Violate? Posse Comitatus specifically grants POTUS the authority to use federal troops and resources in case of insurrection. That seems like exactly the kind of situation where the government might want to shut down the internet.
Not saying I support it. Just saying the legal groundwork is already in place.
My take is that these companies are trying to make money on providing access to the internet (which they already do to some degree). If you think of the internet like the public highway system (as the GP suggests) you have to see the attempt to monitize access as a bad thing. Like highways and airwaves, cyberspace ought to be treated as a public resource. Everyone should be able to expect that once they put their bits onto the internet that their bits be treated the same as everyone else's.
Companies ought to be able to provide services and make money on those services. I have a hard time seeing how they ought to be making money from the tubes themselves.
Actually your example is perfect, that is one of the reasons I prefer to use a local Credit Union rather than a national bank. I have no real guarantee that they won't outsource a call center, but based on the model and scope of their business I can feel reasonably comfortable that they won't.
But that's the point. Maybe your internal security is fine. Do you know how secure the Indian Governments data streams are? Do you think you would have any ability to increase that security if you found a weakness?
I'll second that because I see you got modded flamebait as well. It's nothing against Indians or companies that operate in India, but data disclosure is something you need to be aware of. If a company is going to be distributing your information you need to know who it goes to and why they want it. The fact that this would apply to every company that operates in India seems very relevant.
Maybe you decide it's ok that the Indian government gets ahold of your data. Maybe your data is sensitive and you don't want any government obtaining it. It's worth paying attention to at the very least.
Far better to let the child die from a possibly curable infection. That is why our current civilized society never offers experimental treatments to people after informing them of the risks, ever.
And a more correct analogy would be that instead of headlights they removed the part of the car that also makes it work as a boat. Still perfectly capable of working as a car, but no longer able to perform a seldom used and impractical "other" service.
I'm sorry, I think I missed the part of the article where they interviewed the Sony Killbot that was sent to this guy's house to mess with his PS3, can you link it?
(Serious Face) There was an update, he had to agree to an updated EULA before he downloaded. He misinterpreted the EULA as an April Fools joke. This is unfortunate, but ultimately his own damn fault for agreeing to something without understanding it. Nothing was stolen. Sony just pushed an update out to their OS. If he wants to run Linux so bad, he is perfectly free to open up his PS3 and do it himself. If he's not capable of doing that without relying on Sony's PS3 OS to do it for him then that's his problem.
For what it's worth, some of us actually do enjoy the American style as well as the fuller more flavorful styles.
Budweiser and Coors is crap. If you're looking for a halfway decent American lager, try Pabst Blue Ribbon or Narraganset. Much better flavor while still being an incredibly light beer.
Modifying your own console so that you can execute backups that YOU CREATED from original discs YOU OWN is illegal in the USA
No it's not. Not even a little bit.
Modifying your own console...punishable under the DMCA.
That's not correct either. It is the backup copy of the software that violates the DMCA. Buying the game disk grants you a single software license that is limited to the media, the backup is considered a new unlicensed copy.
I can do anything I want to modify my console. It is copies of licensed software that get people in trouble. When that copy is distributed and used by other people who never paid for the game we call it piracy. When the copy is used by the person who paid for the game because they want to preserve their original media we call it a backup. In the US these backups are grouped with pirated copies. To me this seems dumb.
Unfortunately the "screw you guys, we gonna do do what we want. its gonna be really cool and super awesome, and you guys can't come" method of governance is not exactly a stable one. And doesn't do anything towards addressing the concern, reconciling the disagreement, and coming to a civil and reasoned resolution.
I refuse to allow the beliefs of anybody to get in the way of scientific research.
While I agree in general with the rest of your post, I feel like I have to caution you about this point. There are a lot of arguments (some more valid than others) that a human embryo is a potential person and is deserving of the rights and protections of any other human. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I don't know that it is completely untrue either.
We would not terminate a person for the purpose of harvesting their organs. An adult human is capable of expressing a desire to donate their organs, but the default without an expressed preference would be to not take those organs. If one is of the opinion that the embryo is in some way a human being, then it would seem to me to be unethical to harvest from them without their express permission.
Again I am not claiming that I think an embryo is a person, but a lot of people do feel that way. The fact that this is still hotly debated says to me that as a society we have not reached a consensus.
During the interview process, the tech lead sees from my resume that I have a lot of experience and knowledge, and then sees from his overly-targeted interview questions that I am not expert on the specific thing he happens to be working on day and night at the moment. Based on a "failed" interview, the tech lead is able to dismiss a potential leadership threat.
I don't mean to offend you, and I am very sure that this kind of thing happens...occasionally. It does not seem unreasonable to me that an interviewer would reject an applicant that does not have the specific technical expertise that they are looking for. All that other experience and knowledge is great, except they may not need it and don't want to have to pay for it. If what they are looking for is someone that has expertise in that specific thing, why would the bring in someone that doesn't have the skills?
Plus, you assume that the tech lead seeking to preserve his authority is a bad thing. Why would they want to bring in someone highly experienced (possibly overqualified?) to perform a very specific role?. Eventually that highly experienced person will be wanting to apply their other experience, and there won't be enough Indians left to actually get the work done.
I'm sure that age discrimination happens. But I think it is more likely that potential employers are discriminating against the huge amount of experience that older workers have, that companies don't want to pay for.
I had some professors tell me that Encyclopedic citations were ok so long as they were reputable sources and they aren't your sole source. Any time I had to do a background or historical piece in a paper I found encyclopedias to be useful as a way of citing a reputable summary. If you're piecing information together to make a new or novel argument then encyclopedias wouldn't really help, but in some cases they might be useful.
I always thought PS3 titles were decent with their DRM. It's there, but most of it works pretty passively behind the scenes and I don't have too deal with it. I think people are turning away from troublesome DRM that makes legitimate copies hard to play (like EA and Blizzard requiring constant connection to a server). If I put a PS3 game into my PS3, it just works. That functionality is really attractive.
If their DRM starts to get too nutty then I can see the situation you describe developing. I've never had problems with DRM on a PS3. Whatever they are doing, they are doing it right (for me).
You don't tell me what the fuck I do with my console, that I paid with my own money. If I want to fucking burn it, I will. If I want to insert a PSJailbreak in it, I will.
Go ahead, nobody's going to stop you from sticking whatever you want wherever you want. Sony is preventing the distribution of a device that solely exists to pirate games that they make money on. I don't know what type of work you do, but if someone started selling a device that would allow them to obtain your product without paying you any money you would damn sure do everything you could to stop it.
Do whatever you want with your PS3. If you've got one of these things, go ahead and do whatever you want with that to. Nobody, not even Sony, will come into your home and prevent you from sticking that device into whatever orifice you choose.
I might not have been so understanding, I'm generally not so ok with the public breastfeeding, but I too get pissed off when breastfeeding mothers are shooed into the bathroom. Bathrooms are dirty, and are no place to be feeding a child. My response in your place would have been to excuse myself to offer her some privacy.
An offer of a private place would have been the right course there, especially from a nurse. Obviously that woman did not bring her two small children to the ER just to find something to do for the night, she was probably stressed out enough as it was without having to worry about feeding her child. I fail to understand how so many places are not family friendly.
I'm not religious, but as a kid my mom took me to church. I remember the church had a separated sound-insulated private area for parents to bring small children. The kids would scream, breastfeed, and get their diapers changed in privacy while the sermon was piped in through speakers. Why don't places like hospitals have spaces like these?
For a modern example, take a look over at California. The majority clearly voted for homosexuals to be oppressed.
That's a perfect example.
A part of the problem is that our process of elections generally doesn't even produce a majority, we get pluralities. Take a deeper look at proposition 8. Using statistics from Wikipedia, prop 8 was supported by about 52% of voters. But only about 80% of eligible voters even voted! Only about 42% of the people even supported the thing!
An even more striking (and flame attracting) example is the 2008 Presidential Election. Obama won with about 53% of the vote, but only 57% of the country even voted in the election. Obama won with only 30% of the country supporting him.
You don't even need to hold a true majority to trample all over peoples rights (directed towards prop 8 and not the 2008 election).
Our political system has a lot of protections in place to prevent the so-called "tyranny" of the majority. Its not that we allow the minority to control it, but we definitely take steps to accommodate the minority viewpoint.
The truth is that the US is not a true Democracy, we are not at all as egalitarian as we like to believe. We are a Federated Republic. Citizens have a voice in local laws and in electing representatives. We do place plenty of restrictions on the freedoms of the majority to protect the rights and sensibilities of the minority. Especially with indecency issues, there is nothing unusual about setting our limits conservatively to accommodate as many people as possible. Very few people are offended that there isn't Sponge Bob porn available during the afternoon.
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Violate? Posse Comitatus specifically grants POTUS the authority to use federal troops and resources in case of insurrection. That seems like exactly the kind of situation where the government might want to shut down the internet.
Not saying I support it. Just saying the legal groundwork is already in place.
My take is that these companies are trying to make money on providing access to the internet (which they already do to some degree). If you think of the internet like the public highway system (as the GP suggests) you have to see the attempt to monitize access as a bad thing. Like highways and airwaves, cyberspace ought to be treated as a public resource. Everyone should be able to expect that once they put their bits onto the internet that their bits be treated the same as everyone else's.
Companies ought to be able to provide services and make money on those services. I have a hard time seeing how they ought to be making money from the tubes themselves.
Actually your example is perfect, that is one of the reasons I prefer to use a local Credit Union rather than a national bank. I have no real guarantee that they won't outsource a call center, but based on the model and scope of their business I can feel reasonably comfortable that they won't.
But that's the point. Maybe your internal security is fine. Do you know how secure the Indian Governments data streams are? Do you think you would have any ability to increase that security if you found a weakness?
I'll second that because I see you got modded flamebait as well. It's nothing against Indians or companies that operate in India, but data disclosure is something you need to be aware of. If a company is going to be distributing your information you need to know who it goes to and why they want it. The fact that this would apply to every company that operates in India seems very relevant.
Maybe you decide it's ok that the Indian government gets ahold of your data. Maybe your data is sensitive and you don't want any government obtaining it. It's worth paying attention to at the very least.
Far better to let the child die from a possibly curable infection. That is why our current civilized society never offers experimental treatments to people after informing them of the risks, ever.
And a more correct analogy would be that instead of headlights they removed the part of the car that also makes it work as a boat. Still perfectly capable of working as a car, but no longer able to perform a seldom used and impractical "other" service.
I'm sorry, I think I missed the part of the article where they interviewed the Sony Killbot that was sent to this guy's house to mess with his PS3, can you link it?
(Serious Face) There was an update, he had to agree to an updated EULA before he downloaded. He misinterpreted the EULA as an April Fools joke. This is unfortunate, but ultimately his own damn fault for agreeing to something without understanding it. Nothing was stolen. Sony just pushed an update out to their OS. If he wants to run Linux so bad, he is perfectly free to open up his PS3 and do it himself. If he's not capable of doing that without relying on Sony's PS3 OS to do it for him then that's his problem.
For what it's worth, some of us actually do enjoy the American style as well as the fuller more flavorful styles.
Budweiser and Coors is crap. If you're looking for a halfway decent American lager, try Pabst Blue Ribbon or Narraganset. Much better flavor while still being an incredibly light beer.
God, I really hope scientists someday develop a new type of tinfoil that permanently sterilizes anyone that wears it as a hat.
Modifying your own console so that you can execute backups that YOU CREATED from original discs YOU OWN is illegal in the USA
No it's not. Not even a little bit.
Modifying your own console...punishable under the DMCA.
That's not correct either. It is the backup copy of the software that violates the DMCA. Buying the game disk grants you a single software license that is limited to the media, the backup is considered a new unlicensed copy.
I can do anything I want to modify my console. It is copies of licensed software that get people in trouble. When that copy is distributed and used by other people who never paid for the game we call it piracy. When the copy is used by the person who paid for the game because they want to preserve their original media we call it a backup. In the US these backups are grouped with pirated copies. To me this seems dumb.
(you know, participating in the democratic process and all)? If you feel they can be and should be outvoted
Nope, democracy is only for folks that agree with me. Everyone else is an ignorant fundamentalist that needs to stop pushing their backwards agenda.
/Sarcasm
Seriously now, you are absolutely correct. It makes me sad that more people don't see that.
Unfortunately the "screw you guys, we gonna do do what we want. its gonna be really cool and super awesome, and you guys can't come" method of governance is not exactly a stable one. And doesn't do anything towards addressing the concern, reconciling the disagreement, and coming to a civil and reasoned resolution.
I refuse to allow the beliefs of anybody to get in the way of scientific research.
While I agree in general with the rest of your post, I feel like I have to caution you about this point. There are a lot of arguments (some more valid than others) that a human embryo is a potential person and is deserving of the rights and protections of any other human. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I don't know that it is completely untrue either.
We would not terminate a person for the purpose of harvesting their organs. An adult human is capable of expressing a desire to donate their organs, but the default without an expressed preference would be to not take those organs. If one is of the opinion that the embryo is in some way a human being, then it would seem to me to be unethical to harvest from them without their express permission.
Again I am not claiming that I think an embryo is a person, but a lot of people do feel that way. The fact that this is still hotly debated says to me that as a society we have not reached a consensus.
I'm having difficulty not picturing each line of the GP's post as a horribly scribbled missive on a sheet of cardboard.
During the interview process, the tech lead sees from my resume that I have a lot of experience and knowledge, and then sees from his overly-targeted interview questions that I am not expert on the specific thing he happens to be working on day and night at the moment. Based on a "failed" interview, the tech lead is able to dismiss a potential leadership threat.
I don't mean to offend you, and I am very sure that this kind of thing happens ...occasionally. It does not seem unreasonable to me that an interviewer would reject an applicant that does not have the specific technical expertise that they are looking for. All that other experience and knowledge is great, except they may not need it and don't want to have to pay for it. If what they are looking for is someone that has expertise in that specific thing, why would the bring in someone that doesn't have the skills?
Plus, you assume that the tech lead seeking to preserve his authority is a bad thing. Why would they want to bring in someone highly experienced (possibly overqualified?) to perform a very specific role?. Eventually that highly experienced person will be wanting to apply their other experience, and there won't be enough Indians left to actually get the work done.
I'm sure that age discrimination happens. But I think it is more likely that potential employers are discriminating against the huge amount of experience that older workers have, that companies don't want to pay for.
I had some professors tell me that Encyclopedic citations were ok so long as they were reputable sources and they aren't your sole source. Any time I had to do a background or historical piece in a paper I found encyclopedias to be useful as a way of citing a reputable summary. If you're piecing information together to make a new or novel argument then encyclopedias wouldn't really help, but in some cases they might be useful.
But citing wikipedia? dumb. Just dumb.
Wait, I thought we were talking about breaking my PS3 out of jail.
What are you guys talking about?
I always thought PS3 titles were decent with their DRM. It's there, but most of it works pretty passively behind the scenes and I don't have too deal with it. I think people are turning away from troublesome DRM that makes legitimate copies hard to play (like EA and Blizzard requiring constant connection to a server). If I put a PS3 game into my PS3, it just works. That functionality is really attractive.
If their DRM starts to get too nutty then I can see the situation you describe developing. I've never had problems with DRM on a PS3. Whatever they are doing, they are doing it right (for me).
You don't tell me what the fuck I do with my console, that I paid with my own money. If I want to fucking burn it, I will. If I want to insert a PSJailbreak in it, I will.
Go ahead, nobody's going to stop you from sticking whatever you want wherever you want. Sony is preventing the distribution of a device that solely exists to pirate games that they make money on. I don't know what type of work you do, but if someone started selling a device that would allow them to obtain your product without paying you any money you would damn sure do everything you could to stop it.
Do whatever you want with your PS3. If you've got one of these things, go ahead and do whatever you want with that to. Nobody, not even Sony, will come into your home and prevent you from sticking that device into whatever orifice you choose.
I've read that breast milk contains a large amount of dihydrogen monoxide. And we all know how dangerous that can be!
I might not have been so understanding, I'm generally not so ok with the public breastfeeding, but I too get pissed off when breastfeeding mothers are shooed into the bathroom. Bathrooms are dirty, and are no place to be feeding a child. My response in your place would have been to excuse myself to offer her some privacy.
An offer of a private place would have been the right course there, especially from a nurse. Obviously that woman did not bring her two small children to the ER just to find something to do for the night, she was probably stressed out enough as it was without having to worry about feeding her child. I fail to understand how so many places are not family friendly.
I'm not religious, but as a kid my mom took me to church. I remember the church had a separated sound-insulated private area for parents to bring small children. The kids would scream, breastfeed, and get their diapers changed in privacy while the sermon was piped in through speakers. Why don't places like hospitals have spaces like these?
For a modern example, take a look over at California. The majority clearly voted for homosexuals to be oppressed.
That's a perfect example.
A part of the problem is that our process of elections generally doesn't even produce a majority, we get pluralities. Take a deeper look at proposition 8. Using statistics from Wikipedia, prop 8 was supported by about 52% of voters. But only about 80% of eligible voters even voted! Only about 42% of the people even supported the thing!
An even more striking (and flame attracting) example is the 2008 Presidential Election. Obama won with about 53% of the vote, but only 57% of the country even voted in the election. Obama won with only 30% of the country supporting him.
You don't even need to hold a true majority to trample all over peoples rights (directed towards prop 8 and not the 2008 election).
I'd hope people can see that.
Unfortunately, I think you give the average American too much credit.
Our political system has a lot of protections in place to prevent the so-called "tyranny" of the majority. Its not that we allow the minority to control it, but we definitely take steps to accommodate the minority viewpoint.
The truth is that the US is not a true Democracy, we are not at all as egalitarian as we like to believe. We are a Federated Republic. Citizens have a voice in local laws and in electing representatives. We do place plenty of restrictions on the freedoms of the majority to protect the rights and sensibilities of the minority. Especially with indecency issues, there is nothing unusual about setting our limits conservatively to accommodate as many people as possible. Very few people are offended that there isn't Sponge Bob porn available during the afternoon.