This is about Google keeping its developers in line, not its customers, and that is exactly as it should be.
Google made an extremely smart decision in its development of Android and the ways users can install applications, by doing what Apple should have done all along. An Android user has the Android Market, while an iPhone user has the App Store. But if an owner of an Android phone decides not to use the Market, this user need only visit another site with Android applications to install anyr mobile app outside of Google's purview.
I completely agree. Android users have the benefit of knowing which apps Google's endorses without being limited to use only what they endorse. Even users of software distributed outside the Android Market could benefit by checking whether our software has never been on the Market, or has been deleted from the Market, which would suggest those aren't the warez we're looking for. The more I learn about it the more I think my next mobile electronic device will be an Android.
If HTC (or any hardware manufacturer) let you install completely bespoke firmware images on your phone, then they'd have no control over what code you ran on the phone. You could accidentally or intentionally create firmware images which crashed or disrupted the phone networks they were connected to.
I doubt it. I suspect that the ability to crash or disrupt the phone network depends on server-side configuration, not only client-side software/firmware.
If the server's software accepts [and processes] requests that would allow clients, meaning individuals' mobile phones, to crash or disrupt the networks they were connected to, how does a client's firmware protect the server? Couldn't a networked peripheral [I'm thinking Bluetooth, but anything that can exchange a "handshake" with the phone would do] successfully impersonate the phone, and be just as potentially harmful to the network as this hypothetical bad-firmware phone? Based on my experience with personal computing [none of it with telecomms, but still...], the client has to have some parameters configured certain ways, to be able to send output that is interpreted by the server as anything at all. Once that's done, the server has to be configured to drop client requests which would harm it. Which client requests the server will honor is a totally separate question from which ones the client is [or becomes] capable of sending, except that it is obviously a subset of the former [less than or equal to].
An employee on a Windows workstation cannot typically accomplish anything by saving the text "rm -rf/" on her allocated space on a shared Unix network directory, and getting that command to execute on the server requires privilege escalation on the server, not changes to the client's firmware. At least, putting all that jive into the firmware would not be the efficient way to accomplish such disruption, given that the disgruntlee already has a client that will send signals to the server, which the server can interpret. The trick is altering the software on the server, which prevents such commands from being performed when they originate on other machines, ie clients. So, what's so different about a telephone network?
The belief that some statutes are incorrect or immoral does not indicate self-immolation to those statutes. Submitting ourselves to more suffering than necessary, to statutes we hold in moral contempt, would be inconsistent.
You can Google the judge's opinion if you want, but my opinion...
For once, the linked article is also the most pertinent document, in this case the legal document and not a local newspaper's synopsis of same. Hoodathunkit?
I do not want my pursuit of happiness impeded by any package-dealing of goods with services. Ever. Even for something as cool as AT&T, because when such is allowed, next thing you know, the only way to obtain something as cool as AT&T will be to also accept something as uncool as an iPhone. Er, strike that; reverse it.
Note that I'm not saying it SHOULDN'T be against the law. Rather, I'm asking how it can be considered illegal under the laws we have today. I'm curious about the legal standpoint on this issue.
You can Google the judge's opinion if you want, but my opinion is that restriction to any one service provider, or even (hypothetically) to a limited set of service providers, violates the property rights I obtain when I purchase an iPhone. Rights are absolute, as Apple learned when they tried to engage in "strings attached sales" (usage privileges in the guise of outright sales) for a couple extra ducats from AT&T, at the expense of the almighty "user experience." You either have property rights to a thing, or you sell that thing for money, never both. You may not sell it, but then also wield any decision-making power over its use any more than you can eat a cake, then 10 minutes later have that same cake... in cake form. Ahem. Had they termed the transaction a "lease" or "rental"... but they did not.
There are some secrets (placement) that need to be maintained for a secure society. I accept that.
As a citizen should I be allowed to own and build a nuclear weapon? Yes.
Should the government be allowed to come take it away from me because they're scared? No.
Should I be allowed, as a mere citizen, to train that weapon on anything other than my own government? No.
Holy crap!! What? You want to see what's inside Area 51, even if you have to go there as a prisoner or a guinea pig?
Though, well, if you're gonna sign up consider the Marines.
Heckuva pitch. Despite it, if I was gonna sign up I would certainly consider the Marines. Whether I would consider any other branch I cannot say, only speculate, and I do not do that.
As a side note? I'm brainwashed in many areas and know this to be true. In the latter paragraph I would die to protect another Marine of kill to ensure his safety. Please do look at the reasoning behind the brainwashing and understand that that is a required trait for effective soldiering. I can not speak for other branches (though I've given consideration to re-enlisting) but I think that a good percentage of MARINES would lay down their weapons if we were ever forced to train them on civilians.
And that is why I won't really consider any branch. Psychological de-sensitization and perhaps some kind of conditioning are probably necessary, valid parts of new-hire training of professional soldiers. But if the word "brainwashing" as I understand it is inflicted on our soldiers, and I have the impression that it is, we citizens are doing something(s) very wrong. In fact, I know that we have stationed you and/or your fellow soldiers in extended policing roles in distant lands, decades after missions in defense of the (in many cases, dubious or worse) national interest have been accomplished, or stalemate accepted. If it's time to turn over the defense of their own country to Iraqis, and I believe it is, then how long overdue are we to do the same for the South Koreans? How many other countries want our soldiers on their "sovereign" territory? And why, exactly?
Yeah, I don't like the "suggested" questions either. It's really the user's responsibility, though, to make sure their recovery questions are things that only they would know... kind of like Palin famously failed to do...
You don't have to give true answers to those questions. The same random number based password generator you use to create your password can also create the string you use to make NOT NULL answers to those silly questions, which is the only criterion I've ever encountered on any 'create account' software. In fact, spaces and a wider variety of punctuation characters are often allowed than in the so-called "password" field for the same account. Just don't forget to backup your password list!
I take more of a Libertarian stance, and am very much a fiscal conservative, which makes it hard for me to ever vote for a Democrat.
I don't expect or want to make you a party-line Democrat, but seriously, you have tuned in, turned on and dropped out for all of the last 30 years if you truly believe "fiscal conservative" = !Democrat. Whatever you dislike about the "tax and spend" caricature of "the Democrats," in the real world, it's "borrow-and-spend" Republicans who have been the worst possible parody of fiscal responsibility. Ron Paul and Tom Coburn are notable exceptions, not the average Republican any more than Larry Craig is the average Republican. On average -- objectively defined by spending and votes for it -- only Republicans' empty rhetoric is fiscally conservative. Democrats, admittedly over-generalizing here, unquestionably do a better job of being fiscally conservative in proportion to their rhetoric, comparing Clinton and Democratic Congresses to Bush Jr. and Republican Congresses. Democrats are not less fiscally responsible than Republicans overall, they are less noisy about fiscal responsibility, but more responsible in practice, where it matters. You are holding Republicans' vice -- fiscal hypocrisy -- against Democrats.
What has Obama done to change anything? I mean, I keep hearing about Obama being about change, and about hope, and reform. But, what has he actually done about anything? Besides get elected, and sell some books.
I agree with everything you just said, so instead of replying to it, I have decided to go on a tangent. Hopefully, it's related enough to not be graded off topic. Here goes.
I've been thinking more than usual along similar lines since Monday's 500 point stock market crash. Specifically, I've been thinking about the source of economic value. I don't generally care much about stocks, even derivatives or short-selling, mainly because I think of collective ownership as such BS that all derived concepts are beneath me. But aside from the corporate angle on the recent economic news, I've been reminded of my initial reaction to rumors of a "housing boom," (before the housing bubble) -- appreciation in housing prices beyond their normal tendency to slightly exceed inflation. I thought "What a bunch of shit! Immigration is not that rapid, the birth rate is not skyrocketing, and it's not as though every municipality suddenly implemented strict urban growth boundaries. So, what is supposed to cause demand to exceed supply, exactly?"
After watching the collapse of the predatory lending industry, I finally understand what skewed the demand curve in the housing market: funny money. Any dork who could write a number between 50,000 and 1,000,000 could get a loan beyond their means, and lenders advised them that doing so was a sound investment -- provided that they were applying for a home loan. Decades of tradition that holds that a house is in fact an investment, and/or collateral, and/or equity, combined with the legal loophole permitting the initial lenders to replace these irresponsible loans with genuine assets encouraged lenders to encourage borrowers, and from what I've read, this was all encouraged by Alan Greenspan, and Gramm-Leach-Biley. What exactly motivated third parties to take these foolish loans off the hands of the original lenders is still not clear to me, but neither is the DVD industry's interest in maximizing the difficulty of viewing DVDs.
But, I have a good theory. In both cases, manipulation of the end user depends on the ignorance of the majority of end users of the nature of the tool they're using. Lack of a conceptual framework for analyzing the real market value of a home leaves renters eager to believe lines that are too good to be true, but vaguely resemble true things they've heard all their lives about homes being a "sound" investment. Since most users are not programmers, the breach between the role of a codec and the "locking" function advertised by RIAA & friends seems believable enough. Without one, I was in effect "locked out" of the movies I bought. Knowing that encryption and decryption are designed to keep secrets, and codecs are designed to allow convenient translation among formats which are better suited for different purposes -- such as optical disc formats for storage, and audio and video streams for entertainment -- I'm not very tolerant of claims that the purpose of a "codec" is to do what I know is actually the purpose of encryption, if the RIAA & MPAA were serious about their verbiage. In fact, they're serious only about fucking around, in being unaccountable.
I fail to see how prohibiting the free software world from playing content purchased legally by the consumer is in any way hurting the free market or why this notion is somehow considered "socialist."
My guess is, because they can. They don't even consider the demonstrable fact that their policies do not contribute to their profit margins, because at some point after one's first hundred million, I think the wealth is more than enough to make future labor unnecessary. After that, some people do work only for the love of their profession. For the rest, power has become an end in itself. A lot of the noises about this being "socialist" or that being "free market" have nothing to do with either concept, really. They have to do with preserving the status quo for people whose existence centers around locating and exploiting lo
Because, by and large, you won't. (well okay, you might, but most people wouldn't).
Citation needed.
Relying on individuals to be willing and able to appropriately address the country's national-level problems through voluntary donations of their own personal funds is simply unrealistic.
Citation needed.
The guaranteed result of adopting such a policy would be the effective destruction of the social safety net that many Americans rely on.
Citation needed: how many, and what do you promise if you're incorrect, ie as guarantee?
I'm not against Social Security or Medicare or Welfare necessarily, I just find it very difficult to believe that the vast number of Americans who give voluntarily to charity, don't give enough to cover the needs of those, relatively few at any given time, who are in need of charity. The amount anybody has to give is of course diminished by whatever they pay in taxes. I'm doubtful that a reduced tax burden would mean the end of the safety net, because I know that ~50% of Americans practice some organized worship of a higher power, which either strongly encourages or outright mandates charitable giving, with only temporary exceptions while churchgoers are financially unable to tithe, or what-have-you. In addition, many non-churchgoers who self-describe, when asked about religion, as "atheist" or "agnostic," describe their morality as "secular humanist," and
are equally conscientious about contributing to the general welfare.
And while you personally might find that acceptable, the vast majority of Americans do not.
Nobody is saying that neglecting widespread poverty without any safety net is acceptable. The dispute is, would that be the result if government stopped being the primary channel of safety net activity? Please cite sources of your claims.
Yes, and it's not even as general as "scared easily," the correlated variable is the greater fear of physical harm that researchers correlated to political conservatism. The typically Liberal fears like "liberty and privacy" mentioned above by Aaron5367, are abstractions, requiring extended periods free from fear to conceptualize, then value. Thus, Evil Pete's observation about Stalin keeping people scared in order to control them.
First, they were attached to equipment to measure skin conductivity, which rises with emotional stress as the moisture level in skin goes up. Each participant was shown threatening images, such as a bloody face interspersed with innocuous pictures of things such as bunnies, and rise in skin conductance in response to the shocking image was measured. The other measure was the involuntary eye blink that people have in response to something startling, such as a sudden loud noise. The scientists measured the amplitude of blinks via electrodes that detected muscle contractions under people's eyes.
If we could find an experimenter patient enough, I bet I could devise a similar test showing that people having extreme Liberal views have stronger reactions to long textual descriptions of police states, whether Orwellian fiction or the USA 'Patriot' Act.
Left wingers are the ones that are always worried about "offending" people, remember?
You have confused decency and manners with fear, and mainstream society with "left wingers."
And who voted for the Patriot Act?
Only Congress. What do you think would have been the result if that was put to a referendum?
Yep, both sides of the aisle.
Yep, Congress approved it and Dubya signed it, and that's what matters, not that it effectively neutralizes the Fourth Amendment, and only 42% of survey respondents could even identify a description of it from 4 choices.. Since probability gives the right answer to 25% of those who take a random guess, all we can reasonably assume is that 22 2/3% of citizens want to allow the Executive Branch to demand a wiretap from your phone company, and to leave you no legal recourse, even if the gov't had no reasonable suspicion, and your phone company never had any reason to believe they did. But that is what we have, not because we want it, but because most of us don't know what laws we have and thus no way to know why no reasonable person wants to be subjected to the Patriot Act. That's why they had to make so much noise at Alberto Gonzales' show trial, that only "foreign" communications would be subject to unlimited spying.
What's more, we'll be billed for each of those at least once more, in direct and/or indirect costs. Now that those messes have been made, the best case scenario is that we will bear the burden of cleaning them up very soon. More likely is that they will be allowed to fester until the cost of righting the mistakes of the corporatist elites will be far more. Consider corporate welfare. Each of the $10,100,000,000 bestowed on Exxon-Mobil and other petroleum cartels not only comes from our tax payments today, it adds to our future tax and household expense burdens by prolonging the use of petroleum as the primary transportation fuel source beyond sustainable levels, and discouraging rapid adoption of alternative energy sources. Switching away from petroleum will without doubt be required. On cannot reasonably argue that it will not run out eventually, and it will be more trouble than it's worth much sooner than the "Drill, baby, drill" morons want to believe.
By postponing this inevitable switch, we only shorten the time available in which to do it and constrain ourselves to endure the transition with lower supply and higher demand, thus higher prices. From Econ 101/102, the relevant graph is a demand curve. Corporate welfare, like all mismanagement of collectivized expense, costs the collective at least twice: once to screw up, and at least once more to get it right. In the special case of a shrinking supply, the nature of economic forces states beyond a reasonable doubt that exponentially increasing long-term costs will be the result. Political science tells us in the current petroleum crisis to expect the same pressures, combined with corruption within (throughout is more like it) the military-industrial complex to result in more neo-colonial invasions, which will cause intermittent, marginal reductions in demand. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians are just the tip of the iceberg, unless petroleum consumption begins to drop faster than supply, very soon.
You don't honestly believe their crimes against the proletariat were motivated by atheism. Correlation does not equal causation. Dictators prohibit religion to prevent public assembly of people who might then revolt against the totalitarian state. The persecution of religious practice by various dictators, just like the mandate of religious practice by other dictators, is tactical, not ideological. Atheism as government policy is about power. Atheism as the personal policy of citizens in a free society is about intellectual integrity.
My/prima facie/ view is that Reisinger sounds like a bit of a nut-case trying to grind a huge axe and use it to cut up some immigrants.
You disagree with her. You disapprove of how she uses her right to free speech. But, she has not committed a crime. The cease and desist letter:
October 19, 2007
Ms. Jennifer Reisinger
Brat City Web Design
1819 Settlement Trail
Sheboygan, WI 53081
Dear Ms. Reisinger:
It has been brought to my attention that the website that you operate, namely www.sheboyganspirit.com, includes as one of its "local links" a link to the City of Sheboygan Police Department website.
I am further advised that the City has not authorized this connection to its Police Department website, and we wish to have the link severed until such time as the City were to give authorization.
To the extent that maintenance of this link could be construed as having been authorized or endorsed by the City and/or its Police Department, or that there is some affiliation between your website and the City of Sheboygan, or that we are somehow endorsing your website, we hereby demand that you sever this link and cease and desist from linking your website to the City's Police Department website until such time as the City were to authorize such a link.
Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Very truly yours,
[signed]
Stephen G. McLean
CITY ATTORNEY
A hyperlink does not imply endorsement, only a link to information in another location. Stephen G. McLean will need to convince a jury of his peers that he is very ignorant of the basics of the Internet. Otherwise, phrasing his wish as a demand instead of properly, as a request, "could be construed as" a deliberate violation of citizens' rights to discuss their government.
In November, the city withdrew its demand that Reisinger not link to city government sites.
SO um, what's the issue?
Hint: not the city's eventual respect of the victim's unalienable legal right to free speech. Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241..."makes it unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same)." It's a felony, not water under the bridge.
Even in such a simple case there are many things it should be testing. Is the A/D output sane? Does it take 3 quick samples while someone is blowing and average them or just take it once (which could be wrong for some reason)? According to the article, it doesn't look like it does. It calibrates the wind sensor, but doesn't check that the calibration is sane. It doesn't report errors unless they happen 32 times in a row. It disables the watchdog timer. It disables the interrupt for illegal instructions. It doesn't meet any coding standards. It contains code with things like "this is temporary for now" in it. There is an obvious reason why they didn't want the code released.
This was a partial summary of another breathalyzer source code that was opened up in another case. This has nothing to do with open source this has to do with software that is half-ass'd but determines if someone has to go through years of court hearings, meetings, suspended license, and a whole waste of money because some company rushed their software engineer to write code that may be giving wrong results all together.
The right to examine the evidence against oneself requires that any software used to produce such evidence must always be open source.
Did you know that there are actually certain conditions where they can jail you for contempt for refusing to provide them with incriminating information (note: I said information, not evidence or testimony.)
Relax a little, and learn to laugh at yourself a little.
You go ahead and set the example; laugh at yourself while I laugh at you, if you think a sense of humor about oneself is such an important virtue. Otherwise, you're just a hypocrite, so henceforth keep your worthless advice to yourself.
Ethnic jokes are told all the time....it is just that if you have a group of people, they might look over to make sure no one of said ethnicity is around to hear the joke, but, that is the extent of it. Look, all of us have funny attributes and general behaviors. You just can't have too thin a skin, and need to have a sense of humour. And let's face it....these behaviors and traits didn't come out of the blue......many of them are based on real observable things in life.
Citation required.
Relax a little, and learn to laugh at yourself a little.
Slashdot Mirror
Google made an extremely smart decision in its development of Android and the ways users can install applications, by doing what Apple should have done all along. An Android user has the Android Market, while an iPhone user has the App Store. But if an owner of an Android phone decides not to use the Market, this user need only visit another site with Android applications to install anyr mobile app outside of Google's purview.
To put it bluntly, Android has a multitude of possible channels for the distribution of apps. The iPhone does not.
I completely agree. Android users have the benefit of knowing which apps Google's endorses without being limited to use only what they endorse. Even users of software distributed outside the Android Market could benefit by checking whether our software has never been on the Market, or has been deleted from the Market, which would suggest those aren't the warez we're looking for. The more I learn about it the more I think my next mobile electronic device will be an Android.
If HTC (or any hardware manufacturer) let you install completely bespoke firmware images on your phone, then they'd have no control over what code you ran on the phone. You could accidentally or intentionally create firmware images which crashed or disrupted the phone networks they were connected to.
I doubt it. I suspect that the ability to crash or disrupt the phone network depends on server-side configuration, not only client-side software/firmware.
/" on her allocated space on a shared Unix network directory, and getting that command to execute on the server requires privilege escalation on the server, not changes to the client's firmware. At least, putting all that jive into the firmware would not be the efficient way to accomplish such disruption, given that the disgruntlee already has a client that will send signals to the server, which the server can interpret. The trick is altering the software on the server, which prevents such commands from being performed when they originate on other machines, ie clients. So, what's so different about a telephone network?
If the server's software accepts [and processes] requests that would allow clients, meaning individuals' mobile phones, to crash or disrupt the networks they were connected to, how does a client's firmware protect the server? Couldn't a networked peripheral [I'm thinking Bluetooth, but anything that can exchange a "handshake" with the phone would do] successfully impersonate the phone, and be just as potentially harmful to the network as this hypothetical bad-firmware phone? Based on my experience with personal computing [none of it with telecomms, but still...], the client has to have some parameters configured certain ways, to be able to send output that is interpreted by the server as anything at all. Once that's done, the server has to be configured to drop client requests which would harm it. Which client requests the server will honor is a totally separate question from which ones the client is [or becomes] capable of sending, except that it is obviously a subset of the former [less than or equal to].
An employee on a Windows workstation cannot typically accomplish anything by saving the text "rm -rf
The belief that some statutes are incorrect or immoral does not indicate self-immolation to those statutes. Submitting ourselves to more suffering than necessary, to statutes we hold in moral contempt, would be inconsistent.
Like missing car keys, the correct/best theory of [_____] is in the last place we look -- because once we find them, we stop looking!
You can Google the judge's opinion if you want, but my opinion ...
For once, the linked article is also the most pertinent document, in this case the legal document and not a local newspaper's synopsis of same. Hoodathunkit?
Note that I'm not saying it SHOULDN'T be against the law. Rather, I'm asking how it can be considered illegal under the laws we have today. I'm curious about the legal standpoint on this issue.
You can Google the judge's opinion if you want, but my opinion is that restriction to any one service provider, or even (hypothetically) to a limited set of service providers, violates the property rights I obtain when I purchase an iPhone. Rights are absolute, as Apple learned when they tried to engage in "strings attached sales" (usage privileges in the guise of outright sales) for a couple extra ducats from AT&T, at the expense of the almighty "user experience." You either have property rights to a thing, or you sell that thing for money, never both. You may not sell it, but then also wield any decision-making power over its use any more than you can eat a cake, then 10 minutes later have that same cake ... in cake form. Ahem. Had they termed the transaction a "lease" or "rental" ... but they did not.
There are some secrets (placement) that need to be maintained for a secure society. I accept that.
As a citizen should I be allowed to own and build a nuclear weapon? Yes.
Should the government be allowed to come take it away from me because they're scared? No.
Should I be allowed, as a mere citizen, to train that weapon on anything other than my own government? No.
Holy crap!! What? You want to see what's inside Area 51, even if you have to go there as a prisoner or a guinea pig?
Though, well, if you're gonna sign up consider the Marines.
Heckuva pitch. Despite it, if I was gonna sign up I would certainly consider the Marines. Whether I would consider any other branch I cannot say, only speculate, and I do not do that.
As a side note? I'm brainwashed in many areas and know this to be true. In the latter paragraph I would die to protect another Marine of kill to ensure his safety. Please do look at the reasoning behind the brainwashing and understand that that is a required trait for effective soldiering. I can not speak for other branches (though I've given consideration to re-enlisting) but I think that a good percentage of MARINES would lay down their weapons if we were ever forced to train them on civilians.
And that is why I won't really consider any branch. Psychological de-sensitization and perhaps some kind of conditioning are probably necessary, valid parts of new-hire training of professional soldiers. But if the word "brainwashing" as I understand it is inflicted on our soldiers, and I have the impression that it is, we citizens are doing something(s) very wrong. In fact, I know that we have stationed you and/or your fellow soldiers in extended policing roles in distant lands, decades after missions in defense of the (in many cases, dubious or worse) national interest have been accomplished, or stalemate accepted. If it's time to turn over the defense of their own country to Iraqis, and I believe it is, then how long overdue are we to do the same for the South Koreans? How many other countries want our soldiers on their "sovereign" territory? And why, exactly?
Yeah, I don't like the "suggested" questions either. It's really the user's responsibility, though, to make sure their recovery questions are things that only they would know... kind of like Palin famously failed to do...
You don't have to give true answers to those questions. The same random number based password generator you use to create your password can also create the string you use to make NOT NULL answers to those silly questions, which is the only criterion I've ever encountered on any 'create account' software. In fact, spaces and a wider variety of punctuation characters are often allowed than in the so-called "password" field for the same account. Just don't forget to backup your password list!
I take more of a Libertarian stance, and am very much a fiscal conservative, which makes it hard for me to ever vote for a Democrat.
I don't expect or want to make you a party-line Democrat, but seriously, you have tuned in, turned on and dropped out for all of the last 30 years if you truly believe "fiscal conservative" = !Democrat. Whatever you dislike about the "tax and spend" caricature of "the Democrats," in the real world, it's "borrow-and-spend" Republicans who have been the worst possible parody of fiscal responsibility. Ron Paul and Tom Coburn are notable exceptions, not the average Republican any more than Larry Craig is the average Republican. On average -- objectively defined by spending and votes for it -- only Republicans' empty rhetoric is fiscally conservative. Democrats, admittedly over-generalizing here, unquestionably do a better job of being fiscally conservative in proportion to their rhetoric, comparing Clinton and Democratic Congresses to Bush Jr. and Republican Congresses. Democrats are not less fiscally responsible than Republicans overall, they are less noisy about fiscal responsibility, but more responsible in practice, where it matters. You are holding Republicans' vice -- fiscal hypocrisy -- against Democrats.
What has Obama done to change anything? I mean, I keep hearing about Obama being about change, and about hope, and reform. But, what has he actually done about anything? Besides get elected, and sell some books.
One thing Obama has done is consistently pursue meaningful accountability for malfeasance and incompetence in government. If you want to know what "has Obama done to change anything" else, go look it up yourself.
to kiss my hairy ass.
I've been thinking more than usual along similar lines since Monday's 500 point stock market crash. Specifically, I've been thinking about the source of economic value. I don't generally care much about stocks, even derivatives or short-selling, mainly because I think of collective ownership as such BS that all derived concepts are beneath me. But aside from the corporate angle on the recent economic news, I've been reminded of my initial reaction to rumors of a "housing boom," (before the housing bubble) -- appreciation in housing prices beyond their normal tendency to slightly exceed inflation. I thought "What a bunch of shit! Immigration is not that rapid, the birth rate is not skyrocketing, and it's not as though every municipality suddenly implemented strict urban growth boundaries. So, what is supposed to cause demand to exceed supply, exactly?"
After watching the collapse of the predatory lending industry, I finally understand what skewed the demand curve in the housing market: funny money. Any dork who could write a number between 50,000 and 1,000,000 could get a loan beyond their means, and lenders advised them that doing so was a sound investment -- provided that they were applying for a home loan. Decades of tradition that holds that a house is in fact an investment, and/or collateral, and/or equity, combined with the legal loophole permitting the initial lenders to replace these irresponsible loans with genuine assets encouraged lenders to encourage borrowers, and from what I've read, this was all encouraged by Alan Greenspan, and Gramm-Leach-Biley. What exactly motivated third parties to take these foolish loans off the hands of the original lenders is still not clear to me, but neither is the DVD industry's interest in maximizing the difficulty of viewing DVDs.
But, I have a good theory. In both cases, manipulation of the end user depends on the ignorance of the majority of end users of the nature of the tool they're using. Lack of a conceptual framework for analyzing the real market value of a home leaves renters eager to believe lines that are too good to be true, but vaguely resemble true things they've heard all their lives about homes being a "sound" investment. Since most users are not programmers, the breach between the role of a codec and the "locking" function advertised by RIAA & friends seems believable enough. Without one, I was in effect "locked out" of the movies I bought. Knowing that encryption and decryption are designed to keep secrets, and codecs are designed to allow convenient translation among formats which are better suited for different purposes -- such as optical disc formats for storage, and audio and video streams for entertainment -- I'm not very tolerant of claims that the purpose of a "codec" is to do what I know is actually the purpose of encryption, if the RIAA & MPAA were serious about their verbiage. In fact, they're serious only about fucking around, in being unaccountable.
I fail to see how prohibiting the free software world from playing content purchased legally by the consumer is in any way hurting the free market or why this notion is somehow considered "socialist."
My guess is, because they can. They don't even consider the demonstrable fact that their policies do not contribute to their profit margins, because at some point after one's first hundred million, I think the wealth is more than enough to make future labor unnecessary. After that, some people do work only for the love of their profession. For the rest, power has become an end in itself. A lot of the noises about this being "socialist" or that being "free market" have nothing to do with either concept, really. They have to do with preserving the status quo for people whose existence centers around locating and exploiting lo
Because, by and large, you won't. (well okay, you might, but most people wouldn't).
Citation needed.
Relying on individuals to be willing and able to appropriately address the country's national-level problems through voluntary donations of their own personal funds is simply unrealistic.
Citation needed.
The guaranteed result of adopting such a policy would be the effective destruction of the social safety net that many Americans rely on.
Citation needed: how many, and what do you promise if you're incorrect, ie as guarantee?
I'm not against Social Security or Medicare or Welfare necessarily, I just find it very difficult to believe that the vast number of Americans who give voluntarily to charity, don't give enough to cover the needs of those, relatively few at any given time, who are in need of charity. The amount anybody has to give is of course diminished by whatever they pay in taxes. I'm doubtful that a reduced tax burden would mean the end of the safety net, because I know that ~50% of Americans practice some organized worship of a higher power, which either strongly encourages or outright mandates charitable giving, with only temporary exceptions while churchgoers are financially unable to tithe, or what-have-you. In addition, many non-churchgoers who self-describe, when asked about religion, as "atheist" or "agnostic," describe their morality as "secular humanist," and are equally conscientious about contributing to the general welfare.
And while you personally might find that acceptable, the vast majority of Americans do not.
Nobody is saying that neglecting widespread poverty without any safety net is acceptable. The dispute is, would that be the result if government stopped being the primary channel of safety net activity? Please cite sources of your claims.
First, they were attached to equipment to measure skin conductivity, which rises with emotional stress as the moisture level in skin goes up. Each participant was shown threatening images, such as a bloody face interspersed with innocuous pictures of things such as bunnies, and rise in skin conductance in response to the shocking image was measured. The other measure was the involuntary eye blink that people have in response to something startling, such as a sudden loud noise. The scientists measured the amplitude of blinks via electrodes that detected muscle contractions under people's eyes.
If we could find an experimenter patient enough, I bet I could devise a similar test showing that people having extreme Liberal views have stronger reactions to long textual descriptions of police states, whether Orwellian fiction or the USA 'Patriot' Act.
That just depends on which liberties you're watching.
You must be watching the right of billionaires to privatize profit, and socialize risk.
Left wingers are the ones that are always worried about "offending" people, remember?
You have confused decency and manners with fear, and mainstream society with "left wingers."
And who voted for the Patriot Act?
Only Congress. What do you think would have been the result if that was put to a referendum?
Yep, both sides of the aisle.
Yep, Congress approved it and Dubya signed it, and that's what matters, not that it effectively neutralizes the Fourth Amendment, and only 42% of survey respondents could even identify a description of it from 4 choices.. Since probability gives the right answer to 25% of those who take a random guess, all we can reasonably assume is that 22 2/3% of citizens want to allow the Executive Branch to demand a wiretap from your phone company, and to leave you no legal recourse, even if the gov't had no reasonable suspicion, and your phone company never had any reason to believe they did. But that is what we have, not because we want it, but because most of us don't know what laws we have and thus no way to know why no reasonable person wants to be subjected to the Patriot Act. That's why they had to make so much noise at Alberto Gonzales' show trial, that only "foreign" communications would be subject to unlimited spying.
Her abuse of public powers belongs in the public domain.
Palin promised cooperation with the investigation, before "Keating 5" McCain found out she's just as "maverick" as he is.
... AMD didn't copy their off-chip memory controller.
I didn't vote for deregulations that allowed massive redistribution of wealth to corrupt speculators. Did you? What about arming Saddam Hussein? Did you vote to ignore all evidence except what would suggest that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons and working directly with al Qaida? The serious problems with the United States are not as general as "the undereducated." It is the most corrupt among the over-privileged, undereducated who are completely to blame for all the problems described in the stories I've linked. These policies were all implemented without the knowledge of the People, and in direct contradiction to the will of the people, which has been clear from the reaction to each. All of these American atrocities are not the fault of "democracy," it's the fault of fascist traitors, led by the Bush family.
What's more, we'll be billed for each of those at least once more, in direct and/or indirect costs. Now that those messes have been made, the best case scenario is that we will bear the burden of cleaning them up very soon. More likely is that they will be allowed to fester until the cost of righting the mistakes of the corporatist elites will be far more. Consider corporate welfare. Each of the $10,100,000,000 bestowed on Exxon-Mobil and other petroleum cartels not only comes from our tax payments today, it adds to our future tax and household expense burdens by prolonging the use of petroleum as the primary transportation fuel source beyond sustainable levels, and discouraging rapid adoption of alternative energy sources. Switching away from petroleum will without doubt be required. On cannot reasonably argue that it will not run out eventually, and it will be more trouble than it's worth much sooner than the "Drill, baby, drill" morons want to believe.
By postponing this inevitable switch, we only shorten the time available in which to do it and constrain ourselves to endure the transition with lower supply and higher demand, thus higher prices. From Econ 101/102, the relevant graph is a demand curve. Corporate welfare, like all mismanagement of collectivized expense, costs the collective at least twice: once to screw up, and at least once more to get it right. In the special case of a shrinking supply, the nature of economic forces states beyond a reasonable doubt that exponentially increasing long-term costs will be the result. Political science tells us in the current petroleum crisis to expect the same pressures, combined with corruption within (throughout is more like it) the military-industrial complex to result in more neo-colonial invasions, which will cause intermittent, marginal reductions in demand. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians are just the tip of the iceberg, unless petroleum consumption begins to drop faster than supply, very soon.
You don't honestly believe their crimes against the proletariat were motivated by atheism. Correlation does not equal causation. Dictators prohibit religion to prevent public assembly of people who might then revolt against the totalitarian state. The persecution of religious practice by various dictators, just like the mandate of religious practice by other dictators, is tactical, not ideological. Atheism as government policy is about power. Atheism as the personal policy of citizens in a free society is about intellectual integrity.
My /prima facie/ view is that Reisinger sounds like a bit of a nut-case trying to grind a huge axe and use it to cut up some immigrants.
You disagree with her. You disapprove of how she uses her right to free speech. But, she has not committed a crime. The cease and desist letter:
October 19, 2007
Ms. Jennifer Reisinger
Brat City Web Design
1819 Settlement Trail
Sheboygan, WI 53081
Dear Ms. Reisinger:
It has been brought to my attention that the website that you operate, namely www.sheboyganspirit.com, includes as one of its "local links" a link to the City of Sheboygan Police Department website.
I am further advised that the City has not authorized this connection to its Police Department website, and we wish to have the link severed until such time as the City were to give authorization.
To the extent that maintenance of this link could be construed as having been authorized or endorsed by the City and/or its Police Department, or that there is some affiliation between your website and the City of Sheboygan, or that we are somehow endorsing your website, we hereby demand that you sever this link and cease and desist from linking your website to the City's Police Department website until such time as the City were to authorize such a link.
Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Very truly yours,
[signed]
Stephen G. McLean
CITY ATTORNEY
A hyperlink does not imply endorsement, only a link to information in another location. Stephen G. McLean will need to convince a jury of his peers that he is very ignorant of the basics of the Internet. Otherwise, phrasing his wish as a demand instead of properly, as a request, "could be construed as" a deliberate violation of citizens' rights to discuss their government.
In November, the city withdrew its demand that Reisinger not link to city government sites.
SO um, what's the issue?
Hint: not the city's eventual respect of the victim's unalienable legal right to free speech. ..."makes it unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same)." It's a felony, not water under the bridge.
Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241
Even in such a simple case there are many things it should be testing. Is the A/D output sane? Does it take 3 quick samples while someone is blowing and average them or just take it once (which could be wrong for some reason)? According to the article, it doesn't look like it does. It calibrates the wind sensor, but doesn't check that the calibration is sane. It doesn't report errors unless they happen 32 times in a row. It disables the watchdog timer. It disables the interrupt for illegal instructions. It doesn't meet any coding standards. It contains code with things like "this is temporary for now" in it. There is an obvious reason why they didn't want the code released.
This was a partial summary of another breathalyzer source code that was opened up in another case. This has nothing to do with open source this has to do with software that is half-ass'd but determines if someone has to go through years of court hearings, meetings, suspended license, and a whole waste of money because some company rushed their software engineer to write code that may be giving wrong results all together.
The right to examine the evidence against oneself requires that any software used to produce such evidence must always be open source.
Did you know that there are actually certain conditions where they can jail you for contempt for refusing to provide them with incriminating information (note: I said information, not evidence or testimony.)
Citation required.
Relax a little, and learn to laugh at yourself a little.
You go ahead and set the example; laugh at yourself while I laugh at you, if you think a sense of humor about oneself is such an important virtue. Otherwise, you're just a hypocrite, so henceforth keep your worthless advice to yourself.
Ethnic jokes are told all the time....it is just that if you have a group of people, they might look over to make sure no one of said ethnicity is around to hear the joke, but, that is the extent of it. Look, all of us have funny attributes and general behaviors. You just can't have too thin a skin, and need to have a sense of humour. And let's face it....these behaviors and traits didn't come out of the blue......many of them are based on real observable things in life.
Citation required.
Relax a little, and learn to laugh at yourself a little.
You first.