Did you know there's legal and illegal ways to butcher animals? Despite that trend in china where they literally torture dogs to death to "add flavor", we do make an effort to make the process as humane as possible. Currently they zap them with an electrical shock to stun them and then put a piston into their head. Cows anyway. As any deer hunter can tell you, if they have a violent death, the meat is all stringy and tough.
Likewise, there's a right way and a wrong way to kill hopes and dreams. If we must send our children to the dream slaughterhouse we can at least do it humanely. So obviously teachers should carry tasers to gently stun students and then deliver the soul-crushing news while they're writhing on the floor.
But if that happens because someone is appearing in commercials instead of news, then something is wrong on a much more fundamental level.
. . . Why? Is the scientific progress made by NASA skewed if someone's face is on a box of Wheaties? Does the NICER cease rotation-resolved spectroscopy of emissions of neutron stars in the soft (0.2–12 keV) X-ray band if it's likeness is made into keychain trinkets?
I mean, I get the sentiment. On reading the headline I was vaguely in the same camp. "oh god no, that'd be tacky as shit". We're putting NASA on some sort of special pedestal where it can only be praised in certain ways. To geeks, it's sacred. (The technical sense of sacred without religious connotation. Most religious stuff is sacred, but non-religious can also be). It has to be treated with "respect" instead of stamped on merch and used to sell stuff. Except that it is. There's T-shirts and toys and keychain fobs already. WAY back there a few astronauts were heroes. And they god-damn still are. But I couldn't tell you the names of the ones currently in orbit. Most people will be able to name way more athletes than (living) scientists or astronauts. And part of that is.... branding. Out of sight and out of mind. A niche thing for nerds. Well fuck that noise.
Where's the fantasy league of scientific paper publications? Where's the ULA and SpaceX branded adderall? Where's the monday-night Launch&Liquor specials? Where everyone pays $0.05 drink insurance but they give everyone shots when there's a launch failure. Where are my rappers with epistemological throw-downs? Why is debate club not called FIGHT-NIGHT and selling tickets?
I don't know. Selling naming rights is pretty pedestrian. But I don't think space and science need be some elite-exclusive thing on a special sacred pedestal. Bring on the Coke-branded right booster and the Mentos-branded left booster.
Read to the bloody end of the fucking paragraph: "It's actually up to a judge, but they've been ruling really fucking lax about what constitutes a threat. I mean, jesus. That old guy put his arm on Cheney's shoulder while talking to him. 'That's battery'. Wow. But the charge stuck."
And.... did you entirely dodge the entire point that followed? "That's just the legal system" "THESE PEOPLE on the other hand..."
Fuck hell nasch, how lazy can you get? Very first instant you can jerk that knee and you spam a half-hearted bullshit excuse and don't even read the rest? That's just plain rude.
and I don't think I've ever been threatened with death.
If this thread is any example, you probably just never bothered reading them. I guess ignorance is bliss...
"And even if you now reply with 'I'm going to kill you' I would consider that a joke, not a threat."
You can't NOW say it IS a threat.... Except, of course, you CAN. Just as anyone can. It might make you a hypocrite. It might make them pansies. It might make their worldview not jive with your or mine. But the way our legal system works, if you FEEL THREATENED, it's a threat. And when I say "you" I mean the impersonal other-person sort of you. Not you specifically, of course. Because the thing I really wanted to point out to you is that IT'S NOT UP TO YOU. Or me. It's actually up to a judge, but they've been ruling really fucking lax about what constitutes a threat. I mean, jesus. That old guy put his arm on Cheney's shoulder while talking to him. "That's battery". Wow. But the charge stuck.
But hey, that's just the legal system and the underpinning of what our government defines as true. THESE PEOPLE on the other hand are MAKING CLAIMS about how many death threats they've gotten. And it's prompting people to suggest things like "you need to go through a Cryptographically Signed process that PROVES your identity" like that's not a laughable piece of unworkable bullshit. And that's at +5 insightful so don't tell me it's not an issue.
He thinks "-No one ever even needs to SEE a death threat." but fails to understand exactly how low the bar is for what SOME PEOPLE (not you or I) would constitute a threat.
You can disagree all you want but you're missing the bloody point.
Ok, this is important: Not everyone would consider that a joke and not a threat.
Reddit mods UNDOUBTEDLY get way more flak than this. But any time someone talks about receiving "death threats over the internet" remember that "go DIAF" technically counts. In this age of trigger-happy victim-card-play snowflakes, getting some details about just what exactly they mean by "death threat" is important. AND, remember that you can't control how other people feel. If they feel threatened, that's that. Before the divorce, the wife pulled a knife on me and had some playful little threat but I didn't feel threatened. I walked into it and she pulled away. We laughed about it afterwards. And a few months later shit hits the fan and she's pushing to collect on that half mil of life insurance money. The bitch. I guess that's a long round about way of saying that even if people don't feel threatened, they maybe idiots.
Well ok, time to pop that cherry. You can go DIAF. Boom. Done. I told you to go die. In a fire. Horrific, I know. But I trust that, as an adult of "a long time", you'll learn to move on. To carry forth. To look past this dark time of villainy and cruelty. To be a better person from what we can all hope is a character building exercise.
Have you? If so, over what?
Yeah. Last time that I remember? I think I said that NAZIs had the right to free speech just as much as they did. Then they called me a NAZI and said they'd kill me. It was cute.
Nixon was BUSTED as all bloody get-out. They had him dead to rights and were about to nail him as the blatent crook that he most certainly was. But he stepped down before it happened because he knew he was busted. If you ever even remotely THINK that "he wasn't technically busted" then you have absolutely ZERO sense for politics.
So arguing over what he was "busted for" would seem to be moot.
No, the details are actually quite pertinent as it comes to precedence for current affairs.
Those "bunch of actual criminals" were actual CIA operatives. I thought all of them had moved on from the CIA at the time of the burglary, but Eugenio Martinez was still getting paid.
James W. McCord Jr., GS-15 (top pay) in the CIA. Served 2 months in prison.[97] Virgilio Gonzalez, the locksmith that got them busted. Cuban-born activist. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 13 months in prison.[97] Bernard Barker, undercover agent of the FBI and CIA. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 18 months in prison.[99] Eugenio Martínez, a "paid asset" of the CIA at the time of the break in. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 15 months in prison.[100] Frank Sturgis, A spy for the marines, Navy, and Army. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 10 months in prison.[100]
Their boss, E. Howard Hunt, was an officer in the CIA. Original sentence of up to 35 years in prison.[92][96] Served 33 months in prison.[98] He and G. Gordon Liddy, FBI agent, ran nixon's "plumbers" who fixed leaks in the party. Original sentence of up to 20 years in prison.[92][96] Served 4.5 years in federal prison.[97] I consider him the only one to have served any real time behind bars. He's still alive btw. Retired from the talk-show circuit in 2012.
There were also 42 other government officials found guilty. Mostly for the coverup and lying to the investigation. Get your ass ready for another such draining of the swamp.
That's actually a well reasoned stance. Up to the 2nd to last paragraph. Then it veers off into pointless philosophy. Rebelling city-states? Really? Get off it dude. Anyway, yes, our society is fragile and the ease of wounding it is WAY easier than protecting it. Stick to that part and you're golden.
But yes, I want the FBI to do their job. I really DO want them to catch the bad guys. All my bitching and moaning about warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance, parallel construction, bullshit about "metadata", kangaroo FISA courts, and practically anything the CIA does is rooted in preserving the system of checks and balances that give us rights as citizens. If the cops go get a real warrant, I'm perfectly fine with them pulling out the stops and violating the fuck out of Capone's and Osama's privacy. The CIA shouldn't be operating within US borders and I'm not so sure anything they do within other nation's legal systems are all that "legal" and they've got a bad track-record of doing "good". So I'm up in the air on whether I want the CIA doing their job. It's fundamentally hard to know. And that all by itself is grounds to be skeptic.
This story, if anything, is a sign that the system works. They had a gag on Google. Then it was removed. Then Google informed people. Because while the cops enjoy operating in secret while investigating people, there's a perfectly legit use-case for purchasing this stuff. Least we want any network engineering to be thought-crime. And so off came the gag. That probably cost Google some coin just getting the lawyers to walk through all that paperwork. Good on them. And good on the courts for actually letting the gag come off. And good on the FBI for (presumably) getting an warrant and gag in the first place as they ought to do. So while it might all sound scary... the system works. And we should celebrate that.
Soooo, your "guarantee" and all those capital letters was more along the lines of "bullshit".
Well in that case, I TOO guarantee that the first death-threat I receive from someone on Mars, I will be DEMANDING to speak to an owner of Mars IN PERSON and will NOT do any more space advocacy until it is Resolved to my satisfaction. PERIOD.
Whelp, this'll get to +5 insightful for sure now that I know the formula.
For example? Can in imagine if you're an *honest* politician? And one that just wants to solve a few problems, wants to generally 'fix' something they see broken? Not in it for the power, or money, but honestly just want to make things better.
Yes. I can imagine. I think most politicians are trying to do good. Most even, are trying to do good for people other than themselves. Even those nutjobs that want women to be second class citizens, to ban contraceptives, to ban alchohol, to ban rock'n'roll, and to put scripture into the lawbooks. They just want to do good because they see a bunch of stuff that's broken, and they want to fix it. Unfortunetely, their definition of "broken" doesn't quite line up with mine, and their ideas about how to fix it is absolute nightmare fuel and I disagree with them on the best way forward. Hardly any of them are actually EVIL.
GRANDMOTHER would be happy being a politician.
That's a weird bit of ageism. But anyway, we tried that. Hilary is a grandmother. So was Margaret Thatcher.
You overall argument is that we should be kind to politicians. While I agree that the personal attacks are pointless (distracting even), we should MOST ASSUREDLY give politicians a hard time and be skeptical as hell of anything they're pushing. Even if society at large kept all commentary to the issues (pft, good luck with that), then it would still be a stressful job and rightly so. Because we should definitely NOT trust these people.
But go on, give me a couple of names of "open, honest, caring" politicians. I imagine they exist, but I doubt they're in any place of power.
There's actually a sort of "dualism" between/r/futurology and/r/collapse. The bookends of the future. Super-great or the end of society. The nutters over on collapse are typical doomsayers. Society has always has a percentage of people who think the world is ending soon. All in all I think it's harmless when they're "preppers" as long as they don't take it too far. When they're more like "why go to work, the world is ending?" or "to be prepared for the end of soceity, I'm taking my kid out of school to learn how to dress a rabbit", then that's a problem. The nutters on/r/futurology on the other hand are much much less likely to go off the deep-end and be a sociological problem. They're still crazy, but it's more like a delusion of optimism. The UBI crowd is big over there. But recently there's been a stronger trend of "hey what if AI takes all our jobs?" which is bucking the narrative of futurology. Those posts should really stay in/r/cyberpunk so we can all live our happy little lives inside the comfortable bubbles we know and love.
Obligatory go DIAF comment that's needed in these kinds of threads so we can all pad our victim card.
you need to go through a Cryptographically Signed process that PROVES your identity.
Hahaha! oh wait, you're serious. Ok, walk me through that. "It's encrypted" isn't good enough. Prove... WHAT identity? Prove that it's tied to an email? pft. Tied to a credit card? Also not so good. Do you really want a background check just to question authority?
No one ever even needs to SEE a death threat.
Correct, it's not needed. But if they're an adult in society I can guarantee you it's going to happen. The same way that they're going to meet people who disagree with them, don't think they're good people, insult them, question their motives, cast unsubstantiated aspirations upon their mother, and call them gay. If you are in a position of authority where your job is to censor people, I can guarantee you that you will receive abuse. And I can also guarantee you that the position will be abused. Human nature is a bitch, isn't it?
Obligatory "go DIAF" statement that's needed in these threads so everyone can pad their victim card. There you go. If this is your first time... I guess you have to call someone at... it's not DICE anymore... it's BizX. Good luck with that. If you're not full of shit and you actually meant it when you said you wouldn't be "doing work" until it's "Resolved" then... well... sorry for kicking you off of slashdot.
OH SHIT! That's another death threat. So sorry to anyone that "takes a toll" on. But the mods at Reddit likely get way WAY worse. On the other hand, mods on Reddit are typically little tin-pot tyrants. They LIKE having power. Why else would they do it? They're not getting paid. If they didn't like it they can just... stop.
If they continue to work for free, that really puts a kink in that whole "We should get paid for this" argument.
Evelyn Hall never tried to pass it off as a quote of Voltaire, merely a description of his beliefs. Which I believe she hit right on the head. And it's good enough line I'm cool with quoting Hall's words of wisdom as they are pertinent and powerful.
The best way to fix this is probably to prevent ISPs from being media companies
You're only looking at the current industry fight with ISPs and netflix. You want something like film studios not owning theaters (or car manufacturing owning car dealerships). But what industry doesn't make use of the Internet? They'd have to be restricted to ONLY being an ISP.
And even if they themselves don't own the competition, they can simply sell priority. ESPN3 made deals with ISPs to blatantly violate NN. Rather than selling to individuals, they sold to the ISP. That service is now not neutral with respect to what content you're requesting. Their incentive is simply CASH rather than promoting their own business.
The market was much freer when corporations were only allowed to exist as entities limited to operating in specific businesses.
Was this ever a blanket rule? I think it might have just been a trend to bust up companies and make those sort of restrictions on a few industries after we got through the period with Robber Barons and Trusts. Uncle Sherman's Trust-busting hammer.
I'm going to bet that we literally accomplish voting Trump out of office here in a couple years. If Mueller doesn't get him first. Good luck with Putin though.
You can choose to get your ill-thought short diatribes and banal status updates from somewhere other than Twitter.
Unless you're an ideologue like many of the 'pro netneutrality' crowd who are completely fine with other voices being censored so they can monologue unopposed.
Just who the fuck are you? Show me one god-damned instance of someone arguing in favor of network neutrality that somehow veered into advocating for censorship. Go on. Pour some sauce over here. Throw me a link. Because you can't just spew that sort of garbage around without at least SOME sort of backup.
I'm pro-NN as fuck and I believe Hall said it best: I might disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Yeah, there is a HUGE difference between the two. I only had one real choice in ISP before I moved to a real city. Service sucked. (Now it's just expensive).
Buuuuuuuuuuut, they're similar in certain ways. ISPs should be dumb carriers not liable for the packets they transport and they shouldn't fuck with them. And since that whole "internet 2.0" craze, any website you can publish your own reviews, comments, posts, blogs, and diatribes. I would also like these websites to be dumb carriers not liable for the packets they host and they should really keep their fucking around with them to a minimum.
I'm perfectly ok with ISPs and sysadmins stopping spam. It gets into some scary territory if they decided certain political advertisement was spam. That's a potential abuse of power. But really, I'm ok with them just dropping all that worthless email spam that continues to exist for some bloody reason. And if Fedex has good reason to suspect your package is a bomb, they can call a bombsquad. And if another widespread worm hits the world, sysadmins can do what they can, NN be damned in times of emergency. LIKEWISE, for websites I'm perfectly ok with them simply blocking forum spambots, death-threats, shills, and providing the masses some way to moderate the quality of the commentary. In short, I'm not advocating absolutes.
I'd like to see more freedom in online discussions. This IS the modern-day public square. The fact that the servers are owned by someone raises some issues.
A competitive ISP market doesn't guarantee that at least one provider will offer reasonably priced, net-neutral service. We need net neutrality mandated by law even if there are multiple high-speed, low-latency ISPs serving every area.
True, a competative market doesn't guarantee someone will step up and provide what really ought to be a cornerstone of civilization, akin to clean water and greasy gyros. It practically guarentees it in any major city. SOMEONE would start up a business and launch it and even in some crazy brainwashed dystopia there'd still be enough TrueGeeks(tm) that would want the real Internet. But in rural America the odds of that happening shrink. We might see what the effects of a non-neutral net would have on small communities. In the dial-up era in the 90's, NN violations weren't a big thing, and that was just the free market keeping services in line with what was in demand. But Internet companies are more sophisticated now and there's potential for abuse. Liiiiiiike, Disney getting into a deal with all the surrounding ISPs that scan for IP violations so people don't upload videos or pictures of "incidents" at their park. Or the local church banning certain online purchases on Sunday. Or the local backwater bumpkin blockbuster making a deal to block the bittorrent protocol. But all that's only a worry for rural america. The portions that don't have geeks who get pissed off. Hell, if it became a problem, they'd sell turn-key solutions so anyone that got pissed off could start up their own ISP.
A free-market solution, while not perfect, would be good enough. Unfortunately the market is NOWHERE near the realm of free. It has been conquered and dominated and parceled out by a handful of tyrants.
We need net neutrality mandated by law
That would also work. I'm not totally sure I trust the current sitting congress critters to craft laws that could effectively do that. They'd probably just get their telcom lobbyist buddies to write it for them. And I CERTAINLY don't trust those asshats. Case in point, read the article again. I really liked the title ii classification, although that IS at the whim of every FCC head.
And when they begin the process of establishing best practices for privacy, they will need to look no further than broadband providers.
You want congress to go ask the top 5 major ISP companies for how to make rules for privacy? The people who have been caught violating your privacy for profit. You really think that's a good idea?
For years, our members have embraced strong consumer privacy policies, because they understand the success of any digital business depends on earning their customers’ trust.
The telcoms have success at business because they're monopolies. Most people believe them to be untrustworthy.
People have spent years clamoring for ISP net neutrality. We need same rules of the road for edge.
Most network neutrality issues pertain to those controlling the pipes. But hey, sure, I too have to admit that sounds like a good idea. So it shouldn't matter where you're requesting a video from Youtube and there should be no "restricted due to your countries IP laws". Buuuuuuut that's an issue ABOVE congress. You know, since it's international. ISPs on the other hand, are pretty constrained on the rules of the nation their pipes currently reside in.
Federal investment must be used to fill the gaps in truly unserved areas, not create false market competition by allowing electric utilities with established monopolies to extend their market power over this already fragile market. Together, we should be laser-focused on serving the unserved and maximizing the federal support to do it, while avoiding duplication and overbuilding, and ensuring efficiencies wherever possible.
If you believe at all in capitalism, you HAVE to realize that the ISP industry doesn't have competition and the major telcoms are engaging in anti-competitive practices:
1) They collude not to compete in each other's territory 2) They subsidize service in any area where new competition comes to town, like Google Fiber. 3) They've sued against anyone touching the poles which have their cables. If they're arguing a power company having a monopoly on their own poles, they're hypocrites to the extreme.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you know there's legal and illegal ways to butcher animals? Despite that trend in china where they literally torture dogs to death to "add flavor", we do make an effort to make the process as humane as possible. Currently they zap them with an electrical shock to stun them and then put a piston into their head. Cows anyway. As any deer hunter can tell you, if they have a violent death, the meat is all stringy and tough.
Likewise, there's a right way and a wrong way to kill hopes and dreams. If we must send our children to the dream slaughterhouse we can at least do it humanely. So obviously teachers should carry tasers to gently stun students and then deliver the soul-crushing news while they're writhing on the floor.
But if that happens because someone is appearing in commercials instead of news, then something is wrong on a much more fundamental level.
. . . Why? Is the scientific progress made by NASA skewed if someone's face is on a box of Wheaties? Does the NICER cease rotation-resolved spectroscopy of emissions of neutron stars in the soft (0.2–12 keV) X-ray band if it's likeness is made into keychain trinkets?
I mean, I get the sentiment. On reading the headline I was vaguely in the same camp. "oh god no, that'd be tacky as shit". We're putting NASA on some sort of special pedestal where it can only be praised in certain ways. To geeks, it's sacred. (The technical sense of sacred without religious connotation. Most religious stuff is sacred, but non-religious can also be). It has to be treated with "respect" instead of stamped on merch and used to sell stuff. Except that it is. There's T-shirts and toys and keychain fobs already. WAY back there a few astronauts were heroes. And they god-damn still are. But I couldn't tell you the names of the ones currently in orbit. Most people will be able to name way more athletes than (living) scientists or astronauts. And part of that is.... branding. Out of sight and out of mind. A niche thing for nerds. Well fuck that noise.
Where's the fantasy league of scientific paper publications? Where's the ULA and SpaceX branded adderall? Where's the monday-night Launch&Liquor specials? Where everyone pays $0.05 drink insurance but they give everyone shots when there's a launch failure. Where are my rappers with epistemological throw-downs? Why is debate club not called FIGHT-NIGHT and selling tickets?
I don't know. Selling naming rights is pretty pedestrian. But I don't think space and science need be some elite-exclusive thing on a special sacred pedestal. Bring on the Coke-branded right booster and the Mentos-branded left booster.
. . . that sounds like a number that came from an actuary.
hmmmmm....
Read to the bloody end of the fucking paragraph: "It's actually up to a judge, but they've been ruling really fucking lax about what constitutes a threat. I mean, jesus. That old guy put his arm on Cheney's shoulder while talking to him. 'That's battery'. Wow. But the charge stuck."
And.... did you entirely dodge the entire point that followed? "That's just the legal system" "THESE PEOPLE on the other hand..."
Fuck hell nasch, how lazy can you get? Very first instant you can jerk that knee and you spam a half-hearted bullshit excuse and don't even read the rest? That's just plain rude.
and I don't think I've ever been threatened with death.
If this thread is any example, you probably just never bothered reading them. I guess ignorance is bliss...
No no no... No take backs:
"And even if you now reply with 'I'm going to kill you' I would consider that a joke, not a threat."
You can't NOW say it IS a threat.... Except, of course, you CAN. Just as anyone can. It might make you a hypocrite. It might make them pansies. It might make their worldview not jive with your or mine. But the way our legal system works, if you FEEL THREATENED, it's a threat. And when I say "you" I mean the impersonal other-person sort of you. Not you specifically, of course. Because the thing I really wanted to point out to you is that IT'S NOT UP TO YOU. Or me. It's actually up to a judge, but they've been ruling really fucking lax about what constitutes a threat. I mean, jesus. That old guy put his arm on Cheney's shoulder while talking to him. "That's battery". Wow. But the charge stuck.
But hey, that's just the legal system and the underpinning of what our government defines as true. THESE PEOPLE on the other hand are MAKING CLAIMS about how many death threats they've gotten. And it's prompting people to suggest things like "you need to go through a Cryptographically Signed process that PROVES your identity" like that's not a laughable piece of unworkable bullshit. And that's at +5 insightful so don't tell me it's not an issue.
He thinks "-No one ever even needs to SEE a death threat." but fails to understand exactly how low the bar is for what SOME PEOPLE (not you or I) would constitute a threat.
You can disagree all you want but you're missing the bloody point.
Ok, this is important: Not everyone would consider that a joke and not a threat.
Reddit mods UNDOUBTEDLY get way more flak than this. But any time someone talks about receiving "death threats over the internet" remember that "go DIAF" technically counts. In this age of trigger-happy victim-card-play snowflakes, getting some details about just what exactly they mean by "death threat" is important. AND, remember that you can't control how other people feel. If they feel threatened, that's that. Before the divorce, the wife pulled a knife on me and had some playful little threat but I didn't feel threatened. I walked into it and she pulled away. We laughed about it afterwards. And a few months later shit hits the fan and she's pushing to collect on that half mil of life insurance money. The bitch. I guess that's a long round about way of saying that even if people don't feel threatened, they maybe idiots.
Well ok, time to pop that cherry. You can go DIAF. Boom. Done. I told you to go die. In a fire. Horrific, I know. But I trust that, as an adult of "a long time", you'll learn to move on. To carry forth. To look past this dark time of villainy and cruelty. To be a better person from what we can all hope is a character building exercise.
Have you? If so, over what?
Yeah. Last time that I remember? I think I said that NAZIs had the right to free speech just as much as they did. Then they called me a NAZI and said they'd kill me. It was cute.
You and everyone else need to read up on The White House Plumbers.
Nixon was BUSTED as all bloody get-out. They had him dead to rights and were about to nail him as the blatent crook that he most certainly was. But he stepped down before it happened because he knew he was busted. If you ever even remotely THINK that "he wasn't technically busted" then you have absolutely ZERO sense for politics.
So arguing over what he was "busted for" would seem to be moot.
No, the details are actually quite pertinent as it comes to precedence for current affairs.
Those "bunch of actual criminals" were actual CIA operatives. I thought all of them had moved on from the CIA at the time of the burglary, but Eugenio Martinez was still getting paid.
James W. McCord Jr., GS-15 (top pay) in the CIA. Served 2 months in prison.[97]
Virgilio Gonzalez, the locksmith that got them busted. Cuban-born activist. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 13 months in prison.[97]
Bernard Barker, undercover agent of the FBI and CIA. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 18 months in prison.[99]
Eugenio Martínez, a "paid asset" of the CIA at the time of the break in. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 15 months in prison.[100]
Frank Sturgis, A spy for the marines, Navy, and Army. Original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.[92][96] Served 10 months in prison.[100]
Their boss, E. Howard Hunt, was an officer in the CIA. Original sentence of up to 35 years in prison.[92][96] Served 33 months in prison.[98]
He and G. Gordon Liddy, FBI agent, ran nixon's "plumbers" who fixed leaks in the party. Original sentence of up to 20 years in prison.[92][96] Served 4.5 years in federal prison.[97] I consider him the only one to have served any real time behind bars. He's still alive btw. Retired from the talk-show circuit in 2012.
There were also 42 other government officials found guilty. Mostly for the coverup and lying to the investigation. Get your ass ready for another such draining of the swamp.
That's actually a well reasoned stance. Up to the 2nd to last paragraph. Then it veers off into pointless philosophy. Rebelling city-states? Really? Get off it dude. Anyway, yes, our society is fragile and the ease of wounding it is WAY easier than protecting it. Stick to that part and you're golden.
But yes, I want the FBI to do their job. I really DO want them to catch the bad guys. All my bitching and moaning about warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance, parallel construction, bullshit about "metadata", kangaroo FISA courts, and practically anything the CIA does is rooted in preserving the system of checks and balances that give us rights as citizens. If the cops go get a real warrant, I'm perfectly fine with them pulling out the stops and violating the fuck out of Capone's and Osama's privacy. The CIA shouldn't be operating within US borders and I'm not so sure anything they do within other nation's legal systems are all that "legal" and they've got a bad track-record of doing "good". So I'm up in the air on whether I want the CIA doing their job. It's fundamentally hard to know. And that all by itself is grounds to be skeptic.
This story, if anything, is a sign that the system works. They had a gag on Google. Then it was removed. Then Google informed people. Because while the cops enjoy operating in secret while investigating people, there's a perfectly legit use-case for purchasing this stuff. Least we want any network engineering to be thought-crime. And so off came the gag. That probably cost Google some coin just getting the lawyers to walk through all that paperwork. Good on them. And good on the courts for actually letting the gag come off. And good on the FBI for (presumably) getting an warrant and gag in the first place as they ought to do. So while it might all sound scary... the system works. And we should celebrate that.
Soooo, your "guarantee" and all those capital letters was more along the lines of "bullshit".
Well in that case, I TOO guarantee that the first death-threat I receive from someone on Mars, I will be DEMANDING to speak to an owner of Mars IN PERSON and will NOT do any more space advocacy until it is Resolved to my satisfaction. PERIOD.
Whelp, this'll get to +5 insightful for sure now that I know the formula.
I too, have read Hitchhiker's Guide.
For example? Can in imagine if you're an *honest* politician? And one that just wants to solve a few problems, wants to generally 'fix' something they see broken? Not in it for the power, or money, but honestly just want to make things better.
Yes. I can imagine. I think most politicians are trying to do good. Most even, are trying to do good for people other than themselves. Even those nutjobs that want women to be second class citizens, to ban contraceptives, to ban alchohol, to ban rock'n'roll, and to put scripture into the lawbooks. They just want to do good because they see a bunch of stuff that's broken, and they want to fix it. Unfortunetely, their definition of "broken" doesn't quite line up with mine, and their ideas about how to fix it is absolute nightmare fuel and I disagree with them on the best way forward. Hardly any of them are actually EVIL.
GRANDMOTHER would be happy being a politician.
That's a weird bit of ageism. But anyway, we tried that. Hilary is a grandmother. So was Margaret Thatcher.
You overall argument is that we should be kind to politicians. While I agree that the personal attacks are pointless (distracting even), we should MOST ASSUREDLY give politicians a hard time and be skeptical as hell of anything they're pushing. Even if society at large kept all commentary to the issues (pft, good luck with that), then it would still be a stressful job and rightly so. Because we should definitely NOT trust these people.
But go on, give me a couple of names of "open, honest, caring" politicians. I imagine they exist, but I doubt they're in any place of power.
There's actually a sort of "dualism" between /r/futurology and /r/collapse. The bookends of the future. Super-great or the end of society. The nutters over on collapse are typical doomsayers. Society has always has a percentage of people who think the world is ending soon. All in all I think it's harmless when they're "preppers" as long as they don't take it too far. When they're more like "why go to work, the world is ending?" or "to be prepared for the end of soceity, I'm taking my kid out of school to learn how to dress a rabbit", then that's a problem. The nutters on /r/futurology on the other hand are much much less likely to go off the deep-end and be a sociological problem. They're still crazy, but it's more like a delusion of optimism. The UBI crowd is big over there. But recently there's been a stronger trend of "hey what if AI takes all our jobs?" which is bucking the narrative of futurology. Those posts should really stay in /r/cyberpunk so we can all live our happy little lives inside the comfortable bubbles we know and love.
Obligatory go DIAF comment that's needed in these kinds of threads so we can all pad our victim card.
you need to go through a Cryptographically Signed process that PROVES your identity.
Hahaha! oh wait, you're serious. Ok, walk me through that. "It's encrypted" isn't good enough. Prove... WHAT identity? Prove that it's tied to an email? pft. Tied to a credit card? Also not so good. Do you really want a background check just to question authority?
No one ever even needs to SEE a death threat.
Correct, it's not needed. But if they're an adult in society I can guarantee you it's going to happen. The same way that they're going to meet people who disagree with them, don't think they're good people, insult them, question their motives, cast unsubstantiated aspirations upon their mother, and call them gay. If you are in a position of authority where your job is to censor people, I can guarantee you that you will receive abuse. And I can also guarantee you that the position will be abused. Human nature is a bitch, isn't it?
Obligatory "go DIAF" statement that's needed in these threads so everyone can pad their victim card. There you go. If this is your first time... I guess you have to call someone at... it's not DICE anymore... it's BizX. Good luck with that. If you're not full of shit and you actually meant it when you said you wouldn't be "doing work" until it's "Resolved" then... well... sorry for kicking you off of slashdot.
it's easy to type out a death threat
Exactly, and anyone saying otherwise can go DIAF.
OH SHIT! That's another death threat. So sorry to anyone that "takes a toll" on. But the mods at Reddit likely get way WAY worse. On the other hand, mods on Reddit are typically little tin-pot tyrants. They LIKE having power. Why else would they do it? They're not getting paid. If they didn't like it they can just... stop.
If they continue to work for free, that really puts a kink in that whole "We should get paid for this" argument.
Evelyn Hall never tried to pass it off as a quote of Voltaire, merely a description of his beliefs. Which I believe she hit right on the head. And it's good enough line I'm cool with quoting Hall's words of wisdom as they are pertinent and powerful.
The best way to fix this is probably to prevent ISPs from being media companies
You're only looking at the current industry fight with ISPs and netflix. You want something like film studios not owning theaters (or car manufacturing owning car dealerships). But what industry doesn't make use of the Internet? They'd have to be restricted to ONLY being an ISP.
And even if they themselves don't own the competition, they can simply sell priority. ESPN3 made deals with ISPs to blatantly violate NN. Rather than selling to individuals, they sold to the ISP. That service is now not neutral with respect to what content you're requesting. Their incentive is simply CASH rather than promoting their own business.
The market was much freer when corporations were only allowed to exist as entities limited to operating in specific businesses.
Was this ever a blanket rule? I think it might have just been a trend to bust up companies and make those sort of restrictions on a few industries after we got through the period with Robber Barons and Trusts. Uncle Sherman's Trust-busting hammer.
Whatever you say anonymous Russian instigator.
I'm going to bet that we literally accomplish voting Trump out of office here in a couple years. If Mueller doesn't get him first. Good luck with Putin though.
Citation provided
downstream platform monopoly
You can choose to get your ill-thought short diatribes and banal status updates from somewhere other than Twitter.
Unless you're an ideologue like many of the 'pro netneutrality' crowd who are completely fine with other voices being censored so they can monologue unopposed.
Just who the fuck are you? Show me one god-damned instance of someone arguing in favor of network neutrality that somehow veered into advocating for censorship. Go on. Pour some sauce over here. Throw me a link. Because you can't just spew that sort of garbage around without at least SOME sort of backup.
I'm pro-NN as fuck and I believe Hall said it best: I might disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Yeah, there is a HUGE difference between the two. I only had one real choice in ISP before I moved to a real city. Service sucked. (Now it's just expensive).
Buuuuuuuuuuut, they're similar in certain ways. ISPs should be dumb carriers not liable for the packets they transport and they shouldn't fuck with them. And since that whole "internet 2.0" craze, any website you can publish your own reviews, comments, posts, blogs, and diatribes. I would also like these websites to be dumb carriers not liable for the packets they host and they should really keep their fucking around with them to a minimum.
I'm perfectly ok with ISPs and sysadmins stopping spam. It gets into some scary territory if they decided certain political advertisement was spam. That's a potential abuse of power. But really, I'm ok with them just dropping all that worthless email spam that continues to exist for some bloody reason. And if Fedex has good reason to suspect your package is a bomb, they can call a bombsquad. And if another widespread worm hits the world, sysadmins can do what they can, NN be damned in times of emergency. LIKEWISE, for websites I'm perfectly ok with them simply blocking forum spambots, death-threats, shills, and providing the masses some way to moderate the quality of the commentary. In short, I'm not advocating absolutes.
I'd like to see more freedom in online discussions. This IS the modern-day public square. The fact that the servers are owned by someone raises some issues.
A competitive ISP market doesn't guarantee that at least one provider will offer reasonably priced, net-neutral service. We need net neutrality mandated by law even if there are multiple high-speed, low-latency ISPs serving every area.
True, a competative market doesn't guarantee someone will step up and provide what really ought to be a cornerstone of civilization, akin to clean water and greasy gyros. It practically guarentees it in any major city. SOMEONE would start up a business and launch it and even in some crazy brainwashed dystopia there'd still be enough TrueGeeks(tm) that would want the real Internet. But in rural America the odds of that happening shrink. We might see what the effects of a non-neutral net would have on small communities. In the dial-up era in the 90's, NN violations weren't a big thing, and that was just the free market keeping services in line with what was in demand. But Internet companies are more sophisticated now and there's potential for abuse. Liiiiiiike, Disney getting into a deal with all the surrounding ISPs that scan for IP violations so people don't upload videos or pictures of "incidents" at their park. Or the local church banning certain online purchases on Sunday. Or the local backwater bumpkin blockbuster making a deal to block the bittorrent protocol. But all that's only a worry for rural america. The portions that don't have geeks who get pissed off. Hell, if it became a problem, they'd sell turn-key solutions so anyone that got pissed off could start up their own ISP.
A free-market solution, while not perfect, would be good enough. Unfortunately the market is NOWHERE near the realm of free. It has been conquered and dominated and parceled out by a handful of tyrants.
We need net neutrality mandated by law
That would also work. I'm not totally sure I trust the current sitting congress critters to craft laws that could effectively do that. They'd probably just get their telcom lobbyist buddies to write it for them. And I CERTAINLY don't trust those asshats. Case in point, read the article again. I really liked the title ii classification, although that IS at the whim of every FCC head.
Really?
And when they begin the process of establishing best practices for privacy, they will need to look no further than broadband providers.
You want congress to go ask the top 5 major ISP companies for how to make rules for privacy? The people who have been caught violating your privacy for profit. You really think that's a good idea?
For years, our members have embraced strong consumer privacy policies, because they understand the success of any digital business depends on earning their customers’ trust.
The telcoms have success at business because they're monopolies. Most people believe them to be untrustworthy.
People have spent years clamoring for ISP net neutrality. We need same rules of the road for edge.
Most network neutrality issues pertain to those controlling the pipes. But hey, sure, I too have to admit that sounds like a good idea. So it shouldn't matter where you're requesting a video from Youtube and there should be no "restricted due to your countries IP laws". Buuuuuuut that's an issue ABOVE congress. You know, since it's international. ISPs on the other hand, are pretty constrained on the rules of the nation their pipes currently reside in.
Federal investment must be used to fill the gaps in truly unserved areas, not create false market competition by allowing electric utilities with established monopolies to extend their market power over this already fragile market. Together, we should be laser-focused on serving the unserved and maximizing the federal support to do it, while avoiding duplication and overbuilding, and ensuring efficiencies wherever possible.
If you believe at all in capitalism, you HAVE to realize that the ISP industry doesn't have competition and the major telcoms are engaging in anti-competitive practices:
1) They collude not to compete in each other's territory
2) They subsidize service in any area where new competition comes to town, like Google Fiber.
3) They've sued against anyone touching the poles which have their cables. If they're arguing a power company having a monopoly on their own poles, they're hypocrites to the extreme.