There are actually some pretty profound psychological principles involved there.
Indeed! That sort of thing fascinates me, but I think for at least the present and upcoming generation, that's a lost battle. There's no faith in the law for its own sake because it's demonstrated repeatedly that it doesn't reflect the views of a reasonable middle-ground majority (speed laws when done for revenue sake being one such contributing evil).
This itself is dangerous, as I think you correctly note, because it can affect laws that don't APPEAR to be reasonable but are necessary. It's a question of trust and unfortunately it's just not present. Interestingly I think, it shows that the will of the majority is more innately powerful than any technical written organizational principles. Enlightenment-era philosophers would be fascinated by our self-government even in the face of on-paper democratic rule.
"Speeding cameras are against the constitution" - so? Speeding is against the law and kills hundreds of people. Is your constitutional right more important than a hundred lives you endanger?
You lost me here. If it is indeed unconstitutional (I'm not convinced it is, but I could see a conflict with the right to face your accuser), then why wouldn't that right be more important? Not the right to speed in particular, but the right to be found guilty for your speeding fairly.
Let's rephrase the proposition: Is the city's desire for a lazy way to catch speeders more important than your constitutional rights?
Being a [NOUN MEANING THE MEMBER OF SOME GROUP] is to support [NAME OF A GROUP], therefore the individual character _does not matter_ because that individual still supports [ATROCITY SOMEONE HAS COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF THAT GROUP].
If you replace "ATROCITY SOMEONE HAS COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF THAT GROUP" with "ATROCITY THAT THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE PURPORTING TO BELONG TO THAT GROUP SUPPORT" then I would actually agree that's a fair statement to make, and applies both to Islam and Christianity.
A venture capitalist said that patents are not needed to secure investment. That pretty damn well refutes the idea that venture capitalists won't invest without patents.
You're missing the point. It's not the quality of the argument; it's that the subject of the sentence is wrong: VCs by and large aren't engaged in patent reform advocacy. The VCs dispute that patents are needed to secure investment. That contradiction is used by advocates to refute the argument that said patents are needed. One exception is this VC, Brad Feld, who is both disputing the premise and attempting to refute it.
Are you sure a gun is the best weapon on an aircraft? Set aside the pressurization issue, just consider the crowding. How likely do you think it is for an air marshal to fire a pistol with that many civilians nearby? How much hesitation would he use and time would he take for positioning?
A melee weapon allows you a more aggressive posture. Alternately a taser might be good to have on hand.
SPOT has been proven ineffective. Searches are partially effective. How can you say that only SPOT has any chance of success?
What was proved was that attempts to judge human behavior in manners similar to SPOT are not significantly more effective than random selection. What do you think we have now? Random selection. SPOT can only perform worse if it actively biases AGAINST selecting terrorists (which isn't out of the question: some studies show that suicide bombers in particular can be unexpectedly calm). It's possible that with more research and practice, programs like SPOT can do a better job in the future.
Furthermore, you assert that having innocent passengers subject to extra search. How far are you willing to take this? Anyone that looks suspicious should be turned away from the airport? You've arbitrary drawn the line at "it's acceptable to subject innocent people to extra searches", there's no reasoning not to draw the line at any other place.
That's absolutely absurd, it's textbook Slippery Slope fallacy. Nobody said anything about denying travel because people look suspicious. All that's being attempted is finding a better-than-random algorithm for selecting passengers for additional screening. How many innocent people do you think are selected for random searches right now? There's potential to do better than that.
Now I'm not sure what a philosophical debate on what a successful program is would turn up, but surely we can agree that 1% success rate is a failure?
No. That's abusing statistics. For the sake of argument, say 0.001% of all passengers are conducting offenses worthy of arrest. Then this program would be 1000x more effective than simple random screenings.
This program is probably bogus, the story implies a more accurate analysis was done, but your picture is WAY too simplistic.
That's the advice economists have been giving us! But the Fed in the 90s thought home ownership was more important, and kept rates low. Now that there was a recession, they didn't have much to manipulate without hitting zero (which they did).
We also thought we'd have jetpacks and flying cars. All that shows is how unrealistic we were (in some cases for reasons that should have been perfectly obvious at the time).
Credit cards in particular, are handled by the card companies (and by the law) in a way very different from the way consumers look at them. From the credit card company's point of view, they are establishing a loan to you FOR THE BILLING PERIOD, at that month's apr. If you choose to "revolve" the loan into the next billing period, that's a whole new agreement, which you're free to take or leave, understanding that "leaving" requires paying off your loan in full.
Timeshare where you can pick whichever times you like, and as many or as few as you like. Not a bad deal, if you can live with the property manager popping by now and then to see how people are using the place.
Those are personal accessories, and while they do say a lot about the attractiveness of Apple in the consumer sector, I believe GP was posting a slightly parallel question: i.e. can Microsoft employees even do their JOB nowadays without Google?
While I have no doubt it's accomplish-able, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some pains in a department or another.
Life expectancy is the average death age of all people born. What you need are some good actuarial tables that tell you the average death age of a person who's managed to reach 71. It'll be higher.
Perhaps I'm being naive, but money is fungible, and the wireless carriers aren't a cartel (yet), so ostensibly this is money that could be used by the carriers to compete on price, or at the very least forestall a round of rate increases, right? To use it as raw profit wouldn't be very competitive.
So when someone rips the flash chips off the board, they can't read them, but when they just, you know, ASK the iPhone for the data, it gives it to them?
So what you're saying is I should vote for my father, because I consider him the most qualified man to run the country? *Regardless* of the voting system, at some point you have to make a decision to vote for people that other people will vote for too.
I would actually find that more consistent than the alternative approach. I disagree with these groups completely, but I can understand the idea that there's no particular magic in the words themselves, but the sentiment they're trying to convey. So if you're against someone saying "shit", I would *rather* see you also against someone who's trying to sneak around it but really mean the same thing.
Not that I'm in favor of anyone saying I can't say "shit", even on TV.
Re:Was Not Impressed at All
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
The final twist was that the show wasn't about the island at all, it was about a bunch of annoying characters. I passed on the first season because I had no interest in a "bunch of people stuck on an island" show
Character stories can be very powerful, witness BSG. I actually loved Lost for the first 3 seasons, because it was very artfully a story about PEOPLE, and the mysterious island was really just a setting to let them bounce off each other. I started to lose interest in the show when they stopped doing flash-backs and started concentrating on actually trying to make the island logically explainable. And then they invoked time travel. I just skimmed through the rest so I could watch the finale (beautiful, btw), but it appears the show you wanted and the show I wanted were completely different things, and Lost delivered only half of each.
Re:Babylon 5 / Firefly / Star Blazers
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It seems to me that a series is *so* much better when the writers KNOW what the ending will be BEFORE the series airs.
Absolutely, but you can't do that on television. You have no idea how many seasons you'll get to run for, so the best thing to do is create some short term arcs, some longer ones, and weave what you can. If you get popular, make up more stuff to tie in with the longer-term arcs.
What we really need is a return to the miniseries. Even a 1-season television show, that knew in advance it was only 20 eps (or however many) long, would be able to plan out a complete and interesting story.
The problem is two-fold. Under traditional Unix access systems, a process has the same privileges as the user who runs them. Otherwise every binary (or be more general, call it an application context) would need to have its own privileges, its own list of resources it can or can't access. Which is what SELinux does, which is why your policy files are so large.
But even then, even if you do THAT, you need a way to elevate. Occasionally you'll want your browser to have read access to your files, say you're uploading photos to a website. So you need an API for that app context to request more permissions, and for something with those permissions (the user, if necessary) to grant them temporarily.
The last bit exists in traditional Linux, it's called PolicyKit. But you still need the application-specific capability-based-restrictions a la SELinux. And you need support from every app you want to be able to run. There hasn't been a whole lot of forward progress here.
The Court does not reach or decide any claim that the statute or its application denies equal protection, procedural or substantive due process, or any other constitutional rights. Respondents are free to pursue those claims on remand, and any others they have preserved.
the underlying point is that people much more knowledgeable and skillful at legal argument than anyone here decided that it was a losing argument not even worth making
I don't know, I think my original quote could be read as an invitation. Of the 4 dissenters in Kansas v. Hendricks, which decided a similar case on individual Constitutional rights grounds, the 3 that are on the court today were on the majority opinion on Comstock. As a law-student friend of mine says, a majority opinion is the smallest amount you can get 5 justices to agree on... which means if you can give them a reasonable legal basis to get the result they want... you might get it.
I don't think that's what should bother you. There's already a Federal justice system, Federal crimes, Federal incarceration. If you accept that civil commitment is an acceptable response to crimes by the States (remembering that the 14th amendment holds them to the same Constitutional responsibilities as the Federal government regarding individual rights), then it's a barely a leap at all to allow that action to the Federal government, provided it doesn't usurp State powers (and as this particular statute is written, it doesn't).
Civil commitment in general is a little scary though, having your freedoms taken away because some arbitrary group unconnected with the judicial process finds you mentally unfit is not something people like to think about. But nobody wants to think about the alternative either, of genuinely mentally unwell (and potentially dangerous) people out in general society. Mental wards are one of those niches of human society that we'd prefer not to look at too closely, because it's just plain nauseating one way or another.
The Court does not reach or decide any claim that the statute or its
application denies equal protection, procedural or substantive due
process, or any other constitutional rights. Respondents are free to
pursue those claims on remand, and any others they have preserved.
SCOTUS let this one go because the defendant didn't make your arguments! I can tell nobody on Slashdot read the decision because nobody is arguing any of the questions that the case was actually decided on.
Slashdot Mirror
There are actually some pretty profound psychological principles involved there.
Indeed! That sort of thing fascinates me, but I think for at least the present and upcoming generation, that's a lost battle. There's no faith in the law for its own sake because it's demonstrated repeatedly that it doesn't reflect the views of a reasonable middle-ground majority (speed laws when done for revenue sake being one such contributing evil).
This itself is dangerous, as I think you correctly note, because it can affect laws that don't APPEAR to be reasonable but are necessary. It's a question of trust and unfortunately it's just not present. Interestingly I think, it shows that the will of the majority is more innately powerful than any technical written organizational principles. Enlightenment-era philosophers would be fascinated by our self-government even in the face of on-paper democratic rule.
"Speeding cameras are against the constitution" - so? Speeding is against the law and kills hundreds of people. Is your constitutional right more important than a hundred lives you endanger?
You lost me here. If it is indeed unconstitutional (I'm not convinced it is, but I could see a conflict with the right to face your accuser), then why wouldn't that right be more important? Not the right to speed in particular, but the right to be found guilty for your speeding fairly.
Let's rephrase the proposition: Is the city's desire for a lazy way to catch speeders more important than your constitutional rights?
Being a [NOUN MEANING THE MEMBER OF SOME GROUP] is to support [NAME OF A GROUP], therefore the individual character _does not matter_ because that individual still supports [ATROCITY SOMEONE HAS COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF THAT GROUP].
If you replace "ATROCITY SOMEONE HAS COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF THAT GROUP" with "ATROCITY THAT THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE PURPORTING TO BELONG TO THAT GROUP SUPPORT" then I would actually agree that's a fair statement to make, and applies both to Islam and Christianity.
A venture capitalist said that patents are not needed to secure investment. That pretty damn well refutes the idea that venture capitalists won't invest without patents.
You're missing the point. It's not the quality of the argument; it's that the subject of the sentence is wrong: VCs by and large aren't engaged in patent reform advocacy. The VCs dispute that patents are needed to secure investment. That contradiction is used by advocates to refute the argument that said patents are needed. One exception is this VC, Brad Feld, who is both disputing the premise and attempting to refute it.
Are you sure a gun is the best weapon on an aircraft? Set aside the pressurization issue, just consider the crowding. How likely do you think it is for an air marshal to fire a pistol with that many civilians nearby? How much hesitation would he use and time would he take for positioning?
A melee weapon allows you a more aggressive posture. Alternately a taser might be good to have on hand.
SPOT has been proven ineffective. Searches are partially effective. How can you say that only SPOT has any chance of success?
What was proved was that attempts to judge human behavior in manners similar to SPOT are not significantly more effective than random selection. What do you think we have now? Random selection. SPOT can only perform worse if it actively biases AGAINST selecting terrorists (which isn't out of the question: some studies show that suicide bombers in particular can be unexpectedly calm). It's possible that with more research and practice, programs like SPOT can do a better job in the future.
Furthermore, you assert that having innocent passengers subject to extra search. How far are you willing to take this? Anyone that looks suspicious should be turned away from the airport? You've arbitrary drawn the line at "it's acceptable to subject innocent people to extra searches", there's no reasoning not to draw the line at any other place.
That's absolutely absurd, it's textbook Slippery Slope fallacy. Nobody said anything about denying travel because people look suspicious. All that's being attempted is finding a better-than-random algorithm for selecting passengers for additional screening. How many innocent people do you think are selected for random searches right now? There's potential to do better than that.
Now I'm not sure what a philosophical debate on what a successful program is would turn up, but surely we can agree that 1% success rate is a failure?
No. That's abusing statistics. For the sake of argument, say 0.001% of all passengers are conducting offenses worthy of arrest. Then this program would be 1000x more effective than simple random screenings.
This program is probably bogus, the story implies a more accurate analysis was done, but your picture is WAY too simplistic.
That's the advice economists have been giving us! But the Fed in the 90s thought home ownership was more important, and kept rates low. Now that there was a recession, they didn't have much to manipulate without hitting zero (which they did).
We also thought we'd have jetpacks and flying cars. All that shows is how unrealistic we were (in some cases for reasons that should have been perfectly obvious at the time).
Credit cards in particular, are handled by the card companies (and by the law) in a way very different from the way consumers look at them. From the credit card company's point of view, they are establishing a loan to you FOR THE BILLING PERIOD, at that month's apr. If you choose to "revolve" the loan into the next billing period, that's a whole new agreement, which you're free to take or leave, understanding that "leaving" requires paying off your loan in full.
Timeshare where you can pick whichever times you like, and as many or as few as you like. Not a bad deal, if you can live with the property manager popping by now and then to see how people are using the place.
Those are personal accessories, and while they do say a lot about the attractiveness of Apple in the consumer sector, I believe GP was posting a slightly parallel question: i.e. can Microsoft employees even do their JOB nowadays without Google?
While I have no doubt it's accomplish-able, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some pains in a department or another.
Life expectancy is the average death age of all people born. What you need are some good actuarial tables that tell you the average death age of a person who's managed to reach 71. It'll be higher.
Perhaps I'm being naive, but money is fungible, and the wireless carriers aren't a cartel (yet), so ostensibly this is money that could be used by the carriers to compete on price, or at the very least forestall a round of rate increases, right? To use it as raw profit wouldn't be very competitive.
So when someone rips the flash chips off the board, they can't read them, but when they just, you know, ASK the iPhone for the data, it gives it to them?
Security by friendliness?
Gibson's setting isn't plausible given recent history, but it still has a unique flavor that makes for a good book, and possibly a good movie.
So what you're saying is I should vote for my father, because I consider him the most qualified man to run the country? *Regardless* of the voting system, at some point you have to make a decision to vote for people that other people will vote for too.
If you have the Google deb repository installed you can get 6.0.408.1 by installing "google-chrome-unstable".
I would actually find that more consistent than the alternative approach. I disagree with these groups completely, but I can understand the idea that there's no particular magic in the words themselves, but the sentiment they're trying to convey. So if you're against someone saying "shit", I would *rather* see you also against someone who's trying to sneak around it but really mean the same thing.
Not that I'm in favor of anyone saying I can't say "shit", even on TV.
The final twist was that the show wasn't about the island at all, it was about a bunch of annoying characters. I passed on the first season because I had no interest in a "bunch of people stuck on an island" show
Character stories can be very powerful, witness BSG. I actually loved Lost for the first 3 seasons, because it was very artfully a story about PEOPLE, and the mysterious island was really just a setting to let them bounce off each other. I started to lose interest in the show when they stopped doing flash-backs and started concentrating on actually trying to make the island logically explainable. And then they invoked time travel. I just skimmed through the rest so I could watch the finale (beautiful, btw), but it appears the show you wanted and the show I wanted were completely different things, and Lost delivered only half of each.
It seems to me that a series is *so* much better when the writers KNOW what the ending will be BEFORE the series airs.
Absolutely, but you can't do that on television. You have no idea how many seasons you'll get to run for, so the best thing to do is create some short term arcs, some longer ones, and weave what you can. If you get popular, make up more stuff to tie in with the longer-term arcs.
What we really need is a return to the miniseries. Even a 1-season television show, that knew in advance it was only 20 eps (or however many) long, would be able to plan out a complete and interesting story.
The problem is two-fold. Under traditional Unix access systems, a process has the same privileges as the user who runs them. Otherwise every binary (or be more general, call it an application context) would need to have its own privileges, its own list of resources it can or can't access. Which is what SELinux does, which is why your policy files are so large.
But even then, even if you do THAT, you need a way to elevate. Occasionally you'll want your browser to have read access to your files, say you're uploading photos to a website. So you need an API for that app context to request more permissions, and for something with those permissions (the user, if necessary) to grant them temporarily.
The last bit exists in traditional Linux, it's called PolicyKit. But you still need the application-specific capability-based-restrictions a la SELinux. And you need support from every app you want to be able to run. There hasn't been a whole lot of forward progress here.
The Court does not reach or decide any claim that the statute or its application denies equal protection, procedural or substantive due process, or any other constitutional rights. Respondents are free to pursue those claims on remand, and any others they have preserved.
the underlying point is that people much more knowledgeable and skillful at legal argument than anyone here decided that it was a losing argument not even worth making
I don't know, I think my original quote could be read as an invitation. Of the 4 dissenters in Kansas v. Hendricks, which decided a similar case on individual Constitutional rights grounds, the 3 that are on the court today were on the majority opinion on Comstock. As a law-student friend of mine says, a majority opinion is the smallest amount you can get 5 justices to agree on... which means if you can give them a reasonable legal basis to get the result they want... you might get it.
I don't think that's what should bother you. There's already a Federal justice system, Federal crimes, Federal incarceration. If you accept that civil commitment is an acceptable response to crimes by the States (remembering that the 14th amendment holds them to the same Constitutional responsibilities as the Federal government regarding individual rights), then it's a barely a leap at all to allow that action to the Federal government, provided it doesn't usurp State powers (and as this particular statute is written, it doesn't).
Civil commitment in general is a little scary though, having your freedoms taken away because some arbitrary group unconnected with the judicial process finds you mentally unfit is not something people like to think about. But nobody wants to think about the alternative either, of genuinely mentally unwell (and potentially dangerous) people out in general society. Mental wards are one of those niches of human society that we'd prefer not to look at too closely, because it's just plain nauseating one way or another.
The Court does not reach or decide any claim that the statute or its application denies equal protection, procedural or substantive due process, or any other constitutional rights. Respondents are free to pursue those claims on remand, and any others they have preserved.
SCOTUS let this one go because the defendant didn't make your arguments! I can tell nobody on Slashdot read the decision because nobody is arguing any of the questions that the case was actually decided on.