole thing is a sign of fundamental corruption and usurpation of civil liberties by the news media and their Illuminati overlords.
You missed my point entirely. Wars are different now. If you're trying to say that Congress hasn't declared war on anybody lately, then you'll get no argument from me. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a war going on, and that there aren't battles to be fought on battlefields that didn't even exist fifty years ago.
The President does [i]not[/i] have the power to wage war. Presidents have usurped this power from Congress since 1945.
You might want to take that up with the Supreme Court.
Information wants to be free? Yes it does. But what does that matter when We The People aren't free from arbitrary exercise of power by our own government?
You can't have government without risking arbitrary exercise of power by government. Personally, I'd love to have a much smaller government with a much smaller amount of authority and power. But I'd still be in favor of that government waging information warfare to the uttermost limit against any and all enemies big or small who seek to use information systems as a military asset. I guess the other option is that you guarantee to carry out the battle for information systems on my behalf. But I'm already paying the government to do that, and I don't see the point in paying twice.
The USA has become the Evil Empire it fought in 1776. Worse, perhaps.
If that's what you need to tell yourself, to justify... well, to justify what, exactly? What are you actually doing to battle an Empire more evil than the British Empire of 1776. That empire was so evil that people were willing to leave their homes and take up arms and put their lives on the line to fight it. Fuck, this Empire is so evil that people are willing to leave their homes and take up arms and put their lives on the line to fight it.
Are you one of those people? Are you telling yourself that America is The Evilest Empire ever to justify your violent opposition to its regime? Are you using this rhetoric to justify your campaign of information warfare against this regime? I bet that--your revolutionary rhetoric notwithstanding--this regime that you fear so much, that you profit so much from, has nothing to fear from you, because you're too much a fool and a coward to give up any of your comfort and safety, to actually strike a blow against that regime.
You love the fantasy of revolution. You relish the idea of other people, in other places, striking a blow against the Great Satan. But you would never actually do that. You'll go as far as complaining in public about how your government stifles dissent, blissfully unaware of the irony. And that's about it, am I right?
Obviously if you were putting a lot of effort into competing with your fellow citizens to influence your representatives, and succeeding in that endeavor, you wouldn't be complaining that they're not representing your desires.
I guess you could be out there every day, busting your ass to make your voice heard above and beyond the vote you cast in the last ballot, and just not succeeding like some others out there. Competition for political influence is pretty stiff, after all... Is that the case?
Well, technically the President does have broad powers to wage war as he sees fit.
What gets me about Slashdot is that it's full of people who have a giant fucking hardon for the Internet and "information wants to be free" and how all this technology changes everything and shifts paradigms and makes collaboration easier and technology transfer faster and all that good stuff, but are willfully ignorant about the major changes to the nature and scope of warfare and the battlefields on which it will be fought.
You can't have an Information Age without Information Warfare. You can't run around celebrating how the Internet makes borders obsolete without acknowledging that BORDERS ARE FUCKING OBSOLETE. You have a web-enabled cell phone? Congratulations! You're now a citizen of the world! And that means you enter the battlefield every time you make a call. Get used to it. It's the price you pay for Youtube and Blogger and Google and Wikipedia and Skype and Slashdot and Pirate Bay and all the rest of it. From here on, every smarty man and clever monkey is going to be waging war in your playground, and you whining about how they should all go back to 1950 and leave 2008 to you isn't going to make any difference at all.
There are plenty of people out there who care deeply about being able to influence their elected representatives. They are willing to put much more effort into influencing their representatives than you are. And so when it comes time for your representatives to represent, they choose to represent those people who have worked the hardest to make their voices heard, their desires known, and their influence felt. Which is exactly as it should be.
Actually, I apologize for implying that you're lazy. It's not that you're lazy at all. You just have different priorities than some of your fellow citizens. And there's nothing wrong with that. You don't want to spend a lot of time becoming a captain of industry, or a prominent academic, or a relentless lobbyist, or an outspoken activist and campaigner. You certainly don't want to put in the time and effort necessary to run for office yourself, let alone win that office. You'd rather do other things with your resources. And that's fine. Just, you know, if that's how you want to live your life, maybe you should consider shutting the fuck up when other people decide to spend their lives having a say in how their country is run.
I'm sure that after reviewing the anti-Nazi propaganda carried and disseminated by those Americans, their professed allegiance to anti-Nazi causes, and their taking up arms against the Nazis, Nazi German quite rightly concluded that they were enemies of the Nazi state and treated them as such. On the other hand, the American government probably raised no objections to their anti-Nazi "jihad", seeing as how the American government was the entity promoting it.
See how that works? It's the purported targets of the aggression and their allies that object to it, not the ones promoting the aggression. Since the United Kingdom has ample reason to consider itself both a jihadist target and an ally of jihadist targets, it's quite reasonable for them to treat jihadists as enemies of the state, investigate allegations of jihadist activity, and detain suspected jihadists based on the evidence of jihadist activity they have uncovered.
The investigation started when one of the students ran away from home and left behind a note saying he was going to fight abroad. And what does the investigation turn up? Jihadist materials on his computer.
Not so much a free speech issue as a suspected fucking terrorist issue.
Seems like things worked out pretty well for these five students, all things considered. The one who left the note came home a few days later, which was probably a critical piece of evidence in his favor, and instrumental in ultimately getting the original conviction overturned.
Evidence of conspiracy isn't free speech, it's evidence of conspiracy.
Re:Why Build new ones? Unless you want the Bigger.
on
The Shadow Space Race
·
· Score: 1
Man, the guys at Illuminati Headquarters must have the most [i]awsome[/i] conversations.
"So, this Bin Laden fellow doesn't actually exist, you say?"
"That's right. All a propaganda fiction, I'm afraid."
"Won't that make us look like incompetent douchebags when we fail to find him?"
"Don't worry! We'll just [i]pretend[/i] we've found him--more of that propaganda fiction, you know--and look slightly less like incompetent douchebags."
". . . "
"And it gets even better! The longer we wait to 'find' him, [i]the more we'll look like incompetent douchebags[/i]!"
"Truly, the mind boggles at our devious cleverness."
Conceded that Bush's ass was covered and the evidence of complicity is slim, though your faith in the good faith of investment bankers of the period is touching.
What does their alleged good faith have to do with anything. Bush's roles and responsibilities are documented. The decision to invest in Nazi Germany was made without him, and he was never put in charge of that portfolio. If you want to play make-believe that Prescott Bush and his entire family are crypto-Nazis based on what some other guy was doing while Bush wasn't around, fine.
Speaking of having faith in the good faith of others, you should check out what Mussolini had to say about Woodrow Wilson's New Deal, or what 1930s Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic had to say about Italian Fascism (and about German Fascim, too).
You're suggesting that... Prescott Bush and his cronies didn't fund the Nazi war machine
Well, that one, at least, I don't mind suggesting.
Prescott Bush was hired on at an investment firm that had already invested in Nazi Germany. This investment was initated by the firm's founder (ironically a Progressive, later FDR's ambassador to the Soviet Union) before Bush joined the firm. During his tenure at the firm, Bush was responsible for managing the firm's domestic portfolios here in the U.S. The firm's founder retained control of the firm's foreign portfolios--including the firm's investments in Nazi Germany.
Like the previous deals on nuclear power, this is an attempt to bribe India away from getting too friendly with China and Iran, and buying U.S. arms instead of Russian. Science has nothing to do with it.
I'm curious: Have you seen the foreign policy documents, or the transcripts of interviews with chief diplomats, that support your claim? Or are you just guessing?
Slashdot Mirror
There's a first time for everything. Why can't novel situations produce a novel body of laws based on consideration of the actual harm actually caused by those novel situations per se, rather than a derivative body of laws based on some poorly-conceived and thoroughly inaccurate analogy?
A man's life is not analagous to his property. We don't use property law to try homicide cases.
And why not be literal? Are the basics of computer networking too difficult for judges and lawyers to understand on their own terms? Let's take a literal look at bandwidth "stealing" for example:
When I "steal" you bandwith, what is literally happening is that my device is making a request to your device. Your device, configured by you, activated by you, either approves or denies my request. If it approves my request, there is literally no theft--I have your written permission, recorded in the configuration of your device, to use your bandwidth. And if it denies my request, there is literally no theft, because I cannot use your bandwidth. That's the way the protocol is written, that's the way the protocol is enforced. It's literally that simple and straightforward. No need for analogies. The thing is completely understandable in terms of itself.
Some things really just need to be explained in terms of themselves. Computer networks are not highway systems. They're not houses. They're not cars, or floor waxes, or dishwashing detergents. They do a totally unique thing, using technologies and paradigms that didn't even exist before computers were invented to make use of them.
OF COURSE analogies don't work.
Too bad we don't know how to design and build phased-array radars... oh, wait.
Radio telescopes receive other wavelengths that are at least as interesting to astronomers and astrophysicists as optical telescopes.
And--if you'd bothered to read the article--the effectiveness of Earth-bound radio telescopes is limited by the RF properties of the ionosphere and the background noise from Earth-bound radio broadcasts.
Hrm. After reading your reply to me, I don't think we actually disagree on anything.
Why did he need a warning?
He was a big boy. He was a producer at CNN. Did he really need to be warned that publishing controversial, offensive, and extremist opinions in contravention of CNN policy might annoy CNN?
And if he does need to be warned about such a thing, as if he's a little child, then why would CNN want to keep such a childish, thoughtless person in a position of responsibility anyway?
I love how blogs are a revolutionary new form of news reporting and editorializing that will take on and bring down the increasingly-obsolete mainstream media in a perfect storm of individual private journalism... except when the mainstream media actually starts treating blogs like competitors, and then they're just irrelevant little things that can't possibly compare to the reporting and editorializing done by big news corporations.
I'm not sure the problem is the Blackberry. I have one, and far from being addicted to it, I ignore the motherfucker as much as possible.
Maybe we should just affix a single, generic warning label to everything. "Health Warning: Due to the possibility that you are a thoughtless jackass, unthinking jackassery on your part might arise from use of this object. On the other hand, if you actually are a thoughtless jackass, you probably won't read this warning, or care about it if you do read it. Luckily, it's pretty much a free country, so jackass or not, do whatever you like with this object."
In fact, CNN doesn't like the competition so much that their employment contracts prohibit CNN employees from publishing material except through CNN.
A low-key blog on an uncontroversial topic like trainspotting probably would've gone unpunished. But a high-profile blog with extremist and offensive political content, under the name of a CNN producer?
The real tragedy is that CNN is will probably now have to crack down on innocuous little blogs about knitting tea cozies, just to avoid lawsuits from asshats like this Producer for showing favoritism.
On paper, this guy is getting fired for breach of contract. I think the real reason he's getting fired is for showing a profound lack of judgement and restraint while holding a position of responsibility at CNN. The political extremists and conspiracy theorists will no doubt assume that the whole thing is a sign of fundamental corruption and usurpation of civil liberties by the news media and their Illuminati overlords.
Also, what the hell does "part computer, part robot, part child" even mean?
Is there part of a child in there? No, there is not.
In fact, all that's in there is a whole computer that mimics some of a child's behavior.
And what's all this bullshit about it not being a computer because it doesn't behave like a conventional desktop PC?
Is Science Daily always this fucktarded?
You missed my point entirely. Wars are different now. If you're trying to say that Congress hasn't declared war on anybody lately, then you'll get no argument from me. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a war going on, and that there aren't battles to be fought on battlefields that didn't even exist fifty years ago.
You might want to take that up with the Supreme Court.
You can't have government without risking arbitrary exercise of power by government. Personally, I'd love to have a much smaller government with a much smaller amount of authority and power. But I'd still be in favor of that government waging information warfare to the uttermost limit against any and all enemies big or small who seek to use information systems as a military asset. I guess the other option is that you guarantee to carry out the battle for information systems on my behalf. But I'm already paying the government to do that, and I don't see the point in paying twice.
If that's what you need to tell yourself, to justify... well, to justify what, exactly? What are you actually doing to battle an Empire more evil than the British Empire of 1776. That empire was so evil that people were willing to leave their homes and take up arms and put their lives on the line to fight it. Fuck, this Empire is so evil that people are willing to leave their homes and take up arms and put their lives on the line to fight it.
Are you one of those people? Are you telling yourself that America is The Evilest Empire ever to justify your violent opposition to its regime? Are you using this rhetoric to justify your campaign of information warfare against this regime? I bet that--your revolutionary rhetoric notwithstanding--this regime that you fear so much, that you profit so much from, has nothing to fear from you, because you're too much a fool and a coward to give up any of your comfort and safety, to actually strike a blow against that regime.
You love the fantasy of revolution. You relish the idea of other people, in other places, striking a blow against the Great Satan. But you would never actually do that. You'll go as far as complaining in public about how your government stifles dissent, blissfully unaware of the irony. And that's about it, am I right?
Obviously if you were putting a lot of effort into competing with your fellow citizens to influence your representatives, and succeeding in that endeavor, you wouldn't be complaining that they're not representing your desires.
I guess you could be out there every day, busting your ass to make your voice heard above and beyond the vote you cast in the last ballot, and just not succeeding like some others out there. Competition for political influence is pretty stiff, after all... Is that the case?
Well, technically the President does have broad powers to wage war as he sees fit.
What gets me about Slashdot is that it's full of people who have a giant fucking hardon for the Internet and "information wants to be free" and how all this technology changes everything and shifts paradigms and makes collaboration easier and technology transfer faster and all that good stuff, but are willfully ignorant about the major changes to the nature and scope of warfare and the battlefields on which it will be fought.
You can't have an Information Age without Information Warfare. You can't run around celebrating how the Internet makes borders obsolete without acknowledging that BORDERS ARE FUCKING OBSOLETE. You have a web-enabled cell phone? Congratulations! You're now a citizen of the world! And that means you enter the battlefield every time you make a call. Get used to it. It's the price you pay for Youtube and Blogger and Google and Wikipedia and Skype and Slashdot and Pirate Bay and all the rest of it. From here on, every smarty man and clever monkey is going to be waging war in your playground, and you whining about how they should all go back to 1950 and leave 2008 to you isn't going to make any difference at all.
I think you meant to say "too bad I'm so lazy".
There are plenty of people out there who care deeply about being able to influence their elected representatives. They are willing to put much more effort into influencing their representatives than you are. And so when it comes time for your representatives to represent, they choose to represent those people who have worked the hardest to make their voices heard, their desires known, and their influence felt. Which is exactly as it should be.
Actually, I apologize for implying that you're lazy. It's not that you're lazy at all. You just have different priorities than some of your fellow citizens. And there's nothing wrong with that. You don't want to spend a lot of time becoming a captain of industry, or a prominent academic, or a relentless lobbyist, or an outspoken activist and campaigner. You certainly don't want to put in the time and effort necessary to run for office yourself, let alone win that office. You'd rather do other things with your resources. And that's fine. Just, you know, if that's how you want to live your life, maybe you should consider shutting the fuck up when other people decide to spend their lives having a say in how their country is run.
Was the Bay of Pigs before or after Castro and Guevara teamed up?
What is it about a columnar or conical jet that makes them not geysers?
How does your theory explain 9/11 and all the other scores of terrorist attacks that happened back when we were leaving Iraq alone?
I'm sure that after reviewing the anti-Nazi propaganda carried and disseminated by those Americans, their professed allegiance to anti-Nazi causes, and their taking up arms against the Nazis, Nazi German quite rightly concluded that they were enemies of the Nazi state and treated them as such. On the other hand, the American government probably raised no objections to their anti-Nazi "jihad", seeing as how the American government was the entity promoting it.
See how that works? It's the purported targets of the aggression and their allies that object to it, not the ones promoting the aggression. Since the United Kingdom has ample reason to consider itself both a jihadist target and an ally of jihadist targets, it's quite reasonable for them to treat jihadists as enemies of the state, investigate allegations of jihadist activity, and detain suspected jihadists based on the evidence of jihadist activity they have uncovered.
RTFA much?
The investigation started when one of the students ran away from home and left behind a note saying he was going to fight abroad. And what does the investigation turn up? Jihadist materials on his computer.
Not so much a free speech issue as a suspected fucking terrorist issue.
Seems like things worked out pretty well for these five students, all things considered. The one who left the note came home a few days later, which was probably a critical piece of evidence in his favor, and instrumental in ultimately getting the original conviction overturned.
Evidence of conspiracy isn't free speech, it's evidence of conspiracy.
Man, the guys at Illuminati Headquarters must have the most [i]awsome[/i] conversations.
"So, this Bin Laden fellow doesn't actually exist, you say?"
"That's right. All a propaganda fiction, I'm afraid."
"Won't that make us look like incompetent douchebags when we fail to find him?"
"Don't worry! We'll just [i]pretend[/i] we've found him--more of that propaganda fiction, you know--and look slightly less like incompetent douchebags."
". . . "
"And it gets even better! The longer we wait to 'find' him, [i]the more we'll look like incompetent douchebags[/i]!"
"Truly, the mind boggles at our devious cleverness."
What does their alleged good faith have to do with anything. Bush's roles and responsibilities are documented. The decision to invest in Nazi Germany was made without him, and he was never put in charge of that portfolio. If you want to play make-believe that Prescott Bush and his entire family are crypto-Nazis based on what some other guy was doing while Bush wasn't around, fine.
Speaking of having faith in the good faith of others, you should check out what Mussolini had to say about Woodrow Wilson's New Deal, or what 1930s Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic had to say about Italian Fascism (and about German Fascim, too).
Well, that one, at least, I don't mind suggesting.
Prescott Bush was hired on at an investment firm that had already invested in Nazi Germany. This investment was initated by the firm's founder (ironically a Progressive, later FDR's ambassador to the Soviet Union) before Bush joined the firm. During his tenure at the firm, Bush was responsible for managing the firm's domestic portfolios here in the U.S. The firm's founder retained control of the firm's foreign portfolios--including the firm's investments in Nazi Germany.
I'm curious: Have you seen the foreign policy documents, or the transcripts of interviews with chief diplomats, that support your claim? Or are you just guessing?
Oh, I see. Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.