250 megabytes on each side, for a total slightly less than the 650 megabytes that fit on a CD.
Hmmm. 2x250 = 500. 500/650 = 10/13 = 0.769. That's actually something like 23% less data. Someone less beholden to the Content Cartel could have written this as "It holds nearly one quarter less music", and it would have been more accurate to boot.
Impeding traffic in ANY lane should be ticketed just as heavily as speeding should. Think about it, if I am going 65 in a 55 and you are in front of me, I am coming up on you at 10mph faster. If I am going 55 in a 55 and you are in front of me going 45, I am STILL coming up on you 10mph faster.
The situation might be as dangerous but they are not equivalent. In the first, you are breaking the law as you approach someone obeying it. Why should that person be held responsible for your breaking the law? If "impeding traffic" were enough by itself, then that allows the most aggressive idiot -- the guy who needs to go 90 mph in a school zone -- to set the limit for everyone else, since eventually he'll overtake (= be impeded by) anyone going slower.
Now, the guy doing 45 on a 55 road is also causing trouble, even for the people going the speed limit. Which points out that "speed limit" is a dumb concept. There should be a "speed range" (50 to 60 mph, for example).
4000 people killed in accidents in the home in 2000 and 3,500 killed on the roads.
Oh, come on. On any given day, there are far more people in homes than on the roads (since not every can or has to drive, but everyone lives somewhere). And on any given day, the typical person spends far more time in his/her home than in his/her car. Yet the difference in numbers is only 500? Why are the cars so fratzen dangerous, is what I want to know.
I recognize the privacy issues and goodness knows, they should be addressed. But isn't it time for us to recognize that the only part of the driving system that has not improved in a century is the driver? Why the heck don't we have cars driving themselves and using state-of-the-art sensors -- many markedly superior to eyes and ears -- to avoid danger?
Benefits for insurers, law enforcement, just about everyone except the poor fool who has to pay for it.
Yeah. It ticks me off they have these on airplanes. I mean, the extra weight has got to add maybe a whole dollar to my ticket price, and I certainly don't plan to be involved in a crash, so how do I benefit?
Also how can the Speed Limit Mapping tell if you're going 65 MPH on a highway or 35 MPH over the limit on the rural road running along the highway?
Um, by coordinating the positional information with a database of the roads in the United States? You see, we have these neat little gizmos -- I don't think the name will catch on, but some people call them "computers" -- that are just insanely great at correlating different bits of information, both from real-time sensors and from premapped databases...
If it talks to the Net, or talks to anything that talks to the Net, then it potentially has access to a vast store of statutory and physical data. Stop thinking like it's the 1950s.
OK, where in the following sequence does my speech go from protected to prohibitable?
I talk to a friend about the existence of a content scrambling system.
I talk to a friend about the method used in CSS.
I talk to a friend about the theoretical possibility of cracking CSS.
I talk to a friend and describe a practicable method of cracking CSS.
I talk to a friend and describe a practical algorithm for cracking CSS.
I talk to a friend and describe a practical sequence of psuedocode for cracking CSS.
I talk to a friend and describe, line by line, my Perl code for cracking CSS.
I talk to my friend on the telephone and describe, line by line, my Perl code for cracking CSS.
I talk to my friend on voice-over-IP and describe, line by line, my Perl code for cracking CSS.
I talk to my friend by recording WAV files describing, line by line, my Perl code for cracking CSS, playing the files to my friend sitting in the same room.
I talk to my friend by recording WAV files describing, line by line, my Perl code for cracking CSS, playing the files to my friend via telephone.
I talk to my friend by recording WAV files describing, line by line, my Perl code for cracking CSS, playing the files to my friend via voice-over-IP.
I talk to my friend by recording WAV files describing, line by line, my Perl code for cracking CSS, sending the files over email.
I talk to my friend by recording WAV files, using a speech-to-text converter to render the speech into text, describing my Perl code for cracking CSS, and then send the file over email.
I write out, on paper, my speech describing my Perl code for cracking CSS, and show it to my friend.
I write out, on paper, my speech describing my Perl code for cracking CSS, holding it up to my webcam so my friend can read it, obviously over the Net.
I write out, on paper, my speech describing my Perl code for cracking CSS, scan it in as a JPEG image file, and send that (over the Net) to my friend.
I write out my Perl code in a text editor, then allow my friend to read the text file on my screen.
I write out my Perl code in a text editor, then email the text file to my friend.
I write out my Perl code in a text editor, then post the text file on my website so my friend can read it.
I don't think any of these steps, considered logically, can be considered "unprotected speech". Yet the anticircumvention statute would call that last step trafficking in a circumvention device. Since the last step is logically equivalent to the earlier ones, I believe, then all the steps are vulnerable, and hence the DMCA does muzzle speech.
The oddity is this idea that speech is a literal device.
Because this is how government R&D has always worked.
In biotech, at least, this is not how it has always worked, until relatively recently. Indeed, in most government research, the results have been available as a matter of principle. Of course the government would also allow commercialization and sometimes would even fund it... it's not a perfect world. But things like patenting genes is a new "improvement" to the process.
In the Industrial revolution, mechanical engineers were in high demand, then they foolishly designed and built production lines that would automate and therefore remove their own jobs
Excuse me? First of all, mechanical engineers do not, nor did they, run the factories. There were mechanics, of course, who ran the lines. Even for unskilled labor, it was a decent job. Then the mechanical engineers came along and designed automation. Suddenly (if 150 years is suddenly) unskilled jobs could be done by machine. This of course made the mechanical engineers even more valuable. And the children of the smart mechanical engineers became civil engineers. And the children of smart civil engineers became electroincs engineers. And the children of smart electronic engineers became computer engineers.
Change happens. Deal with it. The truly worthwhile don't whine about how things are so different from before. They ride the wave and figure out the Next Big Thing, and move the rest of us there.
Everything will have to be "compiled to match the parameters of your network environment" and the lawyer... err... umm... consultant, will visit you and charge $200/hr to "perform the standard system integration procedures for version 5.63.2 patchlevel 5 as recommended by circular 12-422 from the Bureau of Information Technology". it will usually take 5 hours, not including phone consultations.
Um, who does that sound more like... Open Source (wherein a large, if diffuse, community exists actively sharing solutions), or Microsoft and other proprietary vendors? Have you ever tried to call Microsoft customer support? Three hour wait to hear someone tell you that you should have tried the pay-per-incident service. (Not the "pay service". You pay for customer support when you buy the product. But you only get decent support if you then pay the surcharge.) Another hour to describe the problem four times to three people. And then the "help"? Frag the drive and reinstall.
If that's the convenience of the proprietary world, give me the chaos of OSS any day.
He was making an analogy, for heaven's sake, not stating that the police actually need a warrant to stop burglars.
Yeah, except he was making a bad analogy and people rightfully called him on it. This is much closer to, Can the police search arbitrarily the apartment of a renter if the house owner allows it. I am not a lawyer and I don't play one on the Net. But I am fairly certain the answer is, No, the owner cannot authorize a search of a tenant's belongings.
Do you want the FBI to have to take several hours to draft and get a warrant signed in a situation such as that?
Um, yeah, I do. A warrant is not just some hoop to be passed through. It is a requirement that the FBI convince an independent judge that they have sufficient grounds to eavesdrop (or whatever). They don't have to prove a crime is being committed, but rather, that there's good reason to believe one is. If the owner of a computer asks the FBI to monitor it, I'm pretty sure the judge would immediately grant the warrant.
People seem to ask, "Well, if it's so trivial, why bother with a warrant?" I ask, "Well, if it's so trivial, why aren't you confident enough to try getting a warrant?" The Fourth Amendment is more than a hurdle, a hoop, or a technicality. It is the linchpin of an effective, independent judiciary. And if the FBI is "not some huge govt. agency listening in on everyones phone calls and reading everyones email", that is at least in part because they haven't been allowed to be.
Our guarantees of civil liberties are not hinderances on an otherwise effective and respect law enforcement system. They are the root causes as to why that system is effective and respected.
And as a result, if your husband is on a moon mission and it looks like he's going to die, you won't have half of the country's reporters on your front lawn. How horrible.
But also as a result, if your President looks like he's going to crush his enemies and shred the Constitution, you do have your reports camped out on the White House lawn. It's a fair trade, I think.
It's pretty much a fact that the US educational system is awful when compared to most other systems int the world.
I don't think that's a "fact" at all. I think we perform poorly on standardized international tests. Yet I think the evidence is sketchy, at best, that those tests measure things that are important. As an example often bruited about, the poor performance of US students on biology exams is often lamented, but no one seems to mention this: The interational exams are heavilty weighted toward classification schema. US bio classes are usually weighted toward human biology.
We won't know if we're really behind -- as opposed to an artificial appearance based on differing criteria -- until someone administers our tests to international populations to see how they do. Until then we don't know the systematic error.
I don't believe we've got the system functioning perfectly. Yet American higher education is the envy of the world. And few other societies attempt the sort of broad-based, universal education we aspire to in the US. So I'm just not convinced the ship is sinking.
As to fixing education: A quick first step is to double the number of teachers. Although recent studies show that simply reducing class size does not have a huge impact, all studies indicate that -- properly trained -- teachers with small classes can achieve much much more than those with large ones. (OK, it's s d-huh moment, but it has been studied.)
How is this wrong? If advertising to kids is wrong, then you'd better not let your kids watch TV, read magazines, or go outside!
Or, you could read the article and not just the summary. Right or wrong, here is the point of view being expressed:
But those commercials appear on television, distinct enough from the programming so there's no confusion between the two. And those brands are in the Real World, where Cheerios look like Cheerios and Barbie looks permanently, unmistakably, predictably like Barbie. We worry about what all those media messages are doing to our kids' sense of values, but we don't worry about products shapeshifting, or about advertising messages getting a little too chummy with our children.
The issue is, these "bot buddies" try to look just like kids. Children can be quite open and trusting, and by having the ad-bot mimic the same age child, it can slice past their not-hardened social defenses. In other words, it is misleading and it is targeted to a demographic that doesn't yet have its baloney detector calibrated.
But individual change is futile; all educators and all education must change as a whole or not at all.
Wow. Isn't that convenient? I don't have to change, 'cause no one else is.
The task is difficult; are any of us up to the challenge?
But from your earlier sentence, unless all of us are up to the challenge, then none of us ever will be... Some classes stink. Some entire schools stink. But students learn more than most people realize. Some classes do work. Some schools do succeed. The fact of the matter is, education in the United States has never been more than a hit-or-miss proposition... and yet, from time to time, we succeed.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am a high school teacher. My job frustrates, exhausts, and sometimes depresses me. I do it anyway, and I try to do it better ever day. Sometimes I think students are sloths. Sometimes I think my colleagues are idiots. Sometimes I lump myself in with them. But at the end of the day, or at the end of the year, I see it is worth it.
Incidentally, the comment I linked to said "30 lines" were copied, but when I went to reread the article it said 30 lines "out of hundreds", which doesn't sound all that bad.
How on Earth are we to judge if we can't see the code? Assume for the moment that he's writing a database-searcher. Maybe the code is 450 lines of data input, data output, and GUI, but the 30 lines is the actual search routine, the topic of this chapter. Well, then, having 450 lines of original code (which is not directly relevant) means nothing compared to the 30 lines of code on the subject at hand.
We don't know enough to form an intelligent opinion. From the tone and style -- and essentially contentless prose -- of the article, I'd say the author didn't have an intelligent opinion, either.
Why else would the student accept the lower grade without protesting it to the appropriate school governing committies? Maybe becuase he knew the evidence against him was rock-solid.
Ah, another person who thinks taking the 5th means you're guilty. He plea-bargained. One plea-bargains for many reasons. Usually, it's because the expense, hassle, or risk of a full hearing is great. That might be because he's really guilty and knows it. It might be because he's innocent but is convinced the system is rigged. It might even be, as he says, that he wants to move past the whole thing... although, then, you'd have to wonder why he's raising it in the papers...
giving them Incomplete is basically considering them guilty until proven innocent.
Excuse me? Giving him an "F" pending a hearing would be considering him guilty. Giving him an incomplete is exactly the right thing to do: The grade in this class is still in doubt. When it is resolved, the transcript will reflect it. If the hearing goes his way, it shows a B. If it goes against him, it shows an F. Until it has been resolved he doesn't even have a grade... and that's what the incomplete shows.
... apparently any cop show could be illegal, because it is illegal to film "snuff films" wherein someone actually dies. You see,
Chief Justice Rehnquist said Congress saw a compelling need to extend the definition of child pornography to embrace computer images "that are virtually indistinguishable from real children engaged in sexually explicit conduct." (from the New York Times)
So, since in many cases it is impossible to determine whether Bruce Willis actually shot someone dead, or whether he only pretended to, we must ban the Die Hard movies. Take away the hot-button issue of child porn -- consider this as an expansion of criminality of intent -- and the ridiculous nature of the law becomes obvious.
As long as something is free, people won't pay for it
Not really. Most people put in money at the "Suggested Donation" box at museums. Now, museums don't receive enough revenue from the box to stay afloat, and they sure as heck don't have the outrageous benefits of being a music exec, so the RIAA wouldn't go for it. Still, if the music was priced reasonably, I think a lot of people would pay. Not everyone, but a lot.
If you want to complain about the DMCA, complain about the DMCA, but this doesn't seem to have much to do with that.
Oh, I do complain about the DMCA, loudly and often, but that isn't the point here. Believe it or not, not every troubling disturbance on the Net has to do with the DMCA. I find this irksome because (a) it again presumes that everyone out there is a potential and willing thief and (b) informer societies always turn out to be inimical to basic human freedoms. This is a troubling development, as far as I'm concerned.
As for "vigilante": Merrian-Webster defines this as (broadly) "a self-appointed doer of justice". That certainly seems to apply, to my eye. This is a group that seems to be encouraging people to going out and reporting occurrences which they believe to be copyright infringements, so that FAST can notify the ISPs to pull the sites. In American law, at least, the first question of a suit is, Do you have standing? That is, are you directly impacted by the alleged misbehavior? You cannot file suit unless you are. Here, FAST is appointing itself guardian of the Web's purity and asking local townsfolk to ride off on the hunt. Sounds like "vigilante" to me.
So, the question is: Is this the good Federation of Star Trek, or -- more likely, considering its British origin -- the evil Federation of Blake's 7.
Throw in the Trade Federation of Phantom Menace and it becomes clear that evil Federations outnumber good ones.:)
Re:Someone tell me
on
e-Denounce
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Blockquoth the poster:
What does this have to do with My (or Your) Rights Online?
Well, the establishment of a self-appointed unaccountable vigilante force roaming the Web certainly seems to bear on YRO. Much like the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA, this would appear to encourage ISPs to shoot first and ask questions later.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm. 2x250 = 500. 500/650 = 10/13 = 0.769. That's actually something like 23% less data. Someone less beholden to the Content Cartel could have written this as "It holds nearly one quarter less music", and it would have been more accurate to boot.
Oh. That's a pretty reasonable thing, then. That's why speed limits should be speed ranges.
The situation might be as dangerous but they are not equivalent. In the first, you are breaking the law as you approach someone obeying it. Why should that person be held responsible for your breaking the law? If "impeding traffic" were enough by itself, then that allows the most aggressive idiot -- the guy who needs to go 90 mph in a school zone -- to set the limit for everyone else, since eventually he'll overtake (= be impeded by) anyone going slower.
Now, the guy doing 45 on a 55 road is also causing trouble, even for the people going the speed limit. Which points out that "speed limit" is a dumb concept. There should be a "speed range" (50 to 60 mph, for example).
Oh, come on. On any given day, there are far more people in homes than on the roads (since not every can or has to drive, but everyone lives somewhere). And on any given day, the typical person spends far more time in his/her home than in his/her car. Yet the difference in numbers is only 500? Why are the cars so fratzen dangerous, is what I want to know.
I recognize the privacy issues and goodness knows, they should be addressed. But isn't it time for us to recognize that the only part of the driving system that has not improved in a century is the driver? Why the heck don't we have cars driving themselves and using state-of-the-art sensors -- many markedly superior to eyes and ears -- to avoid danger?
Yeah. It ticks me off they have these on airplanes. I mean, the extra weight has got to add maybe a whole dollar to my ticket price, and I certainly don't plan to be involved in a crash, so how do I benefit?
They should. That doesn't mean they will... auto insurance, being a state-mandated service, is not exactly the model of capitalism one would hope.
Um, by coordinating the positional information with a database of the roads in the United States? You see, we have these neat little gizmos -- I don't think the name will catch on, but some people call them "computers" -- that are just insanely great at correlating different bits of information, both from real-time sensors and from premapped databases...
If it talks to the Net, or talks to anything that talks to the Net, then it potentially has access to a vast store of statutory and physical data. Stop thinking like it's the 1950s.
OK, where in the following sequence does my speech go from protected to prohibitable?
I don't think any of these steps, considered logically, can be considered "unprotected speech". Yet the anticircumvention statute would call that last step trafficking in a circumvention device. Since the last step is logically equivalent to the earlier ones, I believe, then all the steps are vulnerable, and hence the DMCA does muzzle speech.
The oddity is this idea that speech is a literal device.
In biotech, at least, this is not how it has always worked, until relatively recently. Indeed, in most government research, the results have been available as a matter of principle. Of course the government would also allow commercialization and sometimes would even fund it... it's not a perfect world. But things like patenting genes is a new "improvement" to the process.
Excuse me? First of all, mechanical engineers do not, nor did they, run the factories. There were mechanics, of course, who ran the lines. Even for unskilled labor, it was a decent job. Then the mechanical engineers came along and designed automation. Suddenly (if 150 years is suddenly) unskilled jobs could be done by machine. This of course made the mechanical engineers even more valuable. And the children of the smart mechanical engineers became civil engineers. And the children of smart civil engineers became electroincs engineers. And the children of smart electronic engineers became computer engineers.
Change happens. Deal with it. The truly worthwhile don't whine about how things are so different from before. They ride the wave and figure out the Next Big Thing, and move the rest of us there.
Um, who does that sound more like... Open Source (wherein a large, if diffuse, community exists actively sharing solutions), or Microsoft and other proprietary vendors? Have you ever tried to call Microsoft customer support? Three hour wait to hear someone tell you that you should have tried the pay-per-incident service. (Not the "pay service". You pay for customer support when you buy the product. But you only get decent support if you then pay the surcharge.) Another hour to describe the problem four times to three people. And then the "help"? Frag the drive and reinstall.
If that's the convenience of the proprietary world, give me the chaos of OSS any day.
Yeah, except he was making a bad analogy and people rightfully called him on it. This is much closer to, Can the police search arbitrarily the apartment of a renter if the house owner allows it. I am not a lawyer and I don't play one on the Net. But I am fairly certain the answer is, No, the owner cannot authorize a search of a tenant's belongings.
Um, yeah, I do. A warrant is not just some hoop to be passed through. It is a requirement that the FBI convince an independent judge that they have sufficient grounds to eavesdrop (or whatever). They don't have to prove a crime is being committed, but rather, that there's good reason to believe one is. If the owner of a computer asks the FBI to monitor it, I'm pretty sure the judge would immediately grant the warrant.
People seem to ask, "Well, if it's so trivial, why bother with a warrant?" I ask, "Well, if it's so trivial, why aren't you confident enough to try getting a warrant?" The Fourth Amendment is more than a hurdle, a hoop, or a technicality. It is the linchpin of an effective, independent judiciary. And if the FBI is "not some huge govt. agency listening in on everyones phone calls and reading everyones email", that is at least in part because they haven't been allowed to be.
Our guarantees of civil liberties are not hinderances on an otherwise effective and respect law enforcement system. They are the root causes as to why that system is effective and respected.
But also as a result, if your President looks like he's going to crush his enemies and shred the Constitution, you do have your reports camped out on the White House lawn. It's a fair trade, I think.
I don't think that's a "fact" at all. I think we perform poorly on standardized international tests. Yet I think the evidence is sketchy, at best, that those tests measure things that are important. As an example often bruited about, the poor performance of US students on biology exams is often lamented, but no one seems to mention this: The interational exams are heavilty weighted toward classification schema. US bio classes are usually weighted toward human biology.
We won't know if we're really behind -- as opposed to an artificial appearance based on differing criteria -- until someone administers our tests to international populations to see how they do. Until then we don't know the systematic error.
I don't believe we've got the system functioning perfectly. Yet American higher education is the envy of the world. And few other societies attempt the sort of broad-based, universal education we aspire to in the US. So I'm just not convinced the ship is sinking.
As to fixing education: A quick first step is to double the number of teachers. Although recent studies show that simply reducing class size does not have a huge impact, all studies indicate that -- properly trained -- teachers with small classes can achieve much much more than those with large ones. (OK, it's s d-huh moment, but it has been studied.)
Or, you could read the article and not just the summary. Right or wrong, here is the point of view being expressed:
The issue is, these "bot buddies" try to look just like kids. Children can be quite open and trusting, and by having the ad-bot mimic the same age child, it can slice past their not-hardened social defenses. In other words, it is misleading and it is targeted to a demographic that doesn't yet have its baloney detector calibrated.
Wow. Isn't that convenient? I don't have to change, 'cause no one else is.
But from your earlier sentence, unless all of us are up to the challenge, then none of us ever will be... Some classes stink. Some entire schools stink. But students learn more than most people realize. Some classes do work. Some schools do succeed. The fact of the matter is, education in the United States has never been more than a hit-or-miss proposition... and yet, from time to time, we succeed.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am a high school teacher. My job frustrates, exhausts, and sometimes depresses me. I do it anyway, and I try to do it better ever day. Sometimes I think students are sloths. Sometimes I think my colleagues are idiots. Sometimes I lump myself in with them. But at the end of the day, or at the end of the year, I see it is worth it.
How on Earth are we to judge if we can't see the code? Assume for the moment that he's writing a database-searcher. Maybe the code is 450 lines of data input, data output, and GUI, but the 30 lines is the actual search routine, the topic of this chapter. Well, then, having 450 lines of original code (which is not directly relevant) means nothing compared to the 30 lines of code on the subject at hand.
We don't know enough to form an intelligent opinion. From the tone and style -- and essentially contentless prose -- of the article, I'd say the author didn't have an intelligent opinion, either.
Ah, another person who thinks taking the 5th means you're guilty. He plea-bargained. One plea-bargains for many reasons. Usually, it's because the expense, hassle, or risk of a full hearing is great. That might be because he's really guilty and knows it. It might be because he's innocent but is convinced the system is rigged. It might even be, as he says, that he wants to move past the whole thing... although, then, you'd have to wonder why he's raising it in the papers...
Excuse me? Giving him an "F" pending a hearing would be considering him guilty. Giving him an incomplete is exactly the right thing to do: The grade in this class is still in doubt. When it is resolved, the transcript will reflect it. If the hearing goes his way, it shows a B. If it goes against him, it shows an F. Until it has been resolved he doesn't even have a grade... and that's what the incomplete shows.
Sheesh. Get a grip, people.
So, since in many cases it is impossible to determine whether Bruce Willis actually shot someone dead, or whether he only pretended to, we must ban the Die Hard movies. Take away the hot-button issue of child porn -- consider this as an expansion of criminality of intent -- and the ridiculous nature of the law becomes obvious.
Not really. Most people put in money at the "Suggested Donation" box at museums. Now, museums don't receive enough revenue from the box to stay afloat, and they sure as heck don't have the outrageous benefits of being a music exec, so the RIAA wouldn't go for it. Still, if the music was priced reasonably, I think a lot of people would pay. Not everyone, but a lot.
Oh, I do complain about the DMCA, loudly and often, but that isn't the point here. Believe it or not, not every troubling disturbance on the Net has to do with the DMCA. I find this irksome because (a) it again presumes that everyone out there is a potential and willing thief and (b) informer societies always turn out to be inimical to basic human freedoms. This is a troubling development, as far as I'm concerned.
As for "vigilante": Merrian-Webster defines this as (broadly) "a self-appointed doer of justice". That certainly seems to apply, to my eye. This is a group that seems to be encouraging people to going out and reporting occurrences which they believe to be copyright infringements, so that FAST can notify the ISPs to pull the sites. In American law, at least, the first question of a suit is, Do you have standing? That is, are you directly impacted by the alleged misbehavior? You cannot file suit unless you are. Here, FAST is appointing itself guardian of the Web's purity and asking local townsfolk to ride off on the hunt. Sounds like "vigilante" to me.
So, the question is: Is this the good Federation of Star Trek, or -- more likely, considering its British origin -- the evil Federation of Blake's 7.
Throw in the Trade Federation of Phantom Menace and it becomes clear that evil Federations outnumber good ones.
Well, the establishment of a self-appointed unaccountable vigilante force roaming the Web certainly seems to bear on YRO. Much like the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA, this would appear to encourage ISPs to shoot first and ask questions later.