Alan Turing ran 2;46:03 in 1948, nearly qualifying for the British Olympic team. While at Cambridge he used to run to Ely and back, and it is said that he once ran from Bletchley Park to a meeting in Whitehall - and back again after. (History doesn't record what the besuited civil servants made of the brilliant boffin sitting at table with them in his sweat-soaked running clothes).
"It may well make sense to the tiny minority of people who know (or care) what a "sub-two" marathon refers to".
Well, there are hundreds of marathons (probably thousands, in fact) in the world every year. Many of them have thousands of competitors. So there may be about a million people who actually run marathons - plus many more who follow the sport and know about it.
So I very much doubt your assertion. It's of the same order as
"...the tiny minority of people who know (or care) what a 'scripting language' refers to".
Or
"...the tiny minority of people who know (or care) what 'iteration' refers to".
Actually, I don't believe in human rights as usually defined. That is, I believe in treating people decently - as well as possible, and fairly - but I don't believe that "rights" have any independent existence. They are abstractions, shared fictions if you like. As Jeremy Bentham wrote,
"Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts".
If we think people should have a right to clean drinking water, or freedom of speech, we can pass laws to make those things legal requirements. But they aren't eternal "natural" rights. If a man starves to death, what became of his right to life?
My whole point is that the US government is forever talking about human rights - and how OTHER nations don't respect them. But it doesn't either.
Sorry to have been a bit cryptic. I didn't mean to insult you personally, either. May I thank you for your patience and civility, and say what a pleasure it is to talk with an American who doesn't resort to personalities when his country is criticized. I am a great admirer of most things American, and I have many really good friends in the USA. It's just the government I have qualms about.
I meant that there is some fine verbiage in the Declaration of Independence about believing that all men are created equal. Nowadays, I believe that really means all men (as opposed to all well-off white men) and has even expanded to embrace women.
But if you really honestly believe that all people are created equal, what can that mean (in practical terms) if not that they should all be TREATED equally?
But that doesn't square at all with what you said about thinking your government should put your rights and interests above those of foreigners. That would mean you consider them inferior - in terms of the treatment your government affords them. (Of course, there is already no shadow of doubt that the US government values American lives thousands of times higher than those of foreigners, when you consider the million-plus Iraqis who were killed in revenge for the 2,500 or so Americans who died on 9/11).
Looking after your interests is, I think, what your government should be doing. But perhaps not to the extent of treating foreigners as of less value than Americans.
My point about the Nazi view of life was that, in fact, the government of the Third Reich sought "living space", food, and other amenities for the German people at the expense of those foreigners who happened to be living in nearby countries. Because they valued the citizens of those countries a great deal lower than Germans, they didn't hesitate to kill them or drive them out of their homes. Also - a critical mistake - they believed that they would easily be able to defeat these supposedly lower forms of humanity. Rather as our ancestors drove the Neanderthals out (and finally to extinction), and the white settlers drove the Native Americans out (and nearly to extinction).
"Your government is also doing the same, and it's at its leisure to spy on me, kill me if they can swing it and decide i'm a terrible threat, or whatnot. This is what i pay for, this is what i expect. They are not "my government" because they value my life and liberties equal to yours".
"Which means that the Americans who hacked into the Chinese computers should not go to China, nor should the Chinese who hacked into American computers go to the USA".
You are (deliberately?) missing the extremely critical point that the people in question are government employees following government orders. That means their actions are those of the government - which changes it from a scenario of possible individual crime to a malicious act by one nation against another. That comes close to being an act of war, when done deliberately and with utter contempt for the other country.
"What about extradition? The US has extradited people from their homes after they cracked US servers so they might struggle to argue that US citizens shouldn't be extradited in similar circumstances".
Yes, that has happened countless times. However, the USA is often very reluctant indeed to reciprocate. Indeed, while very keen on kidnapping foreign heads of state for trial by the ICC, it has formally declared that no American can ever be tried there; and if any American were ever to be brought before the court, he would be rescued by military force.
"The agents hacking into the computer could be guilty of violating the laws of the country that hosts the server..."
Not so fast. A government cannot instruct its employees to commit illegal acts and then disown them when trouble ensues. In so far as they are government employees, their actions are actions of the government of the USA. If those actions involve harm to a foreign nation or its citizens, beyond a certain level, they are acts of war.
"It would be ridiculous to expect a higher standard for the US when our economic security is at stake".
In other words:
We believe wholeheartedly in freedom, democracy, and human rights... unless that looks as if it might lose us some money - in which case forget about it.
"So if I come visit US I have zero rights? Guess I won't be visiting your shitty country".
That's been well known for years. But not visiting the USA won't necessarily help. Drones. Assassination. Character assassination (like getting two women to complain that you raped them, when in fact everything was consensual). All sorts of dirty underhanded undercover tricks - the CIA has been thoroughly enjoying them for decades.
In the long run, the only solution is to stop using dollars and everything connected with them. Stop buying American goods and services, stop dealing with US corporations. Once the dollar ceases to be a global reserve currency, the USA will have to go back to being a normal country. (Unfortunately, it will also be bankrupt many times over, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs).
"Are you living abroad and doing the hacking at the behest of a foreign government? Then go right ahead, but it should be treated as the act of war that it is, just as any other country that has servers hacked at the behest of the US government should do".
Actually, the USA has committed acts of war against dozens of nations since 1945 - and presumably there is no act of limitations on a state of war. That is, if you bomb a nation's territory, fire cruise missiles into it, assassinate its citizens with drones, apply commercial sanctions to it, or attack it financially, you are then in a state of war with that nation. So every one of those nations is entitled, under international law, to use any weapons or other military methods against the USA.
Moreover, the USA has repeatedly committed the supreme international crime of launching unprovoked aggressive wars. Hence, under the very doctrine put forth by the US government as reported in TFA, any foreign government is entitled to hack any servers in the USA - including those of the government and its agencies.
Unless, of course, the US government believes that it is different from all other nations, and that international law does not apply to it. The view expressed by the parent boils down to "might makes right" - the ancient principle enshrined in the Melian Dialogue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
" If it makes sense, the employer wins. If it doesn't make sense, then it's assumed that the employer is covering up for one of the illegal reasons. They will also look for consistency".
All very reasonable. Unfortunately, it's much harder (and usually impossible) to establish truth or falsity. A lone employee up against a stack of managers and their HR department is rather like a single infantryman armed with a rifle trying to fight a tank regiment. It will only end one way.
Argue it however you will, it appears to have been entirely Comcast's fault. You may say it's wrong to rant and swear at a customer service employee, and I quite agree. But the greater fault - because the original one - was on the part of Comcast, which undertook to provide service and then failed to do so. Failed repeatedly, egregiously, in such a way that it's almost impossible to rule out deliberate malicious intent.
Or do Americans nowadays really believe that no corporation can ever do wrong?
"Are we sure that the First Amendment guarantees a right to complain about a cable company without reprisal?"
Not specifically the First Amendment, no. More the whole "free country" business. Mind you, who still believes in any of that? This is the 21st Century...
"...which will work as money has thoroughly corrupted our country's political and regulatory system".
Exactly. Money is the universal solvent. Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote that, "There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president". But actually the fundamental flaw is that money eats through EVERYTHING. How can you appoint guards or regulators to control rich people, when almost every one of them has their price?
What we desperately need is a way of allowing money to be used only for buying things - not people.
"... to escalate his own personal billing issue to someone at Comcast who had zero to do with the situation..."
Senior people in any organization are responsible for what their underlings do. Either they set things up that way, or they hired the guilty party, or they are irresponsibly negligent. You can run things in other ways, but they don't work very well.
Slashdot Mirror
Alan Turing ran 2;46:03 in 1948, nearly qualifying for the British Olympic team. While at Cambridge he used to run to Ely and back, and it is said that he once ran from Bletchley Park to a meeting in Whitehall - and back again after. (History doesn't record what the besuited civil servants made of the brilliant boffin sitting at table with them in his sweat-soaked running clothes).
"Just make the course downhill all the way".
With exactly that in mind, the rules require a closed circuit for record purposes. So you'd need M.C. Escher to design it.
"Not true. Ryan Hall (a USian) ran 2:04:58".
Well, sorta-kinda. With a strong following wind on a one-way course, hence not allowable as a record (for instance). But a terrific run nonetheless.
"It may well make sense to the tiny minority of people who know (or care) what a "sub-two" marathon refers to".
Well, there are hundreds of marathons (probably thousands, in fact) in the world every year. Many of them have thousands of competitors. So there may be about a million people who actually run marathons - plus many more who follow the sport and know about it.
So I very much doubt your assertion. It's of the same order as
"...the tiny minority of people who know (or care) what a 'scripting language' refers to".
Or
"...the tiny minority of people who know (or care) what 'iteration' refers to".
Nice.
Actually, I don't believe in human rights as usually defined. That is, I believe in treating people decently - as well as possible, and fairly - but I don't believe that "rights" have any independent existence. They are abstractions, shared fictions if you like. As Jeremy Bentham wrote,
"Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts".
If we think people should have a right to clean drinking water, or freedom of speech, we can pass laws to make those things legal requirements. But they aren't eternal "natural" rights. If a man starves to death, what became of his right to life?
My whole point is that the US government is forever talking about human rights - and how OTHER nations don't respect them. But it doesn't either.
For example, read the comments on this article to get an impression of what intelligent, informed British people think about a related case:
http://forums.theregister.co.u...
I think this article may provide some depth and detail to the ideas I was trying to get across:
http://www.counterpunch.org/20...
Sorry to have been a bit cryptic. I didn't mean to insult you personally, either. May I thank you for your patience and civility, and say what a pleasure it is to talk with an American who doesn't resort to personalities when his country is criticized. I am a great admirer of most things American, and I have many really good friends in the USA. It's just the government I have qualms about.
I meant that there is some fine verbiage in the Declaration of Independence about believing that all men are created equal. Nowadays, I believe that really means all men (as opposed to all well-off white men) and has even expanded to embrace women.
But if you really honestly believe that all people are created equal, what can that mean (in practical terms) if not that they should all be TREATED equally?
But that doesn't square at all with what you said about thinking your government should put your rights and interests above those of foreigners. That would mean you consider them inferior - in terms of the treatment your government affords them. (Of course, there is already no shadow of doubt that the US government values American lives thousands of times higher than those of foreigners, when you consider the million-plus Iraqis who were killed in revenge for the 2,500 or so Americans who died on 9/11).
Looking after your interests is, I think, what your government should be doing. But perhaps not to the extent of treating foreigners as of less value than Americans.
My point about the Nazi view of life was that, in fact, the government of the Third Reich sought "living space", food, and other amenities for the German people at the expense of those foreigners who happened to be living in nearby countries. Because they valued the citizens of those countries a great deal lower than Germans, they didn't hesitate to kill them or drive them out of their homes. Also - a critical mistake - they believed that they would easily be able to defeat these supposedly lower forms of humanity. Rather as our ancestors drove the Neanderthals out (and finally to extinction), and the white settlers drove the Native Americans out (and nearly to extinction).
"Your government is also doing the same, and it's at its leisure to spy on me, kill me if they can swing it and decide i'm a terrible threat, or whatnot. This is what i pay for, this is what i expect. They are not "my government" because they value my life and liberties equal to yours".
A fine exposition of the Nazi view of life.
"Which means that the Americans who hacked into the Chinese computers should not go to China, nor should the Chinese who hacked into American computers go to the USA".
You are (deliberately?) missing the extremely critical point that the people in question are government employees following government orders. That means their actions are those of the government - which changes it from a scenario of possible individual crime to a malicious act by one nation against another. That comes close to being an act of war, when done deliberately and with utter contempt for the other country.
"What about extradition? The US has extradited people from their homes after they cracked US servers so they might struggle to argue that US citizens shouldn't be extradited in similar circumstances".
Yes, that has happened countless times. However, the USA is often very reluctant indeed to reciprocate. Indeed, while very keen on kidnapping foreign heads of state for trial by the ICC, it has formally declared that no American can ever be tried there; and if any American were ever to be brought before the court, he would be rescued by military force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
https://www.greenleft.org.au/n...
etc., etc. ad nauseam.
"The agents hacking into the computer could be guilty of violating the laws of the country that hosts the server..."
Not so fast. A government cannot instruct its employees to commit illegal acts and then disown them when trouble ensues. In so far as they are government employees, their actions are actions of the government of the USA. If those actions involve harm to a foreign nation or its citizens, beyond a certain level, they are acts of war.
"resopocessoty"
Gets my vote for best neologism of the millennium!
"It would be ridiculous to expect a higher standard for the US when our economic security is at stake".
In other words:
We believe wholeheartedly in freedom, democracy, and human rights... unless that looks as if it might lose us some money - in which case forget about it.
So if I come visit US I have zero rights?
No. Aliens in the US have essentially the same civil rights as citizens.
So if he comes to visit the US he has zero rights.
"So if I come visit US I have zero rights? Guess I won't be visiting your shitty country".
That's been well known for years. But not visiting the USA won't necessarily help. Drones. Assassination. Character assassination (like getting two women to complain that you raped them, when in fact everything was consensual). All sorts of dirty underhanded undercover tricks - the CIA has been thoroughly enjoying them for decades.
In the long run, the only solution is to stop using dollars and everything connected with them. Stop buying American goods and services, stop dealing with US corporations. Once the dollar ceases to be a global reserve currency, the USA will have to go back to being a normal country. (Unfortunately, it will also be bankrupt many times over, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs).
"Are you living abroad and doing the hacking at the behest of a foreign government? Then go right ahead, but it should be treated as the act of war that it is, just as any other country that has servers hacked at the behest of the US government should do".
Actually, the USA has committed acts of war against dozens of nations since 1945 - and presumably there is no act of limitations on a state of war. That is, if you bomb a nation's territory, fire cruise missiles into it, assassinate its citizens with drones, apply commercial sanctions to it, or attack it financially, you are then in a state of war with that nation. So every one of those nations is entitled, under international law, to use any weapons or other military methods against the USA.
Moreover, the USA has repeatedly committed the supreme international crime of launching unprovoked aggressive wars. Hence, under the very doctrine put forth by the US government as reported in TFA, any foreign government is entitled to hack any servers in the USA - including those of the government and its agencies.
Unless, of course, the US government believes that it is different from all other nations, and that international law does not apply to it. The view expressed by the parent boils down to "might makes right" - the ancient principle enshrined in the Melian Dialogue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
" If it makes sense, the employer wins. If it doesn't make sense, then it's assumed that the employer is covering up for one of the illegal reasons. They will also look for consistency".
All very reasonable. Unfortunately, it's much harder (and usually impossible) to establish truth or falsity. A lone employee up against a stack of managers and their HR department is rather like a single infantryman armed with a rifle trying to fight a tank regiment. It will only end one way.
Argue it however you will, it appears to have been entirely Comcast's fault. You may say it's wrong to rant and swear at a customer service employee, and I quite agree. But the greater fault - because the original one - was on the part of Comcast, which undertook to provide service and then failed to do so. Failed repeatedly, egregiously, in such a way that it's almost impossible to rule out deliberate malicious intent.
Or do Americans nowadays really believe that no corporation can ever do wrong?
"Are we sure that the First Amendment guarantees a right to complain about a cable company without reprisal?"
Not specifically the First Amendment, no. More the whole "free country" business. Mind you, who still believes in any of that? This is the 21st Century...
"...which will work as money has thoroughly corrupted our country's political and regulatory system".
Exactly. Money is the universal solvent. Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote that, "There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president". But actually the fundamental flaw is that money eats through EVERYTHING. How can you appoint guards or regulators to control rich people, when almost every one of them has their price?
What we desperately need is a way of allowing money to be used only for buying things - not people.
"I'm sure the conversation included suggesting Comcast-NBC-Universal could look to another company for the same consulting work".
Exactly as, in fairness, all Comcast's customers can change suppliers to some less revoltingly evil corporation.
Oh wait.
"If he didn't order them, then why did he let the package stay at his house?"
As far as I know, a person is under no legal obligation whatever to return unsolicited goods sent to him by a corporation (or anyone else).
"... to escalate his own personal billing issue to someone at Comcast who had zero to do with the situation..."
Senior people in any organization are responsible for what their underlings do. Either they set things up that way, or they hired the guilty party, or they are irresponsibly negligent. You can run things in other ways, but they don't work very well.