I don't think we disagree so much on the facts, more on the future. Your mentioning the DMCA, "there are major changes and growth that have been going on for the past 5 yrs and no one is paying any attention" and such are all points I agree with completely -- I just believe that in the long run those will prove to be temporary eccentricities in the system. At any given point in time, you can find some parts that are out of whack, but as a whole, and over time, I think history shows the system gets more equitable.
I'm not talking about 5 or 10 or 20 years, but over 50-100 or 200 years, we have more individual freedom today, and take them legally for granted, than any humans in any society before. The same was true of those 500 years ago compared to the ones 1000 years ago -- less likley to be called up by the king, less likely to have their property overrun, more likely to be defended from disaster, etc. It's pretty tough to die of starvation or exposure today in the US (and most other 1st world countries), something that wasn't true even 100 years ago. It would be shocking for someone to lose their home because someone stronger felt like moving in. It bothers us to hear about cases such as Diallo in NYC, when even 50 years ago that sort of thing was just considered "good fun" by a large part of the country.
This is true at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) as well -- basically a site license that can be used on any system, be it university or personal student/employee.
Unfortunately, you have to know its there, which many people don't. And it has to be setup properly to auto-scan, and of course with IMAP the email scanning doesn't work...
Are you serious?! Or just joking? And who is US? Are you aware of the current state of America?
Yes, i am serious, no I'm not joking, and yes I've lived in the US for some time now and am well aware of the current state of the union. "Us" is the population of the US, collectively.
The current state of America is that it is the most prosperous, diverse, respected nation on earth, with the fairest judicial system (note that it is a relative term) in the world. Guilty people go free far more often than innocent ones are convicted, an unacceptable idea to most other governments.
Where every group want's to have their voices heard instead of us speaking as a nation.
And this is different than the past? This is more true now than in the past? I think not -- we were a far more fragmented society at our founding than we are today, by any measure. Even the notion of "speaking as a nation" was considered a BAD THING except in the most official sense until the later 2/3rds of the 20th century. We had no desire to speak as a nation, we wanted to be states and cities and ignore everyone else around us, especially those people "over there" with different skin or language or customs.
We are far less fragmented today than ever before -- we focus on differences more (and more vocally), but thats in part because we quite frankly have so few differences left between us that many think they are losing "identity".
I attribute this to the fact that you are a white anglo saxon protestant male who has seen the legal system only work and not fail. Why don't you go down to the Brooklyn DA's office and ask about murders, burgularly and theft, missing persons who they know the culprits for but they aren't jailed. They walk the street.
While you are a bit presumptious on some statements, I couldn't agree with you more -- many times, guilty people go free! Frequently, and that is a great thing! Because it means that we have gotten to the point where protecting the innocent is more important than punishing the guilty. What is the alternative? Throw people in jail because "the DA is REALLY sure he's guilty, there's just no proof"? Lynch mobs? Posses?
Unfortunately, every rule about procedures and evidence is there because at some point, an overzealous DA or cop threw an innocent person in jail abusing that procedure. Which is why we changed the law to say you couldn't that. As I said, in the long run we adjust.
We are the single most privileged? Depends on what you mean my privleged. I'd rather be free.
What do i mean? I mean you can work anywhere, do anything, travel freely, speak your mind, associate with who you like, and love as you see fit. Those go in pretty well with "free", too. You may have in your mind some utopian ideal of what a free society is like, but compared to actual, functioning governments right here on Earth, the US is the most "free" by pretty much any measure. Canada and many European nations are on a par in many ways, better in some, worse in others. It may be a wash depending on your priorities, but when it comes especially to free speech, we continue to baffle even other first-world nations with our strange concept of being able to say and write whatever you like.
Protected? That's not it; it's just that any other country hasn't become extremely pissed off yet. The 310th MP battalion can tell you alot about that. Secure?! You obviously don't know what you're talking about, seriously you just don't know what you're talking about
You seem to equate security/protection with military (even though I didn't mean it that way) but it is still true. We, as a nation, are eminently capable of defending ourselves. More importantly, as Sun Tzu advised some time ago, we are pretty good at avoiding military conflict with most anyone who could actually give us a fight. I can't tell what your actual disagreement is, as it seems to boil down to "you just don't know what you're talking about", and I confess that I don't have a clue why the 310th seems to think that the only reason we haven't been defeated is because we haven't pissed off enough countries yet. I suspect being surrounded by huge bodies of water has something to do with it, but I'm not a military strategist by any means.
Regardless, what I meant by security and protection was on a persoanl level -- if you walk into a hospital,, you'll be treated. If you are short of food, you can get some. If you have nowhere to live, you can get help. If you call the police or an ambulance, you've got a pretty good chance of them actually showing up. Try to get permits or applications filled out -- while it will take forever, the chances of being shaken down for a bribe or extorted by the very government official whose job is to "help" you are pretty slim. This may sound like basic stuff to most americans, but try showing up in a hospital without money overseas and see how long it takes for them to kick your ass out.
If you believe that last statement about the legal future being closer to the ideal "we're" pursing you really need to take a class in law
I assume then that it would surprise you that I have long studied law, particularly the history and development of western legal systems and theories.
The legal system is nowhere near what the founding fathers called the ideal system..
I don't necessarily disagree with you, although the founding fathers were all over the map in what they believed was the ideal anything. Transported to today, they would probably marvel and the shuddering beaurocracy of the whole thing, but I doubt they would be disappointed in the legal directions we've taken (though certainly surprised at many). Their biggest disappointment would likely be the federalization of everything, but given the history I suspect they would understand its necessity -- they would be split, in all likelyhood, on whether the strong judiciary was a good or bad thing. Even they would be amazed at how far we have taken the concept of individual libety -- they talked a good game of ideals, but in reality the early US was not particularly good at concerning itself with individual liberties (they might say it was simply the weakness of the government, not of the will, that kept it from this). In any event, we are closer to the IDEALS they espoused, though they themsleves might not recognize their ideals in fruition, because their concept of contemporary practicality prevented them from even imagining some of the extents to which free speech or due process could take when given a few hundred years to continue to develop.
Not to insult you but please go read a book on the history of our law and then compare to our current state of affairs
Sure -- I would recommend "Quarrels that Have Shaped the Constitution", though I can't remember the editor. It focuses on the major supreme court cases through our history, discussing the personal and political (as well as legal) factors that led to the decisions that pushed us to where we are. Much more readable than a textbook, and most people will be astounded at the notion of how difficult it was to establish what we consider today to be fundamental liberties (speech, trade, association, etc). These liberties were nowhere near as extensive a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years ago as they are today.
That's why I say, despite rampant cynicism, that we are a nation of perfectionists who just don't recognize that we've come a long way because we're always so unforgiving of ourselves...
Yes, and you have just talked about.000001% of the court cases for the past year in NY.
Pointing to extraordinary circumstances as a "failure" of an entire system is pretty fallacious.
The legal system works, in the long run, for 99.999999% of the cases it handles. The rest, eventually, will cause changes in the law, because those extraordinary circumstances offend us.
Yes, that particular offender may never be punished, but that is an individual case, not a systematic one.
comments like that are an insult to and injured public
Your knowledge of the past is pretty weak if you can claim that modern american citizen are by any relative measure "injured". We are the single most privleged, protected, and secure society that has ever existed on planet earth, bar none.
Are we perfect? Of course not. We do get better, and looking at the legal past and the legal present provides such a contrast that it would seem foolish not to believe that the legal future will be even closer to the ideal we're pursuing...
Oh, yeah, duh -- I wasn't thinking of the fact that these are LEOs, so without a tracker they'd be pretty useless for data calls more than a minute or 3.
That said, they don't really "whiz" by, except in a relative sense. We find that the antenna has to be pointed AT a satellite to work, and it stays in relatively the same place unless you wait 20 minutes or so, when you may need to shift the phone a bit to get a good connection again.
Maybe as the constellations get more filled out the directional and hand-off issues will get more user-friendly.
Based on what I see on their web site, I think that just pointing the aerial straight up is sufficient. Perhaps this is is only true in marketing land.
Well, pointing it in the general direction of a satellite and not having anything in the line of sight, like a building or heavy cloud cover.
WE've had mixed results, but if you stand in one spot with a globalstar phone and don't move your head once connected it tends to work okay.
This is by far not the first commercial satellite data access, by any criteria.
It may wind up being less expensive (as the initial costs were all lost), but you can do 9600 on a Globalstar (they're talking about a 30k+, not sure if thats working now or later) and 64k/channel on InMarsat (has been working for years).
InMarsat can mux together multiple 64k channels to give 128k+ IP access from anywhere on earth. it's not the cheapest way to check your email (at $30+ per minute for a 128k connection) but for remote field work there's not a lot of alternatives.
We haven't used any Iridium services, but if the Globalstar phones are any indication (and they should be, as its a pretty similar system) the biggest difficulty is keeping the antenna on a satellite. You can lose a connection very easily, and with data just getting extra noise or interference is a lot more of a pain than having the audio from a call drop out for a half-second.
Once you add dishes to the equation (to get around losing calls from moving the phone) you're basically back to using a larger (but still portable) InMarSat system. If they can come up with a decent dish setup that runs off of batteries for more than 20 minutes of connect time, Iridium would have something novel to offer.
As it stands, the only thing Iridium is bringing to the table is the potential for lower costs through competition (I'm not complaining -- that's plenty for me!)
I never condoned anything, I simply stated the two jobs of the NSA.
That said, deriding someone for thinking it okay to invade privacy for their own benefit while criticising socialism is kind of ironic. In a market economy (hint: the opposite of socialism) the only reason to do ANYTHING is for your own benefit. That's the whole point -- if I can tap into a transoceanic cable and make it profitable, the free market says I should be able to.
You apparently think I should not be able to (presumably by the use of police force or such to stop me?). Communist...
Isn't it ironic that the NSA stands for the very thing thay, behind our backs and behind the scenes, they attempt, and perhaps succeed, to invade?
The NSA has two jobs -- one is to breach foreign information security, but their other is to keep US information secure. So it isn't ironic -- they just have to know security from both sides.
as Mickey Mouse would have lost its copyright in 2004
What's important to clarify here is that this is NOT at all true -- although it IS the "nightmare" scenario that Disney would like us to believe.
Copyright only covers individual creative works -- not characters. The only copyright that would be expiring would be the VERY FIRST Mickey mouse drawings and animations, NOT everey single Mickey Mouse cartoon.
"Steamboat Willie" would thus fall into the public domain, but "the Sorcerer's Apprentice" would still have decades left of Disney ownership.
And I would contend that this is exactly what was meant to happen by the expiration of copyright -- has "Steamboat Willie" not yet become a part of American history? Has it not yet become an item of cultural significance separate from the company that produced it? Has not yet enough time passed for artists to begin exploring the effect of the animation, to begin playing with it and recreating it as a statement of history and culture?
Of course it is time for the creative world to have access to these early works -- for their significance and value as cultural touchstones.
Mickey Mouse will still belong to Disney, the public will merely gain possession of our own history.
Make up your mind: are you supporting the Second Amendment or voting liberal? In this country, the two really are mutually exclusive
Unfortunately there are only two "sides" in politics that you can realistically vote for, so if you are concerned about more than one issue, your voting theory kinda falls flat.
What if I want to support gun rights, and abortion? Which side do I pick, then? Which one is mutually exclusive?
Please restrain yourself from blaming the victims whom Wall Street robbed
You misinterpreted what i said -- I wasn't blaming anyone, or even talking about any specific time or group.
I was just getting across the conundrum that the SS plan was created to solve: there are people who, for whatever reason, have no capability to pay their own medical/food expenses, and we are unwilling as a society to simply let them perish.
So we have SS, but we're possibly running the risk that we're hurting others by creating an incentive, as it were, to not be concerned about saving for those very expenses because they know they won't be allowed to simply perish. (of course, most people don't realize how little SS pays, but they're not thinking of the details, only the general concept)
I was speaking more of OUR generations, not the ones getting SS now or previously, who never "expected" it.
i think i would prefer just to invest the money myself and not have to pay the government SS.
The issue i see with this is that we're not willing to throw people on the streets to die in their old age. So we're going to get stuck with SOME bill (whether large or small) based on taking care of people who didn't plan. Initially SS was just the answer to that problem -- it has grown in scope and size (and each growth was perfectly logical) but I don't know that there is a solution to the problem of it being too big.
The money goes to pay for things, and has to come from somewhere. So either we tax people to get the money, or we tell people we can no longer pay to keep them from starving to death, we refuse medical care to the poor, etc. We're in a pickle because we aren't willing to say "no" to people as a society, but we don't like paying for it.
The flip side of that is that if we provide *too much* to "fall back" on, it will encourage people to ignore planning for retirement. Which makes it even more critical for us to either get more money (from taxes) to support those people, or start refusing services right when the largest population of people who HAVE paid into the system their whole lives comes to expect something back.
The question, I think, is what will we decide are rights that must be available to all, and thereby provided by society at large, versus what should simply be opportunities for people to have
Then we're in perfect agreement! We should stop while we're ahead. Ultimately, that was my only point -- there are some things that transcend the freedom of the marketplace (and of course those "things" are ultimately where the disagreements come into play).
I have a natural right to daily handjobs doesn't mean that the 6 billion people who don't think it's my God-given right must provide it for me
the democrat attacks frequently stink of intellectual elitism
I don't disagree with you at all -- that was definitely a lot of what people didn't like about Gore (he seems snobbish).
The government needs more power and your money, because it of course can do better with it than you can.
This must be a test of some kind, because I don't see that at all. The message isn't "we can do better with it than you can" but rather "there are some things that can only be accomplished collectively".
I mean, you're not giving your money to Bill Clinton to spend "better", you're giving it to agencies that employ hundreds of thousands of people to handle details of life that would quickly overwhelm us if we had to do them individually. Who wants to build a road by getting together with their neighbors and buying paving equipment? Why not just give all that responsibility to one group and all they do is build roads all over the [geographic region]?
I should note that conservatives/republicans don't disagree with this notion at all -- what they disagree on is WHICH things are better done collectively. We should, for example, provide funding to faith-based charities.
The difference between attacking Clinton for scandals and other political issues (yes, some of us think perjury in a high court IS a big deal!)
But that's just it -- there seemed to be very few "political" issues involved in the attacks. It was all "he murdered Vince Foster!", "He was in shady business deals" "he had sex with ______". Those aren't political issues.
Perjury most definitely is a big deal (but its not "corruption", which is all I said). And it didn't come out until AFTER a decade was spent demonizing the man. So that has always been my question -- what was it about him that made the desire so great to brand him as Evil, long before Foster died, long before he even met Lewinsky, etc. These events were not causes, they were effects.
And FWIW, i view the Republican party as being elitism of a different kind -- economic and moral elitism (and plenty of intellectual as well). I've always had the feeling that the Republican party felt Clinton didn't "deserve" to be in the White House because he wasn't of a high enough rank. He was white trash. And he certainly had the kinds of scandals unbecoming of the social elite -- they tended to be more soap opera than international arms deal. But I'm not sure why that would be WORSE.
Again, if Bush is so dumb, and you're so smart, lets see _you_ actually do something with your life that affects other people
Well, ignoring the fact that this is a complete red herring (what do the accomplishments of a critic have to do with the validity of the criticism?), what did Bush do to affect people's lives before he was "crowned" by the people who surrounded him. He had money, fame, and influence thrust upon him by virtue of being born and having a father in the White House. If he had been born a poor nobody, could he have achieved any of this? I really don't think so -- he's no Bob Dole or John McCain. He's certainly no Rockefeller or Gates.
just go back to work, sit in your cubicle, and smirk at Bush's stupidity. I hope it makes you feel better at least
Not sure if you're just using the collective "you" here, but I never claimed Bush was stupid. He's President of my country, i hope to hell he's a genius and will guide us well.
And the banks'll see that as well. ...you can simply do without insurance
Hey, minorities could just "do without" riding in the front of the bus, or vote with their dollars, but believe it or not markets aren't always as perfectly efficient as the Libertarian party would have us believe.
Sometimes people are refused seating at the lunch counter, even though "economically" it doesn't make sense, and "economically" the bank should give them a loan.
When all the star-bellied sneetches are refused medical insurance for being chipless, you can't count on economic theory to defend them, and when the hospitals refuse to admit them without insurance, you'll wind up with a lot of star-bellied corpses.
Want to see a free market in healthcare? Go to any third-world country and go to the hospital. Try to get treatment without a big wad of cash in your hand. The free market doesn't care if you live or die, but thankfully we don't have a free market in the US, and an emergency room has to treat you whether you can pay or not. Hopefully that will still be the case after the ass-chips come!
As an aside, I think I deserve some extra mod points just for multiple creative uses of the phrase "ass-chip"....
I think the best post in this whole topic was the one about ass-chips -- "damn, Doritos is going overboard with all the new flavors". Alas, it doesn't seem to have been modded up much:(
But you still have the issue of regulation, which is what this was all about. Where do you start and stop regulating? We have to use the government to defend property rights, so now we still have the same debate over whether to enact the DMCA (which is just a law to protect intellectual property) or environmental controls (which are laws that protect your property and health from being destroyed by the guy upstream).
Deciding to hold individuals or corporations responsible makes no difference to the question of what we hold them responsible for, or what government gets involved with in terms of regulation of that responsibility vs self-regulation?
...whereupon you take your business to some other insurance company who has terms more to your liking
What other insurance company? The other one who wants the chip in your baby, or the OTHER, other one who wants the chip in your baby? Oh, you mean the one out of state that wants the chip in your baby?
Oh, no, I know the answer to this one -- start your own insurance company, right? But the bank won't finance an insurance company that doesn't put chips in babies, because the financial risk is too great compared to all those other companies that have more accurate medical info (thanks to the chips).
Really? And what pray tell did he do that was corrupt? I mean, he lied about having sex (many times, with many different women, including in court testimony) but that's not corruption (it's either a virtuous lie or a damn lie with perjury, depending how you feel about him and infidelity).
As far as I know, thats the only thing that was ever really proven, despite, as I said, many, many, MANY people spending the better part of a decade examining every strand of hair he had ever come into contact with.
Sure, he killed Vincent Foster, sold nuclear weapons to China, performed pagan rites in the Lincoln bedroom and sodomized babies, but what I'm asking is why -- really, and truthfully -- do so many Republicans believe he, as you say, "really was corrupt" despite no actual evidence of corruption (or at least of corruption with any significant devation for a president).
He was involved in some sort of bizarre land deal that he lost money on, unlike Bush who was involved in some bizarre CIA/oil deals, and GW, involved in some bizarre baseball team and oil deals, and Reagan, who was actually *provably* involved in some highly illegal arms deals.
because at least Nixon had thought about the best interests of the country on occasion.
See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You've just stated that Clinton, in fact, never once considered the nation when making a decision (which I personally consider to be a charge tantamount to treason, at least philosophically). The worst that Democrats say about Bush is that he's greedy and dumb. And yet, somehow, the Democrats are the only ones being relentless and unreasonable?
I never claimed governments were harmless, either. Only that believing corporations have "no power but selling to you" flies completely in the face of the reality that this country (and most others) have lived through already. Lets make new mistakes, not repeat the ones of the past -- at least that way we can say we tried.
Good ol' American public schools saving the world for democracy, one epsilon-minus Slashdotter at a time.
Maybe if you study harder you can rise above this hindrance?
if a corporation goes out and gasses a village somewhere, then the stockholders have no personal responsibility, but the corporate employees who made the decision to perform the gassing, and the employees who carried it out will still go to jail for a long time
That's news to me. I'd love to hear of any person ever being found guilty of wrongful death for deadly decisions they made on behalf of a corporation.
Firestone may go bankrupt -- unfortunately, the dead people who rode around on their tires are still dead.
The executives who decided to go ahead with the tire designs (despite engineers telling them they were faulty) will just find new jobs paying in the six figures, and joke about it all over brunch at the restaurant on the ninth hole.
Also, the Bhopal incident was an accident that was the fault of a company already following government safety measures
Ah, so its not their fault because the government regulations should have been stricter, thanks for clearing up how that was all the government's fault.
Now, back to the discussion about how great industry self-regulation is...
Your insurance company. After all, they can't very well extend coverage to the child without being able to monitor his vital signs remotely, now, could they? Its simply economics, Ma'am, nothing personal.
None of the industry's bad decisions really start to have a severe effect until the government backs them up
Well, that's true. Without governments to uphold property rights, or imbue them to artificial persons, there wouldn't be any corporations.
So now we're back to the same place we were before -- deciding where in the vast gray area the government starts and stops regulating the actions of business. There is not a clear dividing line between industry and government, no matter how much the libertarian ideal says so.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think we disagree so much on the facts, more on the future. Your mentioning the DMCA, "there are major changes and growth that have been going on for the past 5 yrs and no one is paying any attention" and such are all points I agree with completely -- I just believe that in the long run those will prove to be temporary eccentricities in the system. At any given point in time, you can find some parts that are out of whack, but as a whole, and over time, I think history shows the system gets more equitable.
I'm not talking about 5 or 10 or 20 years, but over 50-100 or 200 years, we have more individual freedom today, and take them legally for granted, than any humans in any society before. The same was true of those 500 years ago compared to the ones 1000 years ago -- less likley to be called up by the king, less likely to have their property overrun, more likely to be defended from disaster, etc. It's pretty tough to die of starvation or exposure today in the US (and most other 1st world countries), something that wasn't true even 100 years ago. It would be shocking for someone to lose their home because someone stronger felt like moving in. It bothers us to hear about cases such as Diallo in NYC, when even 50 years ago that sort of thing was just considered "good fun" by a large part of the country.
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This is true at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) as well -- basically a site license that can be used on any system, be it university or personal student/employee.
Unfortunately, you have to know its there, which many people don't. And it has to be setup properly to auto-scan, and of course with IMAP the email scanning doesn't work...
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Or you could just wait for it to show up on Usenet warez groups (approximately 12 seconds after release)...
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Are you serious?! Or just joking? And who is US? Are you aware of the current state of America?
Yes, i am serious, no I'm not joking, and yes I've lived in the US for some time now and am well aware of the current state of the union. "Us" is the population of the US, collectively.
The current state of America is that it is the most prosperous, diverse, respected nation on earth, with the fairest judicial system (note that it is a relative term) in the world. Guilty people go free far more often than innocent ones are convicted, an unacceptable idea to most other governments.
Where every group want's to have their voices heard instead of us speaking as a nation.
And this is different than the past? This is more true now than in the past? I think not -- we were a far more fragmented society at our founding than we are today, by any measure. Even the notion of "speaking as a nation" was considered a BAD THING except in the most official sense until the later 2/3rds of the 20th century. We had no desire to speak as a nation, we wanted to be states and cities and ignore everyone else around us, especially those people "over there" with different skin or language or customs.
We are far less fragmented today than ever before -- we focus on differences more (and more vocally), but thats in part because we quite frankly have so few differences left between us that many think they are losing "identity".
I attribute this to the fact that you are a white anglo saxon protestant male who has seen the legal system only work and not fail. Why don't you go down to the Brooklyn DA's office and ask about murders, burgularly and theft, missing persons who they know the culprits for but they aren't jailed. They walk the street.
While you are a bit presumptious on some statements, I couldn't agree with you more -- many times, guilty people go free! Frequently, and that is a great thing! Because it means that we have gotten to the point where protecting the innocent is more important than punishing the guilty. What is the alternative? Throw people in jail because "the DA is REALLY sure he's guilty, there's just no proof"? Lynch mobs? Posses?
Unfortunately, every rule about procedures and evidence is there because at some point, an overzealous DA or cop threw an innocent person in jail abusing that procedure. Which is why we changed the law to say you couldn't that. As I said, in the long run we adjust.
We are the single most privileged? Depends on what you mean my privleged. I'd rather be free.
What do i mean? I mean you can work anywhere, do anything, travel freely, speak your mind, associate with who you like, and love as you see fit. Those go in pretty well with "free", too. You may have in your mind some utopian ideal of what a free society is like, but compared to actual, functioning governments right here on Earth, the US is the most "free" by pretty much any measure. Canada and many European nations are on a par in many ways, better in some, worse in others. It may be a wash depending on your priorities, but when it comes especially to free speech, we continue to baffle even other first-world nations with our strange concept of being able to say and write whatever you like.
Protected? That's not it; it's just that any other country hasn't become extremely pissed off yet. The 310th MP battalion can tell you alot about that. Secure?! You obviously don't know what you're talking about, seriously you just don't know what you're talking about
You seem to equate security/protection with military (even though I didn't mean it that way) but it is still true. We, as a nation, are eminently capable of defending ourselves. More importantly, as Sun Tzu advised some time ago, we are pretty good at avoiding military conflict with most anyone who could actually give us a fight. I can't tell what your actual disagreement is, as it seems to boil down to "you just don't know what you're talking about", and I confess that I don't have a clue why the 310th seems to think that the only reason we haven't been defeated is because we haven't pissed off enough countries yet. I suspect being surrounded by huge bodies of water has something to do with it, but I'm not a military strategist by any means.
Regardless, what I meant by security and protection was on a persoanl level -- if you walk into a hospital,, you'll be treated. If you are short of food, you can get some. If you have nowhere to live, you can get help. If you call the police or an ambulance, you've got a pretty good chance of them actually showing up. Try to get permits or applications filled out -- while it will take forever, the chances of being shaken down for a bribe or extorted by the very government official whose job is to "help" you are pretty slim. This may sound like basic stuff to most americans, but try showing up in a hospital without money overseas and see how long it takes for them to kick your ass out.
If you believe that last statement about the legal future being closer to the ideal "we're" pursing you really need to take a class in law
I assume then that it would surprise you that I have long studied law, particularly the history and development of western legal systems and theories.
The legal system is nowhere near what the founding fathers called the ideal system..
I don't necessarily disagree with you, although the founding fathers were all over the map in what they believed was the ideal anything. Transported to today, they would probably marvel and the shuddering beaurocracy of the whole thing, but I doubt they would be disappointed in the legal directions we've taken (though certainly surprised at many). Their biggest disappointment would likely be the federalization of everything, but given the history I suspect they would understand its necessity -- they would be split, in all likelyhood, on whether the strong judiciary was a good or bad thing. Even they would be amazed at how far we have taken the concept of individual libety -- they talked a good game of ideals, but in reality the early US was not particularly good at concerning itself with individual liberties (they might say it was simply the weakness of the government, not of the will, that kept it from this). In any event, we are closer to the IDEALS they espoused, though they themsleves might not recognize their ideals in fruition, because their concept of contemporary practicality prevented them from even imagining some of the extents to which free speech or due process could take when given a few hundred years to continue to develop.
Not to insult you but please go read a book on the history of our law and then compare to our current state of affairs
Sure -- I would recommend "Quarrels that Have Shaped the Constitution", though I can't remember the editor. It focuses on the major supreme court cases through our history, discussing the personal and political (as well as legal) factors that led to the decisions that pushed us to where we are. Much more readable than a textbook, and most people will be astounded at the notion of how difficult it was to establish what we consider today to be fundamental liberties (speech, trade, association, etc). These liberties were nowhere near as extensive a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years ago as they are today.
That's why I say, despite rampant cynicism, that we are a nation of perfectionists who just don't recognize that we've come a long way because we're always so unforgiving of ourselves...
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Yes, and you have just talked about .000001% of the court cases for the past year in NY.
Pointing to extraordinary circumstances as a "failure" of an entire system is pretty fallacious.
The legal system works, in the long run, for 99.999999% of the cases it handles. The rest, eventually, will cause changes in the law, because those extraordinary circumstances offend us.
Yes, that particular offender may never be punished, but that is an individual case, not a systematic one.
comments like that are an insult to and injured public
Your knowledge of the past is pretty weak if you can claim that modern american citizen are by any relative measure "injured". We are the single most privleged, protected, and secure society that has ever existed on planet earth, bar none.
Are we perfect? Of course not. We do get better, and looking at the legal past and the legal present provides such a contrast that it would seem foolish not to believe that the legal future will be even closer to the ideal we're pursuing...
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Oh, yeah, duh -- I wasn't thinking of the fact that these are LEOs, so without a tracker they'd be pretty useless for data calls more than a minute or 3.
That said, they don't really "whiz" by, except in a relative sense. We find that the antenna has to be pointed AT a satellite to work, and it stays in relatively the same place unless you wait 20 minutes or so, when you may need to shift the phone a bit to get a good connection again.
Maybe as the constellations get more filled out the directional and hand-off issues will get more user-friendly.
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Based on what I see on their web site, I think that just pointing the aerial straight up is sufficient. Perhaps this is is only true in marketing land.
Well, pointing it in the general direction of a satellite and not having anything in the line of sight, like a building or heavy cloud cover.
WE've had mixed results, but if you stand in one spot with a globalstar phone and don't move your head once connected it tends to work okay.
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This is by far not the first commercial satellite data access, by any criteria.
It may wind up being less expensive (as the initial costs were all lost), but you can do 9600 on a Globalstar (they're talking about a 30k+, not sure if thats working now or later) and 64k/channel on InMarsat (has been working for years).
InMarsat can mux together multiple 64k channels to give 128k+ IP access from anywhere on earth. it's not the cheapest way to check your email (at $30+ per minute for a 128k connection) but for remote field work there's not a lot of alternatives.
We haven't used any Iridium services, but if the Globalstar phones are any indication (and they should be, as its a pretty similar system) the biggest difficulty is keeping the antenna on a satellite. You can lose a connection very easily, and with data just getting extra noise or interference is a lot more of a pain than having the audio from a call drop out for a half-second.
Once you add dishes to the equation (to get around losing calls from moving the phone) you're basically back to using a larger (but still portable) InMarSat system. If they can come up with a decent dish setup that runs off of batteries for more than 20 minutes of connect time, Iridium would have something novel to offer.
As it stands, the only thing Iridium is bringing to the table is the potential for lower costs through competition (I'm not complaining -- that's plenty for me!)
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I never condoned anything, I simply stated the two jobs of the NSA.
That said, deriding someone for thinking it okay to invade privacy for their own benefit while criticising socialism is kind of ironic. In a market economy (hint: the opposite of socialism) the only reason to do ANYTHING is for your own benefit. That's the whole point -- if I can tap into a transoceanic cable and make it profitable, the free market says I should be able to.
You apparently think I should not be able to (presumably by the use of police force or such to stop me?). Communist...
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Isn't it ironic that the NSA stands for the very thing thay, behind our backs and behind the scenes, they attempt, and perhaps succeed, to invade?
The NSA has two jobs -- one is to breach foreign information security, but their other is to keep US information secure. So it isn't ironic -- they just have to know security from both sides.
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as Mickey Mouse would have lost its copyright in 2004
What's important to clarify here is that this is NOT at all true -- although it IS the "nightmare" scenario that Disney would like us to believe.
Copyright only covers individual creative works -- not characters. The only copyright that would be expiring would be the VERY FIRST Mickey mouse drawings and animations, NOT everey single Mickey Mouse cartoon.
"Steamboat Willie" would thus fall into the public domain, but "the Sorcerer's Apprentice" would still have decades left of Disney ownership.
And I would contend that this is exactly what was meant to happen by the expiration of copyright -- has "Steamboat Willie" not yet become a part of American history? Has it not yet become an item of cultural significance separate from the company that produced it? Has not yet enough time passed for artists to begin exploring the effect of the animation, to begin playing with it and recreating it as a statement of history and culture?
Of course it is time for the creative world to have access to these early works -- for their significance and value as cultural touchstones.
Mickey Mouse will still belong to Disney, the public will merely gain possession of our own history.
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Make up your mind: are you supporting the Second Amendment or voting liberal? In this country, the two really are mutually exclusive
Unfortunately there are only two "sides" in politics that you can realistically vote for, so if you are concerned about more than one issue, your voting theory kinda falls flat.
What if I want to support gun rights, and abortion? Which side do I pick, then? Which one is mutually exclusive?
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Please restrain yourself from blaming the victims whom Wall Street robbed
You misinterpreted what i said -- I wasn't blaming anyone, or even talking about any specific time or group.
I was just getting across the conundrum that the SS plan was created to solve: there are people who, for whatever reason, have no capability to pay their own medical/food expenses, and we are unwilling as a society to simply let them perish.
So we have SS, but we're possibly running the risk that we're hurting others by creating an incentive, as it were, to not be concerned about saving for those very expenses because they know they won't be allowed to simply perish. (of course, most people don't realize how little SS pays, but they're not thinking of the details, only the general concept)
I was speaking more of OUR generations, not the ones getting SS now or previously, who never "expected" it.
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i think i would prefer just to invest the money myself and not have to pay the government SS.
:)
The issue i see with this is that we're not willing to throw people on the streets to die in their old age. So we're going to get stuck with SOME bill (whether large or small) based on taking care of people who didn't plan. Initially SS was just the answer to that problem -- it has grown in scope and size (and each growth was perfectly logical) but I don't know that there is a solution to the problem of it being too big.
The money goes to pay for things, and has to come from somewhere. So either we tax people to get the money, or we tell people we can no longer pay to keep them from starving to death, we refuse medical care to the poor, etc. We're in a pickle because we aren't willing to say "no" to people as a society, but we don't like paying for it.
The flip side of that is that if we provide *too much* to "fall back" on, it will encourage people to ignore planning for retirement. Which makes it even more critical for us to either get more money (from taxes) to support those people, or start refusing services right when the largest population of people who HAVE paid into the system their whole lives comes to expect something back.
Hmm, come to think of it, we're screwed
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The question, I think, is what will we decide are rights that must be available to all, and thereby provided by society at large, versus what should simply be opportunities for people to have
Then we're in perfect agreement! We should stop while we're ahead. Ultimately, that was my only point -- there are some things that transcend the freedom of the marketplace (and of course those "things" are ultimately where the disagreements come into play).
I have a natural right to daily handjobs doesn't mean that the 6 billion people who don't think it's my God-given right must provide it for me
watch out for chafing!
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the democrat attacks frequently stink of intellectual elitism
I don't disagree with you at all -- that was definitely a lot of what people didn't like about Gore (he seems snobbish).
The government needs more power and your money, because it of course can do better with it than you can.
This must be a test of some kind, because I don't see that at all. The message isn't "we can do better with it than you can" but rather "there are some things that can only be accomplished collectively".
I mean, you're not giving your money to Bill Clinton to spend "better", you're giving it to agencies that employ hundreds of thousands of people to handle details of life that would quickly overwhelm us if we had to do them individually. Who wants to build a road by getting together with their neighbors and buying paving equipment? Why not just give all that responsibility to one group and all they do is build roads all over the [geographic region]?
I should note that conservatives/republicans don't disagree with this notion at all -- what they disagree on is WHICH things are better done collectively. We should, for example, provide funding to faith-based charities.
The difference between attacking Clinton for scandals and other political issues (yes, some of us think perjury in a high court IS a big deal!)
But that's just it -- there seemed to be very few "political" issues involved in the attacks. It was all "he murdered Vince Foster!", "He was in shady business deals" "he had sex with ______". Those aren't political issues.
Perjury most definitely is a big deal (but its not "corruption", which is all I said). And it didn't come out until AFTER a decade was spent demonizing the man. So that has always been my question -- what was it about him that made the desire so great to brand him as Evil, long before Foster died, long before he even met Lewinsky, etc. These events were not causes, they were effects.
And FWIW, i view the Republican party as being elitism of a different kind -- economic and moral elitism (and plenty of intellectual as well). I've always had the feeling that the Republican party felt Clinton didn't "deserve" to be in the White House because he wasn't of a high enough rank. He was white trash. And he certainly had the kinds of scandals unbecoming of the social elite -- they tended to be more soap opera than international arms deal. But I'm not sure why that would be WORSE.
Again, if Bush is so dumb, and you're so smart, lets see _you_ actually do something with your life that affects other people
Well, ignoring the fact that this is a complete red herring (what do the accomplishments of a critic have to do with the validity of the criticism?), what did Bush do to affect people's lives before he was "crowned" by the people who surrounded him. He had money, fame, and influence thrust upon him by virtue of being born and having a father in the White House. If he had been born a poor nobody, could he have achieved any of this? I really don't think so -- he's no Bob Dole or John McCain. He's certainly no Rockefeller or Gates.
just go back to work, sit in your cubicle, and smirk at Bush's stupidity. I hope it makes you feel better at least
Not sure if you're just using the collective "you" here, but I never claimed Bush was stupid. He's President of my country, i hope to hell he's a genius and will guide us well.
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And the banks'll see that as well.
:(
...you can simply do without insurance
Hey, minorities could just "do without" riding in the front of the bus, or vote with their dollars, but believe it or not markets aren't always as perfectly efficient as the Libertarian party would have us believe.
Sometimes people are refused seating at the lunch counter, even though "economically" it doesn't make sense, and "economically" the bank should give them a loan.
When all the star-bellied sneetches are refused medical insurance for being chipless, you can't count on economic theory to defend them, and when the hospitals refuse to admit them without insurance, you'll wind up with a lot of star-bellied corpses.
Want to see a free market in healthcare? Go to any third-world country and go to the hospital. Try to get treatment without a big wad of cash in your hand. The free market doesn't care if you live or die, but thankfully we don't have a free market in the US, and an emergency room has to treat you whether you can pay or not. Hopefully that will still be the case after the ass-chips come!
As an aside, I think I deserve some extra mod points just for multiple creative uses of the phrase "ass-chip"....
I think the best post in this whole topic was the one about ass-chips -- "damn, Doritos is going overboard with all the new flavors". Alas, it doesn't seem to have been modded up much
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I think such a system would be very fair, no?
But you still have the issue of regulation, which is what this was all about. Where do you start and stop regulating? We have to use the government to defend property rights, so now we still have the same debate over whether to enact the DMCA (which is just a law to protect intellectual property) or environmental controls (which are laws that protect your property and health from being destroyed by the guy upstream).
Deciding to hold individuals or corporations responsible makes no difference to the question of what we hold them responsible for, or what government gets involved with in terms of regulation of that responsibility vs self-regulation?
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...whereupon you take your business to some other insurance company who has terms more to your liking
What other insurance company? The other one who wants the chip in your baby, or the OTHER, other one who wants the chip in your baby? Oh, you mean the one out of state that wants the chip in your baby?
Oh, no, I know the answer to this one -- start your own insurance company, right? But the bank won't finance an insurance company that doesn't put chips in babies, because the financial risk is too great compared to all those other companies that have more accurate medical info (thanks to the chips).
Oh, right, I need to start my own bank...
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The difference is that Clinton really was corrupt
Really? And what pray tell did he do that was corrupt? I mean, he lied about having sex (many times, with many different women, including in court testimony) but that's not corruption (it's either a virtuous lie or a damn lie with perjury, depending how you feel about him and infidelity).
As far as I know, thats the only thing that was ever really proven, despite, as I said, many, many, MANY people spending the better part of a decade examining every strand of hair he had ever come into contact with.
Sure, he killed Vincent Foster, sold nuclear weapons to China, performed pagan rites in the Lincoln bedroom and sodomized babies, but what I'm asking is why -- really, and truthfully -- do so many Republicans believe he, as you say, "really was corrupt" despite no actual evidence of corruption (or at least of corruption with any significant devation for a president).
He was involved in some sort of bizarre land deal that he lost money on, unlike Bush who was involved in some bizarre CIA/oil deals, and GW, involved in some bizarre baseball team and oil deals, and Reagan, who was actually *provably* involved in some highly illegal arms deals.
because at least Nixon had thought about the best interests of the country on occasion.
See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You've just stated that Clinton, in fact, never once considered the nation when making a decision (which I personally consider to be a charge tantamount to treason, at least philosophically). The worst that Democrats say about Bush is that he's greedy and dumb. And yet, somehow, the Democrats are the only ones being relentless and unreasonable?
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Yeah, and people who love their government...
I never claimed governments were harmless, either. Only that believing corporations have "no power but selling to you" flies completely in the face of the reality that this country (and most others) have lived through already. Lets make new mistakes, not repeat the ones of the past -- at least that way we can say we tried.
Good ol' American public schools saving the world for democracy, one epsilon-minus Slashdotter at a time.
Maybe if you study harder you can rise above this hindrance?
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if a corporation goes out and gasses a village somewhere, then the stockholders have no personal responsibility, but the corporate employees who made the decision to perform the gassing, and the employees who carried it out will still go to jail for a long time
That's news to me. I'd love to hear of any person ever being found guilty of wrongful death for deadly decisions they made on behalf of a corporation.
Firestone may go bankrupt -- unfortunately, the dead people who rode around on their tires are still dead.
The executives who decided to go ahead with the tire designs (despite engineers telling them they were faulty) will just find new jobs paying in the six figures, and joke about it all over brunch at the restaurant on the ninth hole.
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Also, the Bhopal incident was an accident that was the fault of a company already following government safety measures
Ah, so its not their fault because the government regulations should have been stricter, thanks for clearing up how that was all the government's fault.
Now, back to the discussion about how great industry self-regulation is...
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what corporation will legally be able to do that?
Your insurance company. After all, they can't very well extend coverage to the child without being able to monitor his vital signs remotely, now, could they? Its simply economics, Ma'am, nothing personal.
Next question?
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None of the industry's bad decisions really start to have a severe effect until the government backs them up
Well, that's true. Without governments to uphold property rights, or imbue them to artificial persons, there wouldn't be any corporations.
So now we're back to the same place we were before -- deciding where in the vast gray area the government starts and stops regulating the actions of business. There is not a clear dividing line between industry and government, no matter how much the libertarian ideal says so.
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