Nope, you do what the kids did here. You film it (hopefully you have a camera phone or something similar) and you go public. File a police complaint if you must, but these days that is just asking for excessive harassment (the police look out for their own, always). Upload to youtube, send it to the media, get it out there. That is by far the best course of action when dealing with illegal actions on the part of police, and essentially the only one that will have any result. Look at the guy who got punched a bunch of times, or this kid, do you think ANYTHING would happened had there not been a publicly distributed video of the incident?
3 police officers, one college kid who is not being the least bit physically aggressive, just verbally being a jackass and physically being non-compliant.
If they are not able to remove him from the building without using a taser then they have no business at all being police. What if they didn't have tasers? Would a leg shot be in order then?
Well, with the cops acting like immature spoiled little brats, it was nice to see the college students being the adults. Filming and reporting this was their best option. Interfering with a couple of power-tripping, armed, angry police officers would have just escalated the situation (possibly to the "lethal force" level) and ended up with someone dead. These jokers were threatening to taser people for asking for their badge numbers, what do you think they would have done if someone tried to physically interfere?
With the cops acting like spoiled little brats, it was nice to see the college students being the adults and not overreacting. The best thing they could do was film, document, and publicize the incident. I'm not one to shun "getting involved" but in this case it was a couple of armed, angry, irresponsible, power-tripping police officers who had no problems threatening to tazer people who simply asked for their badge numbers. I do not doubt they would have drawn and fired if they felt someone was going to interfere with them. If you follow the consequences of the crowd getting involved to its logical conclusion, there is a good probability someone would end up dead.
Seriously, comparing a fry cook's job to a cop's job is just silly.
You are quite correct. A fry cook has no authority over the general population. He is not given powers and privileges far above the common citizen. A fry cook can lash out and abuse his position and the consequences for society are minimal. A law enforcement officer must be held to a much higher standard.
There should be no second chances for a LEO abusing their power or violating the law. Given the responsibility and power we as a society give them, the consequences of them abusing that position of authority and power are severe.
Police put their lives on the line, and for that they should be paid much more and trained much better than they are today. However, that is no excuse for bad behavior, and it should never be tolerated. Every one of the police involved in this debacle need to lose their jobs immediately, they are clearly not responsible enough to hold the position of authority they were given and are much more of a danger to society than a punk kid to wouldn't stand up when told to.
You sir, are a shining example of what police SHOULD be. I hope the vast majority are like you.
I have talked to a few police officers I know about this incident (naturally everyone knows about and is talking about it) and while they agree with you, nobody went as far as saying the officers should be fired. I suspect there is still a little of "we protect our own, no matter what" there. One alarmingly raised the point that the proliferation of camera phones is damaging law enforcement and something needs to be done about that...
If the police have to deal with an angry, shouting person who won't identify themself, show ID, or cooperate... what are they left to do?
I suppose that if tasers had not be invented a shot to the leg would have been called for then right? Certainly picking him up and arresting him for trespassing is out of the question, we cannot have police following police procedure now can we? Maybe a shot to the head would have been preferable, teach those punks standing around a lesson about not complying with the infallible police.
That would have been a good start, I would go further and say they should have immediately turned in their badges, tasers, and guns at the nearest police station and go apply for a job that does not involve interaction with other people. They certainly were not qualified for any position of authority.
Then they should have contacted real police officers who would have came in, picked the kid up and taken him into custody without the mess, just like police are supposed to do with non-violent protesters and such who go limp.
I am unable to comprehend how anyone could consider the police to be in the right after seeing this video, and I am a 30-something working at a major corporation, not a "college kid" (who apparently deserve no protection under the law).
Actually, according to multiple reports, they also threatened a girl with a tazing who asked for their badge numbers.
Not a single one of these men is fit to be a police officer, I daresay not a single one of them is fit to be a free man walking the streets. Clearly their abuse of power and violent attitude toward others is a danger to society. All of the "cops" involved deserve prison time.
If their plan is so obvious, why are they doing it anyway?
Why not? Their plan does not have to be secret. Heck, Ballmer has been all but shouting their intentions from the rooftops for weeks now. They are doing it because it will probably work to an extent. No large company is going to want to invest in a Linux distribution that could be litigated out of existence tomorrow by patent violations. And unlike the "SCO - they stole out source code" mess, it is actually quite likely that Linux does infringe on many patents. If only because it is virtually to write a piece of software that does not.
Way too much homo-eroticism going on between Sean Astin and Elijah Wood.
Ummm, have you READ the books? Did you manage to forget all of the "hand stroking"? If anything, Jackson toned it down.
It is also an interesting commentary on our society today. At the time, nobody saw this as homo-eroticism, guys were allowed to be friends and be close without being considered gay.
Ok, I do understand that Novell is close to becoming a Microsoft whore
I'm sorry, close? Novell is already spread eagle holding a bundle of new cash.
There are quite a few programmers being paid by Novell who work on quite exciting open source stuff (Evolution, XGL).
And Microsoft has promised not to sue anyone who buys the stuff they produce (as long as it was sold by Novell). They have all but announced their intentions to attempt to litigate everyone else out of existence with patents.
And we've got yet to see if this really hurts the community - so far I can only see that it unites them in their hatred, and perhaps that is exactly the plan of Microsoft: to taint Novell in a way that makes it unacceptable to its fans.
Kind of a silly plan, Novell could disappear tomorrow and it would have a negligible effect on Linux adoption and use overall. It seems pretty obvious to even a casual observer their plan is to claim Linux is violating their patents (which they already claim), but that they have indemnified all Novell customers. Now there is only one "legal" Linux and MS controls it. Just what they always wanted but were unable to get up till now.
You wouldn't even need to clone it for that... merely steal it.
Ah, but then the owner would realize it was missing and report it. This way nobody is the wiser.
If agents inevitably start relying on the computer that's where the problem lies.
If...IF?!!! Are you on crack? OF COURSE they will rely entirely on the computer. That is what computers are for. They never make mistakes, and they never lie. Mark my words, the first couple of people who's passports are cloned by terrorists, criminals, etc. will face significant penalties and it will be even HARDER for them to prove their innocence.
"You claim it was not you, but we tracked your passport which you never reported stolen and you have in your possession. The evidence is incontrovertible."
While making un-clonable passports would probably be a lot harder if not impossible.
True, it is much easier to throw a bunch of money at a problem and act like you made an un-clonable passport, then treat it as such in court.
So just how much code from the *BSD (unix) projects have shown up in M$ products.
I'm sure the appreciate it. The probably appreciated it so much they went out and patented parts of it because the *BSD people didn't. Now they feel they own it (not the code, but the concepts). The patent office probably agreed because they seem completely staffed with drolling morons these days, and the lawyers will certainly agree. I imagine the US government will also agree because MS gives more money to them than Redhat/debian/etc.
WHAT other stuff? All of the really cool features I was looking forward to in Vista have been cut or back ported to XP (infocard, IE7). I don't want just XP with DRM (the only real reason for Vista's existence) and some fancy graphics.
And my point is you are a rather credulous individual.
As are you, without any evidence (or knowledge of said event) you are both arguing for a specific side. You automatically assume the police are in the right and that the video was edited, the other guy assumes the police are power tripping and assaulting someone for no reason. You are both gullible and strongly believe in your assumption with no good reason to do so. Congrats, in pointing him out you have demonstrated you are exactly as gullible and naive. Maybe you two could hang out or something.
No but a fairly *strong* government is needed to control people like gates (or O.J. Simpson).
Part of the problem is that Gates (or anyone controlling a wealthy corporation) has entirely too much control over government. Part of this (probably most) is due to basically all politicians attempting to keep their job for life (or set up for a post public office career) by selling their integrity and effectively their position to the highest bidder. However part of it also is due to the close relationship government takes with businesses. Because government does not approach business in a libertarian sense (ie. leaving it alone, both in the form of not messing with it too much but also not helping it too much) we have a situation where there is a lot government can do to help business, and lots of businesses willing to buy politicians to make sure it happens. More often than not, massive government regulation is GOOD for business, in the form of helping them corner a market, drive off competition, or just good old unwarranted tax breaks and such.
Don't get me wrong, I am not for an all out Libertarian society, I do not believe that would work any more than Communism (both completely ignore the fact that people are greedy and will fuck over others if they can). I do believe that the libertarians have the right idea when it comes to personal freedom (don't mess with people's right to do what they want if it does not affect other people) and disentangling the mutually beneficial (and totally corrupt) relationships between government and business which just screw over the rest of the country.
If Bill Gates wanted to ruin your life- there is not a damn thing you could do to stop him in a libertarian society.
I'm a programmer, and he is.
But seriously, a libertarian society is not an anarchy, he would have no more right to attempt to ruin my life under it than he would under our current society, I'm not sure how you figure otherwise. What about a libertarian society changes that? On the flip side, he has enough money that if he decided to ruin someone's life under ANY society, he would probably succeed.
Why should any politician step down because they are gay? It's ridiculous.
Not if your party's primary "get out the vote" effort focuses on "we have to stop gay marriage from destroying this country". It is stupidity like that has driven so many (myself include) far away from that party, the results of which we saw this week. Sadly it DOES galvanize a lot of voters (see the last presidential election), but not enough this last time.
No, they aren't. Sure, there are corrupt Democrats...Rostenkowski spent some time in jail, and unless he flees the country, Jefferson will too. But they aren't organized when they do it.
Sure they are, they have just been the minority party for a while. When they were the majority they were quite corrupt, and not so many decades ago they were THEY masters of voter fraud (how times change). The Republicans took over in the 90s with promises to clean house and eliminate corruption (along with a lot of other good ideas they never quite got around to). Now that the Democrats have retaken congress, lets see if they eliminate corruption, or just decide that now it is THEIR turn. Should they actually do it, I will apologize, but history is not on their side.
Not quite. They weren't preventing people from having privacy or crypto, they just wanted the FBI to be able to access information as easily as they can tap a telephone.
Part of the clipper initiative was effectivly outlawing any private research into cryptography. It was to be the sole domain of the NSA, and if you were not in the NSA, you were not allowed to play.
You are parroting what they claimed, however reality is quite different. A backdoor in the only legal crypto system is sure to be exploited, if nothing else if gives a single point of attack to focus on for the rest of the world (and crackers internally) Also, it would totally have destroyed the tech industry in the US, at least globally. Nobody outside the US would ever use a cryptosystem that they knew the US government could decrypt at will, gather intel and turn around and competitively help US companies with it.
Yes it was a horrible idea, but it's not even in the same universe as indefinte detentions, NSA wirtapping, torture, and trying to kill habeas corpus.
Certainly I agree about detentions, torture, and habeas corpus (it's dead, not trying to be killed). However imagine how much worse the NSA wiretapping would be if we knew that (1) they could tap anything at will and (2) there was literally nothing we could do to keep communications private. Today at least we have strong crypto.
I am really interested in seeing what the new Democrat congress will do about all of the things you mentioned. If they immediately start countering all of the crap the Republicans have done I will cheer them on and probably change my party status from independent to Democrat asap. However I suspect they will make a bug stink publicly about a few minor things, but ultimately not change anything and carry on with business as usual (just like the Republcian takeover in 94).
It has served the Republicans as an issue designed to get conservative voters out who would not normally vote. This was proven in the last presidential election. The issue is that many anti-gay (and anti stem-cell, anti-abortion) voters are single issue voters, and will ignore everything else in the face of those issues. For many, those issues are not important enough to define a race, but for the targets of Rove's campaign, that is the only issue.
I agree the democrats who won are not a far left as many in the Democratic leadership, but they were also not anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion candidates, so it is not a victory for that overall. It was a very smart move on the part of the Democratic party to put up candidates who are palpable to moderates and even conservatives at a time when many of us are totally disgusted with the leadership in the GOP.
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Nope, you do what the kids did here. You film it (hopefully you have a camera phone or something similar) and you go public. File a police complaint if you must, but these days that is just asking for excessive harassment (the police look out for their own, always). Upload to youtube, send it to the media, get it out there. That is by far the best course of action when dealing with illegal actions on the part of police, and essentially the only one that will have any result. Look at the guy who got punched a bunch of times, or this kid, do you think ANYTHING would happened had there not been a publicly distributed video of the incident?
Finkployd
3 police officers, one college kid who is not being the least bit physically aggressive, just verbally being a jackass and physically being non-compliant.
If they are not able to remove him from the building without using a taser then they have no business at all being police. What if they didn't have tasers? Would a leg shot be in order then?
Finkployd
Well, with the cops acting like immature spoiled little brats, it was nice to see the college students being the adults. Filming and reporting this was their best option. Interfering with a couple of power-tripping, armed, angry police officers would have just escalated the situation (possibly to the "lethal force" level) and ended up with someone dead. These jokers were threatening to taser people for asking for their badge numbers, what do you think they would have done if someone tried to physically interfere?
Finkployd
With the cops acting like spoiled little brats, it was nice to see the college students being the adults and not overreacting. The best thing they could do was film, document, and publicize the incident. I'm not one to shun "getting involved" but in this case it was a couple of armed, angry, irresponsible, power-tripping police officers who had no problems threatening to tazer people who simply asked for their badge numbers. I do not doubt they would have drawn and fired if they felt someone was going to interfere with them. If you follow the consequences of the crowd getting involved to its logical conclusion, there is a good probability someone would end up dead.
Finkployd
Seriously, comparing a fry cook's job to a cop's job is just silly.
You are quite correct. A fry cook has no authority over the general population. He is not given powers and privileges far above the common citizen. A fry cook can lash out and abuse his position and the consequences for society are minimal. A law enforcement officer must be held to a much higher standard.
There should be no second chances for a LEO abusing their power or violating the law. Given the responsibility and power we as a society give them, the consequences of them abusing that position of authority and power are severe.
Police put their lives on the line, and for that they should be paid much more and trained much better than they are today. However, that is no excuse for bad behavior, and it should never be tolerated. Every one of the police involved in this debacle need to lose their jobs immediately, they are clearly not responsible enough to hold the position of authority they were given and are much more of a danger to society than a punk kid to wouldn't stand up when told to.
Finkployd
You sir, are a shining example of what police SHOULD be. I hope the vast majority are like you.
I have talked to a few police officers I know about this incident (naturally everyone knows about and is talking about it) and while they agree with you, nobody went as far as saying the officers should be fired. I suspect there is still a little of "we protect our own, no matter what" there. One alarmingly raised the point that the proliferation of camera phones is damaging law enforcement and something needs to be done about that...
Finkployd
If the police have to deal with an angry, shouting person who won't identify themself, show ID, or cooperate... what are they left to do?
I suppose that if tasers had not be invented a shot to the leg would have been called for then right? Certainly picking him up and arresting him for trespassing is out of the question, we cannot have police following police procedure now can we? Maybe a shot to the head would have been preferable, teach those punks standing around a lesson about not complying with the infallible police.
Finkployd
That would have been a good start, I would go further and say they should have immediately turned in their badges, tasers, and guns at the nearest police station and go apply for a job that does not involve interaction with other people. They certainly were not qualified for any position of authority.
Then they should have contacted real police officers who would have came in, picked the kid up and taken him into custody without the mess, just like police are supposed to do with non-violent protesters and such who go limp.
I am unable to comprehend how anyone could consider the police to be in the right after seeing this video, and I am a 30-something working at a major corporation, not a "college kid" (who apparently deserve no protection under the law).
Finkployd
No offense, but you do not have the slightest clue what you are talking about.
Finkployd
Actually, according to multiple reports, they also threatened a girl with a tazing who asked for their badge numbers.
Not a single one of these men is fit to be a police officer, I daresay not a single one of them is fit to be a free man walking the streets. Clearly their abuse of power and violent attitude toward others is a danger to society. All of the "cops" involved deserve prison time.
Finkployd
If their plan is so obvious, why are they doing it anyway?
Why not? Their plan does not have to be secret. Heck, Ballmer has been all but shouting their intentions from the rooftops for weeks now. They are doing it because it will probably work to an extent. No large company is going to want to invest in a Linux distribution that could be litigated out of existence tomorrow by patent violations. And unlike the "SCO - they stole out source code" mess, it is actually quite likely that Linux does infringe on many patents. If only because it is virtually to write a piece of software that does not.
Finkployd
Way too much homo-eroticism going on between Sean Astin and Elijah Wood.
Ummm, have you READ the books? Did you manage to forget all of the "hand stroking"? If anything, Jackson toned it down.
It is also an interesting commentary on our society today. At the time, nobody saw this as homo-eroticism, guys were allowed to be friends and be close without being considered gay.
Finkployd
Ok, I do understand that Novell is close to becoming a Microsoft whore
I'm sorry, close? Novell is already spread eagle holding a bundle of new cash.
There are quite a few programmers being paid by Novell who work on quite exciting open source stuff (Evolution, XGL).
And Microsoft has promised not to sue anyone who buys the stuff they produce (as long as it was sold by Novell). They have all but announced their intentions to attempt to litigate everyone else out of existence with patents.
And we've got yet to see if this really hurts the community - so far I can only see that it unites them in their hatred, and perhaps that is exactly the plan of Microsoft: to taint Novell in a way that makes it unacceptable to its fans.
Kind of a silly plan, Novell could disappear tomorrow and it would have a negligible effect on Linux adoption and use overall. It seems pretty obvious to even a casual observer their plan is to claim Linux is violating their patents (which they already claim), but that they have indemnified all Novell customers. Now there is only one "legal" Linux and MS controls it. Just what they always wanted but were unable to get up till now.
Finkployd
You wouldn't even need to clone it for that... merely steal it.
Ah, but then the owner would realize it was missing and report it. This way nobody is the wiser.
If agents inevitably start relying on the computer that's where the problem lies.
If...IF?!!! Are you on crack? OF COURSE they will rely entirely on the computer. That is what computers are for. They never make mistakes, and they never lie. Mark my words, the first couple of people who's passports are cloned by terrorists, criminals, etc. will face significant penalties and it will be even HARDER for them to prove their innocence.
"You claim it was not you, but we tracked your passport which you never reported stolen and you have in your possession. The evidence is incontrovertible."
While making un-clonable passports would probably be a lot harder if not impossible.
True, it is much easier to throw a bunch of money at a problem and act like you made an un-clonable passport, then treat it as such in court.
Finkployd
So just how much code from the *BSD (unix) projects have shown up in M$ products.
I'm sure the appreciate it. The probably appreciated it so much they went out and patented parts of it because the *BSD people didn't. Now they feel they own it (not the code, but the concepts). The patent office probably agreed because they seem completely staffed with drolling morons these days, and the lawyers will certainly agree. I imagine the US government will also agree because MS gives more money to them than Redhat/debian/etc.
Finkployd
Nope, it's all that other stuff.
WHAT other stuff? All of the really cool features I was looking forward to in Vista have been cut or back ported to XP (infocard, IE7). I don't want just XP with DRM (the only real reason for Vista's existence) and some fancy graphics.
Finkployd
And my point is you are a rather credulous individual.
As are you, without any evidence (or knowledge of said event) you are both arguing for a specific side. You automatically assume the police are in the right and that the video was edited, the other guy assumes the police are power tripping and assaulting someone for no reason. You are both gullible and strongly believe in your assumption with no good reason to do so. Congrats, in pointing him out you have demonstrated you are exactly as gullible and naive. Maybe you two could hang out or something.
Finkployd
No but a fairly *strong* government is needed to control people like gates (or O.J. Simpson).
Part of the problem is that Gates (or anyone controlling a wealthy corporation) has entirely too much control over government. Part of this (probably most) is due to basically all politicians attempting to keep their job for life (or set up for a post public office career) by selling their integrity and effectively their position to the highest bidder. However part of it also is due to the close relationship government takes with businesses. Because government does not approach business in a libertarian sense (ie. leaving it alone, both in the form of not messing with it too much but also not helping it too much) we have a situation where there is a lot government can do to help business, and lots of businesses willing to buy politicians to make sure it happens. More often than not, massive government regulation is GOOD for business, in the form of helping them corner a market, drive off competition, or just good old unwarranted tax breaks and such.
Don't get me wrong, I am not for an all out Libertarian society, I do not believe that would work any more than Communism (both completely ignore the fact that people are greedy and will fuck over others if they can). I do believe that the libertarians have the right idea when it comes to personal freedom (don't mess with people's right to do what they want if it does not affect other people) and disentangling the mutually beneficial (and totally corrupt) relationships between government and business which just screw over the rest of the country.
Finkployd
If Bill Gates wanted to ruin your life- there is not a damn thing you could do to stop him in a libertarian society.
I'm a programmer, and he is.
But seriously, a libertarian society is not an anarchy, he would have no more right to attempt to ruin my life under it than he would under our current society, I'm not sure how you figure otherwise. What about a libertarian society changes that? On the flip side, he has enough money that if he decided to ruin someone's life under ANY society, he would probably succeed.
Finkployd
Why should any politician step down because they are gay? It's ridiculous.
Not if your party's primary "get out the vote" effort focuses on "we have to stop gay marriage from destroying this country". It is stupidity like that has driven so many (myself include) far away from that party, the results of which we saw this week. Sadly it DOES galvanize a lot of voters (see the last presidential election), but not enough this last time.
Finkployd
Only one way to find out.
Bite his shiny metal ass
Finkployd
No, they aren't. Sure, there are corrupt Democrats...Rostenkowski spent some time in jail, and unless he flees the country, Jefferson will too. But they aren't organized when they do it.
Sure they are, they have just been the minority party for a while. When they were the majority they were quite corrupt, and not so many decades ago they were THEY masters of voter fraud (how times change). The Republicans took over in the 90s with promises to clean house and eliminate corruption (along with a lot of other good ideas they never quite got around to). Now that the Democrats have retaken congress, lets see if they eliminate corruption, or just decide that now it is THEIR turn. Should they actually do it, I will apologize, but history is not on their side.
Not quite. They weren't preventing people from having privacy or crypto, they just wanted the FBI to be able to access information as easily as they can tap a telephone.
Part of the clipper initiative was effectivly outlawing any private research into cryptography. It was to be the sole domain of the NSA, and if you were not in the NSA, you were not allowed to play.
You are parroting what they claimed, however reality is quite different. A backdoor in the only legal crypto system is sure to be exploited, if nothing else if gives a single point of attack to focus on for the rest of the world (and crackers internally) Also, it would totally have destroyed the tech industry in the US, at least globally. Nobody outside the US would ever use a cryptosystem that they knew the US government could decrypt at will, gather intel and turn around and competitively help US companies with it.
Yes it was a horrible idea, but it's not even in the same universe as indefinte detentions, NSA wirtapping, torture, and trying to kill habeas corpus.
Certainly I agree about detentions, torture, and habeas corpus (it's dead, not trying to be killed). However imagine how much worse the NSA wiretapping would be if we knew that (1) they could tap anything at will and (2) there was literally nothing we could do to keep communications private. Today at least we have strong crypto.
I am really interested in seeing what the new Democrat congress will do about all of the things you mentioned. If they immediately start countering all of the crap the Republicans have done I will cheer them on and probably change my party status from independent to Democrat asap. However I suspect they will make a bug stink publicly about a few minor things, but ultimately not change anything and carry on with business as usual (just like the Republcian takeover in 94).
Here is hoping I am proven wrong.
Finkployd
It has served the Republicans as an issue designed to get conservative voters out who would not normally vote. This was proven in the last presidential election. The issue is that many anti-gay (and anti stem-cell, anti-abortion) voters are single issue voters, and will ignore everything else in the face of those issues. For many, those issues are not important enough to define a race, but for the targets of Rove's campaign, that is the only issue.
I agree the democrats who won are not a far left as many in the Democratic leadership, but they were also not anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion candidates, so it is not a victory for that overall. It was a very smart move on the part of the Democratic party to put up candidates who are palpable to moderates and even conservatives at a time when many of us are totally disgusted with the leadership in the GOP.
Finkployd
I am intrigued by your views and I wis to subscribe to your newsletter
/. in fact) I am thrilled someone finally used it on me :)
As someone who has used that line many times (on
Finkployd
Well, it worked in 2004. They're hoping it will work again.
I didn't work again though.
They have a saying in Texas: "Fool me once, shame on.....shame on you.....fool me can't get fooled again"
Finkployd