You "really don't see" why it's all bad for an *innocent* person to be imprisoned for 28 days on the whim of any random police-officer ?
I should be "ashamed of myself" for defending essential freedoms ? (such as the rigth to be assumed innocent until proven otherwise and the rigth not to be imprisoned without first being convicted in a court of law)
There's a quote that fits your line of arguments very well:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
By the way, you are stupid to assume that anyone with a ".no" adress is a "Norwegian in a very homogenous environment", for all you know I could be living in the Bronx. (I'm not, but neither am I living in Norway or in a homogenous environment) Not that I see why living in a heterogenous environment is an argument in favour of relinquishing essential liberties.
I agree, being drunk is no excuse as it is generally perfectly voluntarily. Besides, that excuse doesn't really hold water anyway, I know I'd never pay $2.50 to download a shitty-quality drm-infested copy of some song, this wouldn't change even if I drank a lot. The point where I'm unable to handle a mobile phone would come before the point where I consider such a "service" worth the money.
On the other hand, I doubt it if anyone would miss it if all such "services" where to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow.
The fact that people can often blame themselves for getting scammed doesn't automatically imply that trying to scam people is OK. Yes, people who fall for the Nigeria scams have themselves to blame, this doesn't mean that the senders of those mails don't belong in jail.
Well you express a lot of discontent but no answers as to what is really reasonable.
Today, in Norway it works like this: The police can, on their own, arrest you and hold you for up to 48 hours if they have what seems (to them!) reason to believe you're guilty of a crime exceeding some minimum treshold and reason to believe that leaving you free would make further investigation difficult or mean a large risk of you running away.
If they want to hold you longer than that they need to appear before a judge and present their evidence. This evidence doesn't need to amount to "proof" in the strict sense needed to convict someone, however the judge needs to agree there's reasonable grounds for suspicion. There's an attorney working *your* side of the case present at this meeting with a judge. If the police are convincing, the judge may order you further detained for up to 3 more weeks.
There are indeed people it's good to hold for a while even if you have no proof. There are indeed people that are good to stop even if they just look suspicious.
Yes, but there are also people who "look suspicious" yet are perfectly innocent. "stopping" one of those is very bad, I don't think you realize the magnitude of how bad. It is better to let 10 guilty ones run free than to imprison even a single innocent it is said, this should apply also here.
I just prefer to err on the side of caution.
So does the justice-system, only that doesn't lead to the "imprison everyone suspicious" conclusion you seem to believe in. Rather the principle of caution is what mandates: If in doubt -- presume innocent. Guilt has to be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Innocense on the other hand is automatically assumed in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
Perhaps someday if you have a car or something else of value you will see the wisdom in being a little over cautious,
Very funny. I do have a car. A 3 month old one I bougth this summer. Aswell as other "things of value" (interesting btw that you mention the car as a first, you must be American, to me the car would never even enter the top-10 list of "things I value")
Instead, I count tops among the things I value stuff like Freedom, my wife and my 15 year old son. And guess what: I worry a lot more about him growing up in a fucking police state than I do about him growing up in a place where possibly some bike-thieves are, when the police is in doubt, left free. And by the way, a police state is what you by definition get if you let the police write all the rules.
Would you honestly say that something is wrong with questioning a 16-year old in a porchse over a 60 year old?
Here, no, because you need to be 18 to drive a car. If it where allowed you can bet I've got something against it if the police starts repeatedly stopping people who do nothing wrong on no other reason than being young and driving an expensive car. That's not a crime, the police should stay the fuck out of it.
Why is any hint of profiling suddenly met with crys of fear?
It isn't about profiling. It's about: "You refuse to tell us the password to these files you claim are loveletters for your wife, therefore we'll keep you imprisoned for a month."
I find that unacceptable. You seem to think it's fine.
Oh, ok, so that makes it okay then. I mean, it's a pretty serious crime and all, refusing to give up your privacy at the random request of a police-officer.(/sarcasm)
The police are NEVER holding you just because you refuse to give up your privacy, they are holding you for some other reason that (to them) seems reasonable.
The key phrase above is "to them". Sorry, but that ain't good enough to justify a month-long sentence. There are obvious reasons a *judge* (and sometimes a *jury*) decide which evidence is good enough to hold someone imprisoned, and not just some random police-officer.
Them holding you is not about your privacy whatsoever, as they WILL eventually crack the hard drive and read all the contents if they wish. It's just a question of the timeframe they are holding you while they do so.
First: in most cases the "timeframe" for crypto is either so short it makes no difference (hours) or so long it migth aswell be forever (millenia). Surely you'er not saying people who refuse to give up their keys should be held until AES-256 can be bruteforced ?
Secondly, your claim is disingenious. A police officer stands before you and say: "Give me the password and go home today. Refuse to give it to me, and stay for 28 days" You claim this situation has "nothing whatsoever" with the rigth to keep privacy to do, I think many people would see that a bit different.
but to some extent it is out of the ordinary and if you are going to be doing unusual things around police why is it such a burden to carry some proof what you're doing is OK?
Yeah, why not. Why not turn our justice-system on its head and demand that lawful citizens be prepared and willing to at all times proove to any random police-officer that they posess the items they carry with them. Innocent until proven guilty should be turned around: Anyone is guilty, and should be held in jail for 28 days unless they proove they're innocent.
Oh yeah, and they should be prepared to proove so over and over and over again, in this case dozens of times a year. If you're black and own expensive stuff you should accept having to always carry around half a dozen prooves of purchase and show them to policemen who will demand it from you on every second streetcorner. Nothing wrong with this picture whatsoever, nosire!
Yes, Sweden is astounding. Sweden is basically (ok so simplified, but this is Slashdot) Norway minus the oil. and with less hydro-power. It comes as no big surprise that oil-industries pollute, there's refineries and shit in norway, and those aren't exactly eco-friendly. The hydropower helps compensate some of that, but as your numbers show, obviously not enough to fully compensate.
That's not what I said. I said Germany is doing crap, but as a matter of fact I highly doubt it's got anything much to do with which of the two main blocks are in power, as in USA they are at this point nearly indistinguishable, indeed the current government is a coalition of the biggest party from the "socialist" block (SPD) and the biggest party-coalition (don't ask!) of the "conservative" block "CDU/CSU". Nobody thinks this will change anything much as the SPD has been leading basically a conservative government for quite some time anyway.
Still, you're acting as if you find it fully acceptable that a person sits for a longer time (here up to 90 days !) in jail *only* for the reason that they refuse to give up their privacy.
Sure, the police will mostly have some sort of reason for arresting you, problem is, the reason doesn't need to be checked by anyone, nor hold up in court. So in practice it can be anything. Google for "driving while black" for one category of examples.
I have a vietnamese friend that is a MTB-half-pro, using a very expensive bike. (around $5000) Last year he got towed in to the police-station *4* times "suspected" of having stolen the bike. He then had to proove his innocence to be let go. After that he is now carrying a copy of the buying-contract for the bike at all times, to spare himself the trouble. This far he's had to proove to the police no less than 17 times that he actually owns the bike he rides.
I find that unacceptable. I don't think it's a good idea to invent a new type of crime that basically amounts to "being muslim and having a encrypted file", and I *certainly* find it unacceptable to hold a person for 90 days for *any* reason simply at the whim of the police.
Stupid to reply twice to the same comment. But I have another point to make:
To me it seems, one of the major problems in Germany is fear. People are scared. A lot of people have decent money, and if they started spending it, it'd help the economy, which then again would help the job-situation, which would give more people more money etc.
Only it's not happening. Instead we've got two classes of people: those who're not spending because they have nothing to spend. And those that are not spending because they don't know if they'll have something to spend next year.
I freely admit to being in the latter group. My wife and I give out around 2000 euro a month. Our current finances would easily allow us to up that to 3000. Only we don't know how long we'll have jobs, and how the salaries will be, so we figure it's safer to save some.
Thus the negative spirale continues. I guess it also doesn't make it better when the money saved is invested in foreign companies. Our money is mostly in scandinavia, the far east and non-euro europa. That doesn't help the german economy. I imagine there's *many* people like us.
No. Actually, the police do not need *any* reason to arrest you as being "suspect" of something. They do need to provide reasons and have those approved by a judge if they want to keep you locked up past a certain time-limit, but any police-officer you meet on the street are, in practice, free to arrest you if he feels like it.
You are saying that the only reason an arrested person would refuse to let the police know the encryption key is because he's got something criminal to hide.
I'm saying there's a lot of stuff you migth want to keep hidden for lots of reasons, other than the stuff in question being illegal.
But the east is tiny. It's only like 10 millions or less from a population of around 80 million. Yes it's part of the reason. No it's not the entire reason, not by far.
I agree that the Euro-stability-pact can go f*ck itself, allthough I find it dishonest that the politicians *first* sign it, *then* break it 4 years in a row, but *still* don't want to renegotiate it. What's the point of having deals noone are planning on following ?
The interesting thing is that France, Sweden, UK and Finland, for example, send *more* money to the new states (relative to their GDP) than do Germany, still all of those countries are in quite different situations. (OK, so France has problems of its own, I'll grant you that)
I teach Norwegian for adults here. And every half-year there's like a dozen people that come and start learning, most for the express reason that they want to get out. I can't even really blame them. With Scandinavian eyes the way employers here (and I don't mean only in the east, I've got experiences from Mannheim, Frankfurt and Hamburg too) is simply mindboggling. "You're replacable, shut up and bend over" seems to be the prevalent attitude.
Concentration of population. The metric that I was using.
Then show me a source that shows the Norwegian population to be more "concentrated" than the US one. It's simply not true, plain and simple.
I'm sure you're rigth that the fact that Sweden gets around 20% of their electric power from hydropower explains why they only release *half* as much CO2 pro capita as the US, and only around 60% so much CO2 pro-dollar-produced. That makes tons of sense. Not.
The interesting thing about this debate is that you'll always find an American (or more) that insists that whatever the reason is, it cannot *possibly* have *anything* with US lifestyle to do, but is instead *only* a result of different circumstances.
This happens in spite of some differences being so obvious that it's absolutely painfully obvious to anyone who's spent time in various regions.
An average US car weighs significantly more than an average European car, even compared to countries that have a wealthier population than the USA.
There are *more* cars pro capita in the USA than in most any other country, including those where there's no logical reason cars are "less needed" (your "norway is compact" claim ain't gonna fly)
US building-standards prescribe *significantly* less heat-insulation than what is common in large parts of Europe, which adds to cost for AC and heating alike.
Yet, these things, that are painfully obvious, are never the reason, not even part of the reason. That would mean America had some kind of influence on it all, and that impression can't be allowed to stand.
It's amusing really. It never ceases to amaze me. You and me need only look out the window, and quite likely in 10 minutes we'll have independently verified that yes, there *are* more V8 3 ton SUVs in USA than just about anywhere else.
It's just that the contrast is so painful it hurts just to look at it.
I understand it when nonstandard stuff is complicated, but here we're talking a process that is as bog-standard as it gets: a child is born, in Germany, with german parents and should be registered as a german citizen. This is something that happens 1000 times a year in this city alone.
I counted. The process involves visiting 6 different agencies with a sum total of 22 different documents in totally 65 copies, meaning most of the agencies require nearly or even precisely the same documentation.
It's just stupidity. It costs literally millions for people who do nothing more than move paper around. For example, the application for "kindergeld" and "erziehungsgeld" requires *precisely* the same documentation, and since *everyone* gets "kindergeld" the entire application-process for erziehungsgeld could be replaced with a single checkbox on the already existing form for kindergeld.
Only the "erziehungsgeld" is for unfathomable reasons paid by the department of work ("Arbeidamt") inspite of having nothing to do with work whatsoever (you get it even if you never held a job in your life...), and the different agencies are incapable of communicating, so you gotta do the same thing twice.
The same process, by contrast, in Norway consists of the following: Show up for the birth bringing along some kind of ID. After the child is born, sign the pre-filled form the hospital put before you. That's it. (it's sligthly more complicated if the parents *arent* married, in that case a "declaration of fatherhood" and a signature from the father is required additionally)
Actually, germany are doing shit. Allthough I don't really see the connection from this to SAP, nor socialism.
Germany has ridicolous unemployment, over 10% on average and well over 20% in some areas. Those are the offical numbers excluding tons of people (for example underemployed, people who've given up getting a job, people who are studying *because* they couldn't find a job, people on different reeducation-projects, people doing 1-euro-jobs, people doing a minijob etc) if you define "unemployed" as "is able and willing to work, but still has no job from which (s)he can live" then the unemployment is easily twice the offical numbers.
Population is sinking, in some districts drastically. Where I live the population has fallen 30% since 1990, leaving literally thousands of apartments empty. One problem is, there's not even enough money to tear down some of the useless buildings.
Savings are across the board. I live in a city of around 100.000 people. It doesn't even have a *single* public swimhall. (it does have a single privately owned "funbath" that receives some public funds) Social Security is definitely in the range where it's "Too much to die from, to little to live from". Huge amounts of money are wasted in a humongous, inefficient, nonrational, surreal bureaucracy.[1] At the same time Germany will break the EU stability pact for the 4th year in a row, and have already announced they'll not be able to keep it next year either.
Most people have had a massive reduction in buying-power over the last few years, and the trend continues. These days they want to increase the VAT by 2-3%, meaning everyone will efficiently get 2-3% less for their money.
If Germany are doing fine, I don't want to know what your standard of reference is supposed to be. Oh, and before you start: Yes I know Germany, I've been living here for the last 4 years.
Socialism ain't the problem though, it's not really defensible to call the current SPD/CDU/CSU government "socialist" even though I guess the SPD is on paper.
[1] Basic problem is, no "amt" is capable of communicating with any other "amt", not even itself. This results in absurdities like when you want to register a newly born child you need to go to "standesamt", get a marriage-certificate for the parents, then give the same piece of paper back to the same person as a proof that the parents are married. The "Beamte" is prevented by law from trusting himself unless he's first printed the certificate out, handed it to you, and received it back. I could give literally dozens of such absurd examples from first hand accounts after less than half a decade in germany.
He's an American. In USA "socialism" means (aproximately) "Bad Thing", it doesn't have anything much to do with the actual normal meaning of socialism.
It's used as a ghost: "X is socialism" is supposed to preclude further debate, because it's assumed by default that anything that can be associated with socialism is automatically bad, regardless of actual merits.
I never said it was clear-cut. All I said is there are arguments both ways.
I kinda doubt the alternative firmware as such would lead to more support-requests. It would when people go about installing it themselves (and occasionally messing it up in the process offcourse) but I doubt it would if it came preinstalled like the normal firmware.
After all the normal firmware was linux too, up until recently. Changing one linux-firmware for another that is similar, except it has had bugs fixed and features added shouldn't really increase support-costs. If anything the fixed bugs should reduce it.
A book cipher can be *very* strong (almost like a one-time cipher) *if* the source text is sufficiently rare (or obscure).
Only with sufficient stirring and a good crypto-algorithm, the simple traditional book-ciphers where you essentially do message-text XOR book = ciphertext and then later ciphertext xor book = plaintext is horribly insecure.
The problem is that even if the book is (and remains) unknown, the book is probably written in some human language, quite likely even english. Which means there'll be a lot more "e" than "x", and also tells you a lot about sequences (i.e. th is much more likely to be followed by "e" than by "w".)
mp3s are actually a lot better than books, since they're compressed they also have more entropy, (if I quote 5 bytes from a book you'll have better luck predicting the next byte than if I quote 5 bytes from a mp3.)
Works both ways. Sure, you can have a company deal with the software. They won't do it for free though, and this is a very low-cost low-margin router.
Besides, I'm not that surprised if the Linux-firmware is adopted to also run on the half-ram version over the next few months, they'll have to sacrifice some functionality, but it's certainly not impossible: I've made Linux-routers that boot and run of a single 1.4MB floppy.
Depends -- Linksys could have gone the other direction and started delivering the more feature-rich OS-firmware by default (or as an option). This would allow them to sell what you call "a $600 router" for $60.
They are not the only router-manufacturer. It is offcourse true that Linksys would rather you buy an expensive router from then than a cheap one. But on the other hand it's also true they would rather you buy a cheap router from then than an expensive one from their competition.
You talk as if you're not aware that the dollar has been, relative to the Euro for example, falling steadily for years.
If I got an IOU for a dollar from you in say January 2002 (shortly after the euro was introduced) this was exchangeable for 1.13 euro. One year later it was only worth 94 eurocents, today it is worth 84 eurocents.
Your comparison to salary is broken in two important respects: First, you generally spend a significant part of your salary for goods and services relatively shortly after you receive it. This minimizes the chanse that the value will have changed (much) before you get to enjoy the benefits of it.
Secondly, you generally are paid in the same valuta that you spend, which means that fluctuations in exchange-rates are only relevant to the degree they influence local inflation (somewhat offcourse).
You are really saying the same thing I am: IOUs are only worth as much as your confidence that they'll be made good on at some future date. The question thus is: how confident are we that the USA will in the future start to pull their weigth ? (as in produce and sell as much as they consume)
The answer, as it turns out has been for the last few years: less and less confident.
This is what the exchange-rate measures afterall: How confident people are that they'll be able to buy how much for the IOUs. In 2002 people generally thougth a USD IOU was 13% *more* worth than a EUR IOU, today they're instead worth 16% *less*.
Military spendings. The rest of the world cares because, and this migth surprise you, not all of it is happy living on a planet dominated by one single military superpower that essentially dictates its will on the rest of the planet. This is true even for many that are allies of the USA. It's not only what you *do*, it's what you *could* do. Domination by a single party seldom leads to anything good.
US spendings on military are also not explained by the size of your economy. It's large, but it's *not* larger than the next ten on the list combined. Not even half close. China and Japan alone have a bigger economy than the US, but it takes another 11 countries after those to add up to your military spendings.
It is indeed about average for the world, because there's a lot of countries in conflict-regions and/or with dictatory leaders that spend ridicolous amounts. I'm not sure you really *want* to be compared with those though. (How large a fraction does North Korea spend again ?) For a industrialized country in peace, without agressive neighbours and with no real threat against you it's high, very high.
Listen, the Oslo district does indeed have half a million people, which as you point out is 10% of the population. But that's only because the population is so small. By US standards a half-million city is not exactly a metropolis.
By any metric you care to name Norway has a lower urbanisation than the USA, as well as a lower concentration in cities than just about every other European country. The average population of the around 400 administrative districts is all of 10.000, the mean somewhat lower than that again.
You are correct that hydroelectric helps Norway generate pollution-free electricity. But I already pointed out that the data looks much the same if you compare to say Germany or Sweden, countries *without* significant hydroelectric power. Also, as you yourself noticed: even if USA got all of its electricity totally pollution-free starting tomorrow -- you'd *still* be polluting more pro/capita as well as pro/dollar-produced.
Just take that negative export balance, for example. This is in fact generally speaking a big benefit to the rest of the world.
A very curious view.
Consider the simplified situation: There are only two families in the world, mine and yours. Every year I send products to you with a total value of $1000, you send products worth $500 in return, and for the rest I get IOUs.
Are you saying this situation benefits me ? Short term ? Because it produces "jobs" for my family? Problem is, jobs only bring something when they're paid, I *don't* get paid for my excess jobs, I get IOUs and my family cannot live from those.
I *now* give away more than I *now* get back. When I do it anyway it's either because I expect that you'll make good on your IOUs in the future, thus that a negative flow of goods now will be compensated by a positive one in the future, or it's because of some altruistic motive of mine.
With the USA it's similar: the negative export-balance works because foreigners are willing to lend money to the USA and invest in American companies, in the expectation that this will pay off in the future.
Now, I personally consider it quite likely that that will happen, but currently it very obviously isn't happening.
In any case the export balance was one of many examples.
Do Americans ever stop to wonder if it makes sense for you to spend more on military than the 10 next countries on the top-spenders list *combined* ?
First, I was talking *currently* not *historically*.
I wasn't saying USA *never* contributed positively to the world, I was saying *currently* there's atleast the perception that you guys are more of a problem than of a help.
You can't counter this by stating that you do some positive things. That is beyond any doubt. But the thing is, there's a lot of problems too, and to evaluate the net effect you need to subtract one from the other, which doesn't give such an obvious answer.
You have a (very) negative export balance. This means, to put it simple, that the stuff going into the USA is worth more than the stuff coming out of the USA. It also only works aslong as foreigners are willing to invest in the USA or grant Americans and/or American companies and the American government loans.
You do some research, thus helping to solve some of our problems, on the other hand you also *cause* or at the very least *contribute* to a lot of those problems.
You also like to have wars. Your military spendings are not only the largest in the world, but indeed larger than the 10 next biggest spenders *combined*, now you like to paint this as playing the "police of the world" and sometimes this migth even be warranted, nevertheless that's not universally true not universally accepted.
Historically, I agree with you -- the USA has contributed a lot to a lot of good stuff. These days I'm no longer so sure. Don't even get me *started* on your election system, your self-imagined image as the centre of democracy in the world looks rather tattered from without.
Yes it does. The GDP pro capita of the USA is around $40.000 pro capita. This is second only to Luxemburg in the 2004 CIA world factbook, for 2005 Guernsey, Jersey and Norway will also pass the USA. Still, it's among the highest in the world.
Sure, lots of this is internally consumed *services*, and you're correct to point out that USA has a large (and growing) trade-deficit. It does produce a lot -- but alas, there's more imports than exports. Especially energy. Thus reducing your energy-consumption should be important not only to those of us in the world that care about pollution, but also to those americans that care about being able to buy anything with your dollars in the future.
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You "really don't see" why it's all bad for an *innocent* person to be imprisoned for 28 days on the whim of any random police-officer ?
I should be "ashamed of myself" for defending essential freedoms ? (such as the rigth to be assumed innocent until proven otherwise and the rigth not to be imprisoned without first being convicted in a court of law)
There's a quote that fits your line of arguments very well:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
By the way, you are stupid to assume that anyone with a ".no" adress is a "Norwegian in a very homogenous environment", for all you know I could be living in the Bronx. (I'm not, but neither am I living in Norway or in a homogenous environment) Not that I see why living in a heterogenous environment is an argument in favour of relinquishing essential liberties.
On the other hand, I doubt it if anyone would miss it if all such "services" where to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow.
The fact that people can often blame themselves for getting scammed doesn't automatically imply that trying to scam people is OK. Yes, people who fall for the Nigeria scams have themselves to blame, this doesn't mean that the senders of those mails don't belong in jail.
Today, in Norway it works like this: The police can, on their own, arrest you and hold you for up to 48 hours if they have what seems (to them!) reason to believe you're guilty of a crime exceeding some minimum treshold and reason to believe that leaving you free would make further investigation difficult or mean a large risk of you running away.
If they want to hold you longer than that they need to appear before a judge and present their evidence. This evidence doesn't need to amount to "proof" in the strict sense needed to convict someone, however the judge needs to agree there's reasonable grounds for suspicion. There's an attorney working *your* side of the case present at this meeting with a judge. If the police are convincing, the judge may order you further detained for up to 3 more weeks.
There are indeed people it's good to hold for a while even if you have no proof. There are indeed people that are good to stop even if they just look suspicious.
Yes, but there are also people who "look suspicious" yet are perfectly innocent. "stopping" one of those is very bad, I don't think you realize the magnitude of how bad. It is better to let 10 guilty ones run free than to imprison even a single innocent it is said, this should apply also here.
I just prefer to err on the side of caution.
So does the justice-system, only that doesn't lead to the "imprison everyone suspicious" conclusion you seem to believe in. Rather the principle of caution is what mandates: If in doubt -- presume innocent. Guilt has to be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Innocense on the other hand is automatically assumed in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
Perhaps someday if you have a car or something else of value you will see the wisdom in being a little over cautious,
Very funny. I do have a car. A 3 month old one I bougth this summer. Aswell as other "things of value" (interesting btw that you mention the car as a first, you must be American, to me the car would never even enter the top-10 list of "things I value")
Instead, I count tops among the things I value stuff like Freedom, my wife and my 15 year old son. And guess what: I worry a lot more about him growing up in a fucking police state than I do about him growing up in a place where possibly some bike-thieves are, when the police is in doubt, left free. And by the way, a police state is what you by definition get if you let the police write all the rules.
Would you honestly say that something is wrong with questioning a 16-year old in a porchse over a 60 year old?
Here, no, because you need to be 18 to drive a car. If it where allowed you can bet I've got something against it if the police starts repeatedly stopping people who do nothing wrong on no other reason than being young and driving an expensive car. That's not a crime, the police should stay the fuck out of it.
Why is any hint of profiling suddenly met with crys of fear?
It isn't about profiling. It's about: "You refuse to tell us the password to these files you claim are loveletters for your wife, therefore we'll keep you imprisoned for a month."
I find that unacceptable. You seem to think it's fine.
Oh, ok, so that makes it okay then. I mean, it's a pretty serious crime and all, refusing to give up your privacy at the random request of a police-officer.(/sarcasm)
The police are NEVER holding you just because you refuse to give up your privacy, they are holding you for some other reason that (to them) seems reasonable.
The key phrase above is "to them". Sorry, but that ain't good enough to justify a month-long sentence. There are obvious reasons a *judge* (and sometimes a *jury*) decide which evidence is good enough to hold someone imprisoned, and not just some random police-officer.
Them holding you is not about your privacy whatsoever, as they WILL eventually crack the hard drive and read all the contents if they wish. It's just a question of the timeframe they are holding you while they do so.
First: in most cases the "timeframe" for crypto is either so short it makes no difference (hours) or so long it migth aswell be forever (millenia). Surely you'er not saying people who refuse to give up their keys should be held until AES-256 can be bruteforced ?
Secondly, your claim is disingenious. A police officer stands before you and say: "Give me the password and go home today. Refuse to give it to me, and stay for 28 days" You claim this situation has "nothing whatsoever" with the rigth to keep privacy to do, I think many people would see that a bit different.
but to some extent it is out of the ordinary and if you are going to be doing unusual things around police why is it such a burden to carry some proof what you're doing is OK?
Yeah, why not. Why not turn our justice-system on its head and demand that lawful citizens be prepared and willing to at all times proove to any random police-officer that they posess the items they carry with them. Innocent until proven guilty should be turned around: Anyone is guilty, and should be held in jail for 28 days unless they proove they're innocent.
Oh yeah, and they should be prepared to proove so over and over and over again, in this case dozens of times a year. If you're black and own expensive stuff you should accept having to always carry around half a dozen prooves of purchase and show them to policemen who will demand it from you on every second streetcorner. Nothing wrong with this picture whatsoever, nosire!
Yes, Sweden is astounding. Sweden is basically (ok so simplified, but this is Slashdot) Norway minus the oil. and with less hydro-power. It comes as no big surprise that oil-industries pollute, there's refineries and shit in norway, and those aren't exactly eco-friendly. The hydropower helps compensate some of that, but as your numbers show, obviously not enough to fully compensate.
Sure, the police will mostly have some sort of reason for arresting you, problem is, the reason doesn't need to be checked by anyone, nor hold up in court. So in practice it can be anything. Google for "driving while black" for one category of examples.
I have a vietnamese friend that is a MTB-half-pro, using a very expensive bike. (around $5000) Last year he got towed in to the police-station *4* times "suspected" of having stolen the bike. He then had to proove his innocence to be let go. After that he is now carrying a copy of the buying-contract for the bike at all times, to spare himself the trouble. This far he's had to proove to the police no less than 17 times that he actually owns the bike he rides.
I find that unacceptable. I don't think it's a good idea to invent a new type of crime that basically amounts to "being muslim and having a encrypted file", and I *certainly* find it unacceptable to hold a person for 90 days for *any* reason simply at the whim of the police.
To me it seems, one of the major problems in Germany is fear. People are scared. A lot of people have decent money, and if they started spending it, it'd help the economy, which then again would help the job-situation, which would give more people more money etc.
Only it's not happening. Instead we've got two classes of people: those who're not spending because they have nothing to spend. And those that are not spending because they don't know if they'll have something to spend next year.
I freely admit to being in the latter group. My wife and I give out around 2000 euro a month. Our current finances would easily allow us to up that to 3000. Only we don't know how long we'll have jobs, and how the salaries will be, so we figure it's safer to save some.
Thus the negative spirale continues. I guess it also doesn't make it better when the money saved is invested in foreign companies. Our money is mostly in scandinavia, the far east and non-euro europa. That doesn't help the german economy. I imagine there's *many* people like us.
You are saying that the only reason an arrested person would refuse to let the police know the encryption key is because he's got something criminal to hide.
I'm saying there's a lot of stuff you migth want to keep hidden for lots of reasons, other than the stuff in question being illegal.
I agree that the Euro-stability-pact can go f*ck itself, allthough I find it dishonest that the politicians *first* sign it, *then* break it 4 years in a row, but *still* don't want to renegotiate it. What's the point of having deals noone are planning on following ?
The interesting thing is that France, Sweden, UK and Finland, for example, send *more* money to the new states (relative to their GDP) than do Germany, still all of those countries are in quite different situations. (OK, so France has problems of its own, I'll grant you that)
I teach Norwegian for adults here. And every half-year there's like a dozen people that come and start learning, most for the express reason that they want to get out. I can't even really blame them. With Scandinavian eyes the way employers here (and I don't mean only in the east, I've got experiences from Mannheim, Frankfurt and Hamburg too) is simply mindboggling. "You're replacable, shut up and bend over" seems to be the prevalent attitude.
Then show me a source that shows the Norwegian population to be more "concentrated" than the US one. It's simply not true, plain and simple.
I'm sure you're rigth that the fact that Sweden gets around 20% of their electric power from hydropower explains why they only release *half* as much CO2 pro capita as the US, and only around 60% so much CO2 pro-dollar-produced. That makes tons of sense. Not.
The interesting thing about this debate is that you'll always find an American (or more) that insists that whatever the reason is, it cannot *possibly* have *anything* with US lifestyle to do, but is instead *only* a result of different circumstances.
This happens in spite of some differences being so obvious that it's absolutely painfully obvious to anyone who's spent time in various regions.
An average US car weighs significantly more than an average European car, even compared to countries that have a wealthier population than the USA.
There are *more* cars pro capita in the USA than in most any other country, including those where there's no logical reason cars are "less needed" (your "norway is compact" claim ain't gonna fly)
US building-standards prescribe *significantly* less heat-insulation than what is common in large parts of Europe, which adds to cost for AC and heating alike.
Yet, these things, that are painfully obvious, are never the reason, not even part of the reason. That would mean America had some kind of influence on it all, and that impression can't be allowed to stand.
It's amusing really. It never ceases to amaze me. You and me need only look out the window, and quite likely in 10 minutes we'll have independently verified that yes, there *are* more V8 3 ton SUVs in USA than just about anywhere else.
I understand it when nonstandard stuff is complicated, but here we're talking a process that is as bog-standard as it gets: a child is born, in Germany, with german parents and should be registered as a german citizen. This is something that happens 1000 times a year in this city alone.
I counted. The process involves visiting 6 different agencies with a sum total of 22 different documents in totally 65 copies, meaning most of the agencies require nearly or even precisely the same documentation.
It's just stupidity. It costs literally millions for people who do nothing more than move paper around. For example, the application for "kindergeld" and "erziehungsgeld" requires *precisely* the same documentation, and since *everyone* gets "kindergeld" the entire application-process for erziehungsgeld could be replaced with a single checkbox on the already existing form for kindergeld.
Only the "erziehungsgeld" is for unfathomable reasons paid by the department of work ("Arbeidamt") inspite of having nothing to do with work whatsoever (you get it even if you never held a job in your life...), and the different agencies are incapable of communicating, so you gotta do the same thing twice. The same process, by contrast, in Norway consists of the following: Show up for the birth bringing along some kind of ID. After the child is born, sign the pre-filled form the hospital put before you. That's it. (it's sligthly more complicated if the parents *arent* married, in that case a "declaration of fatherhood" and a signature from the father is required additionally)
Germany has ridicolous unemployment, over 10% on average and well over 20% in some areas. Those are the offical numbers excluding tons of people (for example underemployed, people who've given up getting a job, people who are studying *because* they couldn't find a job, people on different reeducation-projects, people doing 1-euro-jobs, people doing a minijob etc) if you define "unemployed" as "is able and willing to work, but still has no job from which (s)he can live" then the unemployment is easily twice the offical numbers.
Population is sinking, in some districts drastically. Where I live the population has fallen 30% since 1990, leaving literally thousands of apartments empty. One problem is, there's not even enough money to tear down some of the useless buildings.
Savings are across the board. I live in a city of around 100.000 people. It doesn't even have a *single* public swimhall. (it does have a single privately owned "funbath" that receives some public funds) Social Security is definitely in the range where it's "Too much to die from, to little to live from". Huge amounts of money are wasted in a humongous, inefficient, nonrational, surreal bureaucracy.[1] At the same time Germany will break the EU stability pact for the 4th year in a row, and have already announced they'll not be able to keep it next year either.
Most people have had a massive reduction in buying-power over the last few years, and the trend continues. These days they want to increase the VAT by 2-3%, meaning everyone will efficiently get 2-3% less for their money.
If Germany are doing fine, I don't want to know what your standard of reference is supposed to be. Oh, and before you start: Yes I know Germany, I've been living here for the last 4 years.
Socialism ain't the problem though, it's not really defensible to call the current SPD/CDU/CSU government "socialist" even though I guess the SPD is on paper.
[1] Basic problem is, no "amt" is capable of communicating with any other "amt", not even itself. This results in absurdities like when you want to register a newly born child you need to go to "standesamt", get a marriage-certificate for the parents, then give the same piece of paper back to the same person as a proof that the parents are married. The "Beamte" is prevented by law from trusting himself unless he's first printed the certificate out, handed it to you, and received it back. I could give literally dozens of such absurd examples from first hand accounts after less than half a decade in germany.
It's used as a ghost: "X is socialism" is supposed to preclude further debate, because it's assumed by default that anything that can be associated with socialism is automatically bad, regardless of actual merits.
I kinda doubt the alternative firmware as such would lead to more support-requests. It would when people go about installing it themselves (and occasionally messing it up in the process offcourse) but I doubt it would if it came preinstalled like the normal firmware.
After all the normal firmware was linux too, up until recently. Changing one linux-firmware for another that is similar, except it has had bugs fixed and features added shouldn't really increase support-costs. If anything the fixed bugs should reduce it.
Only with sufficient stirring and a good crypto-algorithm, the simple traditional book-ciphers where you essentially do message-text XOR book = ciphertext and then later ciphertext xor book = plaintext is horribly insecure.
The problem is that even if the book is (and remains) unknown, the book is probably written in some human language, quite likely even english. Which means there'll be a lot more "e" than "x", and also tells you a lot about sequences (i.e. th is much more likely to be followed by "e" than by "w".)
mp3s are actually a lot better than books, since they're compressed they also have more entropy, (if I quote 5 bytes from a book you'll have better luck predicting the next byte than if I quote 5 bytes from a mp3.)
I hope you don't really believe that.
Besides, I'm not that surprised if the Linux-firmware is adopted to also run on the half-ram version over the next few months, they'll have to sacrifice some functionality, but it's certainly not impossible: I've made Linux-routers that boot and run of a single 1.4MB floppy.
They are not the only router-manufacturer. It is offcourse true that Linksys would rather you buy an expensive router from then than a cheap one. But on the other hand it's also true they would rather you buy a cheap router from then than an expensive one from their competition.
If I got an IOU for a dollar from you in say January 2002 (shortly after the euro was introduced) this was exchangeable for 1.13 euro. One year later it was only worth 94 eurocents, today it is worth 84 eurocents.
Your comparison to salary is broken in two important respects: First, you generally spend a significant part of your salary for goods and services relatively shortly after you receive it. This minimizes the chanse that the value will have changed (much) before you get to enjoy the benefits of it.
Secondly, you generally are paid in the same valuta that you spend, which means that fluctuations in exchange-rates are only relevant to the degree they influence local inflation (somewhat offcourse).
You are really saying the same thing I am: IOUs are only worth as much as your confidence that they'll be made good on at some future date. The question thus is: how confident are we that the USA will in the future start to pull their weigth ? (as in produce and sell as much as they consume)
The answer, as it turns out has been for the last few years: less and less confident.
This is what the exchange-rate measures afterall: How confident people are that they'll be able to buy how much for the IOUs. In 2002 people generally thougth a USD IOU was 13% *more* worth than a EUR IOU, today they're instead worth 16% *less*.
Military spendings. The rest of the world cares because, and this migth surprise you, not all of it is happy living on a planet dominated by one single military superpower that essentially dictates its will on the rest of the planet. This is true even for many that are allies of the USA. It's not only what you *do*, it's what you *could* do. Domination by a single party seldom leads to anything good.
US spendings on military are also not explained by the size of your economy. It's large, but it's *not* larger than the next ten on the list combined. Not even half close. China and Japan alone have a bigger economy than the US, but it takes another 11 countries after those to add up to your military spendings.
It is indeed about average for the world, because there's a lot of countries in conflict-regions and/or with dictatory leaders that spend ridicolous amounts. I'm not sure you really *want* to be compared with those though. (How large a fraction does North Korea spend again ?) For a industrialized country in peace, without agressive neighbours and with no real threat against you it's high, very high.
Listen, the Oslo district does indeed have half a million people, which as you point out is 10% of the population. But that's only because the population is so small. By US standards a half-million city is not exactly a metropolis.
By any metric you care to name Norway has a lower urbanisation than the USA, as well as a lower concentration in cities than just about every other European country. The average population of the around 400 administrative districts is all of 10.000, the mean somewhat lower than that again.
You are correct that hydroelectric helps Norway generate pollution-free electricity. But I already pointed out that the data looks much the same if you compare to say Germany or Sweden, countries *without* significant hydroelectric power. Also, as you yourself noticed: even if USA got all of its electricity totally pollution-free starting tomorrow -- you'd *still* be polluting more pro/capita as well as pro/dollar-produced.
A very curious view.
Consider the simplified situation: There are only two families in the world, mine and yours. Every year I send products to you with a total value of $1000, you send products worth $500 in return, and for the rest I get IOUs.
Are you saying this situation benefits me ? Short term ? Because it produces "jobs" for my family? Problem is, jobs only bring something when they're paid, I *don't* get paid for my excess jobs, I get IOUs and my family cannot live from those.
I *now* give away more than I *now* get back. When I do it anyway it's either because I expect that you'll make good on your IOUs in the future, thus that a negative flow of goods now will be compensated by a positive one in the future, or it's because of some altruistic motive of mine.
With the USA it's similar: the negative export-balance works because foreigners are willing to lend money to the USA and invest in American companies, in the expectation that this will pay off in the future.
Now, I personally consider it quite likely that that will happen, but currently it very obviously isn't happening.
In any case the export balance was one of many examples.
Do Americans ever stop to wonder if it makes sense for you to spend more on military than the 10 next countries on the top-spenders list *combined* ?
I wasn't saying USA *never* contributed positively to the world, I was saying *currently* there's atleast the perception that you guys are more of a problem than of a help.
You can't counter this by stating that you do some positive things. That is beyond any doubt. But the thing is, there's a lot of problems too, and to evaluate the net effect you need to subtract one from the other, which doesn't give such an obvious answer.
You have a (very) negative export balance. This means, to put it simple, that the stuff going into the USA is worth more than the stuff coming out of the USA. It also only works aslong as foreigners are willing to invest in the USA or grant Americans and/or American companies and the American government loans.
You do some research, thus helping to solve some of our problems, on the other hand you also *cause* or at the very least *contribute* to a lot of those problems.
You also like to have wars. Your military spendings are not only the largest in the world, but indeed larger than the 10 next biggest spenders *combined*, now you like to paint this as playing the "police of the world" and sometimes this migth even be warranted, nevertheless that's not universally true not universally accepted.
Historically, I agree with you -- the USA has contributed a lot to a lot of good stuff. These days I'm no longer so sure. Don't even get me *started* on your election system, your self-imagined image as the centre of democracy in the world looks rather tattered from without.
Even if they didn't, it's not perjury to state something that is true at the time you say it. Not even if that changes later.
If I state in a court that as far as I know, no human has walked on Mars, I won't get imprisoned for perjury if that fact changes in a few decades.
Yes it does. The GDP pro capita of the USA is around $40.000 pro capita. This is second only to Luxemburg in the 2004 CIA world factbook, for 2005 Guernsey, Jersey and Norway will also pass the USA. Still, it's among the highest in the world.
Sure, lots of this is internally consumed *services*, and you're correct to point out that USA has a large (and growing) trade-deficit. It does produce a lot -- but alas, there's more imports than exports. Especially energy. Thus reducing your energy-consumption should be important not only to those of us in the world that care about pollution, but also to those americans that care about being able to buy anything with your dollars in the future.