Treason has historically been a very very difficult charge to prove in a court of law. It requires either making open war against the US, or in providing assistance to a specific enemy. A confusing bit is that a person cannot be convicted of treason without the testimony of at least two direct witnesses to the act or a full confession in court (I presume because it is pretty much an automatic death sentence).
I'm not sure if I think what Manning did qualifies as treason. I think he might have a defense in that his actions did not provide direct assistance to an enemy. I certainly think this was a huge violation of his oath and obligations as a US serviceman, and there are certainly UCMJ codes that he violated.
Remember though, American Rebels in the 1700's were considered traitors. I am curios to see how History treats Bradley Manning.
Indeed. Proper translation requires some awareness of the cultural context of what is being said. It also requires an awareness of the language, not just the words.
About a year ago we discovered that the name of my company is also an archaic Russian term for gloom and misery. Our promotional materials and documents had the company name in huge font at the top. We found we had to reformat those documents for our target Russian populations.
I'm worried about what the 4chan community will do when the boards are back up again. They're going to be looking for someone to DDoS into oblivion, if they happen to pick the right person that's just a bonus.
Bro, did you read the full report? Here's a direct quote:
This suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the
larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on.
Furthermore, those who had greater exposure to news sources were generally better informed.
In the great majority of cases, those with higher levels of exposure to news sources had lower levels
of misinformation.
There were however a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased
misinformation on a specific issue.
Yahoo reported a "finding" completely out of context, and without the authors very specific qualifications that no single media source is all that trustworthy. Here's another...
Consumers of all sources of media evidenced substantial misinformation, suggesting that false
or misleading information is widespread in the general information environment, just as voters
say they perceive it to be.
Fox News was found to be the single greatest spreader of misinformation than any other single mainstream media source, yes. But the authors were pretty specific that the issue was not with Fox News directly, but with the concept of general reliance on a single media outlet. My personal read on this is that the level of misinformation spread by all mainstream news sources is staggering.
Please come down off your high horse. Misinformation is everywhere. Fox might be the single greatest source of it, but all the big boys are doing it.
In the future, before casually dismissing a political group based on a very limited set of select information, I would suggest you RTF report rather than simply parroting the biased and misleading reporting you find from a single news source.
Homeopathic treatments, as traditionally instructed, are in fact solutions that have been so extremely diluted that there is likely not even a single molecule of the original compound in the final solution. Homeopathic advocates claim that greater dilution of the initial compound actually increases it's potency.
I'm not an expert on the field either, but every expert in a physical science that I've ever read discussing homeopathy finds that there is no way that any residual force, effect, or resonance can carry over to water molecules during the process of diluting the initial compound.
Their reported success has, to the best of our current medical knowledge, been entirely the result of placebo or "ritualized medicine" effects. In the sense that they make people feel better, homeopathic treatments can be successful. In the sense that they have any impact on the underlying illness, they can't. Though I suppose there is some benefit to the hydration they offer a patient.
There's a deeper theme with this list (incl. USS Franklin D. Roosevelt CV 42 that you mention in your follow up).
Almost all of those guys saw Military service, with the exception of FDR (but given that little dustup that he Presided over I doubt anyone would hold that against him). And if memory serves all of them saw combat action, with the exception of Reagan (who was nearsighted and was ineligible for foreign service during WWII). Most of them served with distinction (i.e. Kennedy's PT boat disaster, Teddy Roosevelt's cavalry, G.H.W. Bush's pilotry, and Washington winning America).
The weak point of my thinking here is Reagan, who did volunteer but requested transfer to a stateside film/propaganda unit pretty quickly. The rest of these guys are definitely Military men. Doesn't surprise me that they would have carriers named after them.
Good Teaching/Training really requires both subject matter expertise and an understanding of education theory and instructional design. All to often I hear people with one of those competencies claim that the other is irrelevant. That frustrates me.
I work as a Trainer, currently in a very soft-skills capacity but formerly in a very technical capacity. I've worked with some very good trainers that failed to keep up with the technical content, and with some very talented SME's that were just terrible at simplifying and explaining things. Obviously, I am predisposed towards thinking that both skill-sets are necessary.
Generalists can learn the technical content. SME's can learn the educational methodology. Depending on what the end goal of the learning environment is one of those people might be more appropriate than the other.
Yeah, I feel like what has been happening is that individual users who aren't going to be paying money for business software on their personal machine anyway (like myself), were responding to Genuine Advantage by adopting OpenOffice rather than sticking with MS Office.
As individual users move towards OO, small businesses move towards OO. As OO gets more common, more people feel like OO is an acceptable option. You see where I'm going with this.
Seems like it would be better for Microsoft to keep users on MS Office than push them off MS Office altogether.
The only provider in my area is Comcast. If I don't like Comcast, I am free to not buy their service. But I like having internet in my home, so I deal with Comcast. At the moment it seems that I have no inherent right to the service. And this situation will not change unless/until the US comes to the conclusion that internet access is a right (which is I think where we are heading, but we're not there yet).
What is more free and neutral than having the choice whether or not to pay for a discretionary service?
But I like what you did there AC, changing Libertarian to lolbertarian to imply that their ideals are so patently ridiculous they do not even merit an intelligent counterpoint. That's neat. I bet some third-graders somewhere would be really amused with that.
I always found his "jokes" to be fairly intelligent. He has a way of breaking down complex situations in accessible ways that makes you laugh at how ridiculous they are. I found a lot of his stuff the be kind of like Lewis Black, but much less angry. IMO his career as a comedian gave him some valuable insight into how to manipulate people's perceptions of him. That's an invaluable skill as a politician.
Of course, he was also Stuart Smalley. So that's kind of not doing anything for his image.
The reason given for banning wikileaks was that it could "download trojans or viruses onto military systems". Which, to me, seems like complete bullshit based on a smidgen of truth, but that's their story and they're sticking to it.
The real reason is that they want/need to prevent the spread of classified materials to unclassified workstations. Simply because the wikileaks documents are loose doesn't mean that they are no longer classified. Anytime an Airman uses an Air Force computer to look at classified documents that they shouldn't have access to, there's a big problem. In this case the Air Force is just trying to prevent a situation where it has to scrub the hard drives on all of their workstations.
They could care less if an Airman uses a personal computer, all they need to do is require that the person have their hard drive scrubbed at their own expense. They just don't want to have to assume the cost of cleaning their own networks.
It might be an evil big box chain, but it pays taxes and keeps several dozen jobs in my town. That's definitely better than consolidating those jobs at some online retailers remote distribution center (better for my town anyway).
The thing I like about places like Best Buy is that they make a point to keep live displays. I can actually put my hands on a laptop, or check out a TV before I buy it. I don't mind paying a little more for that convenience.
We (nerds) are fortunate that we don't need to interact with the staff to help us make informed decisions. We just need them to tell us if the thing we want is in stock.
I'll admit the receipt checking is a little inconvenient. Especially when it is obvious I just came through the checkout line. But if it helps with loss prevention, it probably helps to keep their costs down somewhat.
I did this recently with a TV at Best Buy. The sale price on the one I wanted was close enough to what I could find online.
I was able to actually see the TV, see how it looked, and spin the thing around to look at how the I/O ports are configured. I probably paid a little bit more than I would have online, but I firmly believe that the little extra cost is worth it to keep actual displays available at brick-and-mortar mortar locations.
Definitely did not by the extra high quality "HD Optimized" gold plated monster cables though. I might be a little altruistic, but I'm not a fool.
Given the number of times this came up during GWB's Presidency...
Indeed. Bush's indifferent, laissez-faire attitude towards disaster in our nation resurfaced in his bungling of the Katrina disaster, where once again he sat back waiting for the "system" work. Or not.
Someone else already responded to your other points, so I'll just hit on this one. Becuase it is in fact the point I was trying to make.
Katrina was the same issue, Bush had no legal authority to send Federal people or resources into Louisiana until requested and authorized by the state Governer. Then Governer Blanco repeatedly refused requests from the Bush administration and FEMA to allow FEMA take control of relief efforts.
To her credit, Blanco did accept relief provisions and emergency shelters, but refused to relinquish control of the evacuation. She preferred to attempt to handle it internally with local police, National Guard MP's, and some school buses.
Yeah, I've seen that as well. The injustice there is somewhat limited, because if the department head is in tune with what each individual is contributing they will be focusing on how to hit the budget goal while limiting the loss of capable staff. They are free to cut the people who are overpaid for what they produce.
Products do not just sell themselves. From the perspective of actually producing a working product, sure Marketing types aren't going to help with that. From the perspective of selling a product (highlighting its strengths, downplaying its weaknesses, and convincing a potential customer that they need the product ) marketing types are essential.
Real developers might be the ones actually stringing code together to make the computers do fancy things, but there won't be any way to get paid without someone out there selling the product.
Obviously I don't know the kind of work that you do. And it certainly seems like you've had some experiences that has soured your perspective of non-production type jobs. But let me ask you, do you think a business staffed solely by developers doing nothing by direct development will survive? That organizational and marketing junk is critical. It may not be the core product, but it is integral in exchanging that core product for money.
It says that a well regulated militia is necessary for the protection for a free state. Thus in order to allow the people the ability to form a well regulated militia, the people must be allowed to keep and bear arms.
It took him what, like 7 minutes to finish up what he was doing with those kids and move on to responding to the attack? It takes me that long to take a satisfying dump, but you expect him to magically be up to speed on the situation and already be engaged in a response?
I would rather have a President that understands his role in domestic emergency management, and doesn't jump the gun by rashly responding to threats he doesn't fully understand. Unlike some other emergencies during his Presidency, 9/11 was a pretty damn fine example of emergency responders doing their jobs without anybody butting in. Are you really proposing that the nation would have been better served by him terrifying a bunch of schoolchildren to take charge of a response that he was unqualified to personally handle.
Like, maybe getting informed as to what was happening beyond shit whispered in his ear? Calling up National Guard, declaring disaster areas, etc? He's not supossed to do any of that?.
No.... He wasn't really supposed to do any of that. Seriously.
Intelligence activity takes time to come up from analysts through the various levels of filters until it gets to the President. We have entire agencies of analysts whose job it is to figure out what is going on and inform him. At that point him doing his job is saying "keep me informed".
And more importantly, the rest of those responsibilities mostly fall under the State and local government. Specifically the National Guard would have had to have been called up by then Governor Pataki. Local emergency response was handled at the municipal level by Giuliani (quite aggressively I might add, he had to be evacuated from several command posts during the course of the day because buildings were falling down around him).
Unless and until a State Governor officially requests federal assistance, the President literally has no authority to send federal troops or resources. Given the number of times this came up during GWB's Presidency, I am shocked that more people don't understand this.
Your reasoning makes the sci-fi nerd in me nervous that life is either unique to Earth, or somewhat common but very very prone to annihilating other life.
Anheuser-Busch isn't in the business of selling you alcohol. Ultimately, they're in the business of getting you high. While they're currently most efficient at doing that by distributing ethanol, you can bet they could sell other stuff, too.
If you keep carrying on that line of reasoning though, Anheuser-Busch is (like all companies) in the business of making profit. At the moment their core competencies are in the realm of making beer. As long as it is cheaper for them to continue to sell beer then to migrate into a new industry they will do that. Once they think they can make more profit by retooling to another industry, they will.
That's why big-oil is so willing to pursue other energy sources. Because they predict that over time those alternative energy markets will be more profitable than oil alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Treason has historically been a very very difficult charge to prove in a court of law. It requires either making open war against the US, or in providing assistance to a specific enemy. A confusing bit is that a person cannot be convicted of treason without the testimony of at least two direct witnesses to the act or a full confession in court (I presume because it is pretty much an automatic death sentence).
I'm not sure if I think what Manning did qualifies as treason. I think he might have a defense in that his actions did not provide direct assistance to an enemy. I certainly think this was a huge violation of his oath and obligations as a US serviceman, and there are certainly UCMJ codes that he violated.
Remember though, American Rebels in the 1700's were considered traitors. I am curios to see how History treats Bradley Manning.
Indeed. Proper translation requires some awareness of the cultural context of what is being said. It also requires an awareness of the language, not just the words.
About a year ago we discovered that the name of my company is also an archaic Russian term for gloom and misery. Our promotional materials and documents had the company name in huge font at the top. We found we had to reformat those documents for our target Russian populations.
No justice like mob justice!
I'm worried about what the 4chan community will do when the boards are back up again. They're going to be looking for someone to DDoS into oblivion, if they happen to pick the right person that's just a bonus.
Bro, did you read the full report? Here's a direct quote:
This suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on.
Furthermore, those who had greater exposure to news sources were generally better informed. In the great majority of cases, those with higher levels of exposure to news sources had lower levels of misinformation.
There were however a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased misinformation on a specific issue.
Yahoo reported a "finding" completely out of context, and without the authors very specific qualifications that no single media source is all that trustworthy. Here's another...
Consumers of all sources of media evidenced substantial misinformation, suggesting that false or misleading information is widespread in the general information environment, just as voters say they perceive it to be.
Fox News was found to be the single greatest spreader of misinformation than any other single mainstream media source, yes. But the authors were pretty specific that the issue was not with Fox News directly, but with the concept of general reliance on a single media outlet. My personal read on this is that the level of misinformation spread by all mainstream news sources is staggering.
Please come down off your high horse. Misinformation is everywhere. Fox might be the single greatest source of it, but all the big boys are doing it.
In the future, before casually dismissing a political group based on a very limited set of select information, I would suggest you RTF report rather than simply parroting the biased and misleading reporting you find from a single news source.
Homeopathic treatments, as traditionally instructed, are in fact solutions that have been so extremely diluted that there is likely not even a single molecule of the original compound in the final solution. Homeopathic advocates claim that greater dilution of the initial compound actually increases it's potency.
I'm not an expert on the field either, but every expert in a physical science that I've ever read discussing homeopathy finds that there is no way that any residual force, effect, or resonance can carry over to water molecules during the process of diluting the initial compound.
Their reported success has, to the best of our current medical knowledge, been entirely the result of placebo or "ritualized medicine" effects. In the sense that they make people feel better, homeopathic treatments can be successful. In the sense that they have any impact on the underlying illness, they can't. Though I suppose there is some benefit to the hydration they offer a patient.
There's a deeper theme with this list (incl. USS Franklin D. Roosevelt CV 42 that you mention in your follow up).
Almost all of those guys saw Military service, with the exception of FDR (but given that little dustup that he Presided over I doubt anyone would hold that against him). And if memory serves all of them saw combat action, with the exception of Reagan (who was nearsighted and was ineligible for foreign service during WWII). Most of them served with distinction (i.e. Kennedy's PT boat disaster, Teddy Roosevelt's cavalry, G.H.W. Bush's pilotry, and Washington winning America).
The weak point of my thinking here is Reagan, who did volunteer but requested transfer to a stateside film/propaganda unit pretty quickly. The rest of these guys are definitely Military men. Doesn't surprise me that they would have carriers named after them.
Good Teaching/Training really requires both subject matter expertise and an understanding of education theory and instructional design. All to often I hear people with one of those competencies claim that the other is irrelevant. That frustrates me.
I work as a Trainer, currently in a very soft-skills capacity but formerly in a very technical capacity. I've worked with some very good trainers that failed to keep up with the technical content, and with some very talented SME's that were just terrible at simplifying and explaining things. Obviously, I am predisposed towards thinking that both skill-sets are necessary.
Generalists can learn the technical content. SME's can learn the educational methodology. Depending on what the end goal of the learning environment is one of those people might be more appropriate than the other.
Yeah, I feel like what has been happening is that individual users who aren't going to be paying money for business software on their personal machine anyway (like myself), were responding to Genuine Advantage by adopting OpenOffice rather than sticking with MS Office.
As individual users move towards OO, small businesses move towards OO. As OO gets more common, more people feel like OO is an acceptable option. You see where I'm going with this.
Seems like it would be better for Microsoft to keep users on MS Office than push them off MS Office altogether.
I already posted so I can't Mod you up, but I would if I could.
Technically, we still can.
The only provider in my area is Comcast. If I don't like Comcast, I am free to not buy their service. But I like having internet in my home, so I deal with Comcast. At the moment it seems that I have no inherent right to the service. And this situation will not change unless/until the US comes to the conclusion that internet access is a right (which is I think where we are heading, but we're not there yet).
What is more free and neutral than having the choice whether or not to pay for a discretionary service?
But I like what you did there AC, changing Libertarian to lolbertarian to imply that their ideals are so patently ridiculous they do not even merit an intelligent counterpoint. That's neat. I bet some third-graders somewhere would be really amused with that.
I always found his "jokes" to be fairly intelligent. He has a way of breaking down complex situations in accessible ways that makes you laugh at how ridiculous they are. I found a lot of his stuff the be kind of like Lewis Black, but much less angry. IMO his career as a comedian gave him some valuable insight into how to manipulate people's perceptions of him. That's an invaluable skill as a politician.
Of course, he was also Stuart Smalley. So that's kind of not doing anything for his image.
The reason given for banning wikileaks was that it could "download trojans or viruses onto military systems". Which, to me, seems like complete bullshit based on a smidgen of truth, but that's their story and they're sticking to it.
The real reason is that they want/need to prevent the spread of classified materials to unclassified workstations. Simply because the wikileaks documents are loose doesn't mean that they are no longer classified. Anytime an Airman uses an Air Force computer to look at classified documents that they shouldn't have access to, there's a big problem. In this case the Air Force is just trying to prevent a situation where it has to scrub the hard drives on all of their workstations.
They could care less if an Airman uses a personal computer, all they need to do is require that the person have their hard drive scrubbed at their own expense. They just don't want to have to assume the cost of cleaning their own networks.
It might be an evil big box chain, but it pays taxes and keeps several dozen jobs in my town. That's definitely better than consolidating those jobs at some online retailers remote distribution center (better for my town anyway).
The thing I like about places like Best Buy is that they make a point to keep live displays. I can actually put my hands on a laptop, or check out a TV before I buy it. I don't mind paying a little more for that convenience.
We (nerds) are fortunate that we don't need to interact with the staff to help us make informed decisions. We just need them to tell us if the thing we want is in stock.
I'll admit the receipt checking is a little inconvenient. Especially when it is obvious I just came through the checkout line. But if it helps with loss prevention, it probably helps to keep their costs down somewhat.
I did this recently with a TV at Best Buy. The sale price on the one I wanted was close enough to what I could find online.
I was able to actually see the TV, see how it looked, and spin the thing around to look at how the I/O ports are configured. I probably paid a little bit more than I would have online, but I firmly believe that the little extra cost is worth it to keep actual displays available at brick-and-mortar mortar locations.
Definitely did not by the extra high quality "HD Optimized" gold plated monster cables though. I might be a little altruistic, but I'm not a fool.
Given the number of times this came up during GWB's Presidency...
Indeed. Bush's indifferent, laissez-faire attitude towards disaster in our nation resurfaced in his bungling of the Katrina disaster, where once again he sat back waiting for the "system" work. Or not.
Someone else already responded to your other points, so I'll just hit on this one. Becuase it is in fact the point I was trying to make.
Katrina was the same issue, Bush had no legal authority to send Federal people or resources into Louisiana until requested and authorized by the state Governer. Then Governer Blanco repeatedly refused requests from the Bush administration and FEMA to allow FEMA take control of relief efforts.
To her credit, Blanco did accept relief provisions and emergency shelters, but refused to relinquish control of the evacuation. She preferred to attempt to handle it internally with local police, National Guard MP's, and some school buses.
Yeah, I've seen that as well. The injustice there is somewhat limited, because if the department head is in tune with what each individual is contributing they will be focusing on how to hit the budget goal while limiting the loss of capable staff. They are free to cut the people who are overpaid for what they produce.
Specialization of labor FTW!
Products do not just sell themselves. From the perspective of actually producing a working product, sure Marketing types aren't going to help with that. From the perspective of selling a product (highlighting its strengths, downplaying its weaknesses, and convincing a potential customer that they need the product ) marketing types are essential.
Real developers might be the ones actually stringing code together to make the computers do fancy things, but there won't be any way to get paid without someone out there selling the product.
Obviously I don't know the kind of work that you do. And it certainly seems like you've had some experiences that has soured your perspective of non-production type jobs. But let me ask you, do you think a business staffed solely by developers doing nothing by direct development will survive? That organizational and marketing junk is critical. It may not be the core product, but it is integral in exchanging that core product for money.
No, it doesn't.
It says that a well regulated militia is necessary for the protection for a free state. Thus in order to allow the people the ability to form a well regulated militia, the people must be allowed to keep and bear arms.
It took him what, like 7 minutes to finish up what he was doing with those kids and move on to responding to the attack? It takes me that long to take a satisfying dump, but you expect him to magically be up to speed on the situation and already be engaged in a response?
I would rather have a President that understands his role in domestic emergency management, and doesn't jump the gun by rashly responding to threats he doesn't fully understand. Unlike some other emergencies during his Presidency, 9/11 was a pretty damn fine example of emergency responders doing their jobs without anybody butting in. Are you really proposing that the nation would have been better served by him terrifying a bunch of schoolchildren to take charge of a response that he was unqualified to personally handle.
For God's sake, AC, think of the children!
Like, maybe getting informed as to what was happening beyond shit whispered in his ear? Calling up National Guard, declaring disaster areas, etc? He's not supossed to do any of that?.
No.... He wasn't really supposed to do any of that. Seriously.
Intelligence activity takes time to come up from analysts through the various levels of filters until it gets to the President. We have entire agencies of analysts whose job it is to figure out what is going on and inform him. At that point him doing his job is saying "keep me informed".
And more importantly, the rest of those responsibilities mostly fall under the State and local government. Specifically the National Guard would have had to have been called up by then Governor Pataki. Local emergency response was handled at the municipal level by Giuliani (quite aggressively I might add, he had to be evacuated from several command posts during the course of the day because buildings were falling down around him).
Unless and until a State Governor officially requests federal assistance, the President literally has no authority to send federal troops or resources. Given the number of times this came up during GWB's Presidency, I am shocked that more people don't understand this.
Your reasoning makes the sci-fi nerd in me nervous that life is either unique to Earth, or somewhat common but very very prone to annihilating other life.
Anheuser-Busch isn't in the business of selling you alcohol. Ultimately, they're in the business of getting you high. While they're currently most efficient at doing that by distributing ethanol, you can bet they could sell other stuff, too.
If you keep carrying on that line of reasoning though, Anheuser-Busch is (like all companies) in the business of making profit. At the moment their core competencies are in the realm of making beer. As long as it is cheaper for them to continue to sell beer then to migrate into a new industry they will do that. Once they think they can make more profit by retooling to another industry, they will.
That's why big-oil is so willing to pursue other energy sources. Because they predict that over time those alternative energy markets will be more profitable than oil alone.
Returns?