Aside from power and frequency restrictions (which can be limited in hardware), how might you run afoul of FCC regulations?
You might not be running a version, or a "minor" revision of a version, of the telephony software that was loaded on the device when it was tested. It may be more of a bureaucratic problem than a technical problem.
Isn't there a complication for phones? Jailbreaking your PS3 is one thing but a phone device connects to the phone network and falls under FCC jurisdiction in the U.S. Is it possible that jailbreaking may void the FCC license that allows the device to connect to the phone network?
I do research in textual web mining and from time to time I have other researchers ask me for my collections which I spider myself from copyrighted web sources. While my work is purely academic, I am covered by fair use. But since US intellectual property laws are obtuse and overbearing (imho), I cannot take the risk of sharing my collections with others for fear of running afoul of copyright law (since I can't control what is done with the collection once it is out of my hands and how do I know they would use it in a manner consistent with fair use). So it may be more than an unwillingness out of statistical fudging and more an unwillingness to become a target of copyright lawyers.
Why would that be an issue? The onus would be on the people you share the data with it do keep it in the fair use domain. An analogy would be a professor quoting some copyrighted text in a syllabus and then saying she couldn't give a copy of the syllabus to another professor (or student) because she can't control what they do with it.
There is a difference between copying a brief excerpt in a fair use context and copying the complete copyrighted work. The key point is that the fellow researchers want the complete data set, complete copies of copyrighted works. The original researcher is correct to fear legal consequences and regrettably should consult an attorney before sharing such a data set. Alternatively the original researcher should have logged the URLs where the original data was found and provided these URLs to fellow researchers, they could harvest their own copies. Admittedly some content may have been taken down or changed.
Watch 2001 again. A decent copy of it on a decent screen. No CGI, just models. It's the lighting - even with the all the physics in modern programming it's damn hard to get the light exactly correct. And Kubrik's team nailed it.
Ten or so years ago a local theatre offered a showing of 2001. Sometimes the bigger screen "hurts". For example in the African savannah scenes you can recognize the background as painted. A wonderful painting but it does hamper the "suspension of disbelief". Even so the movie deserves its place as one of the greatest sci fi movies ever.
I wouldn't sully that name by calling anything out of Hollywood by it. They barely manage 'fiction', never mind 'science'.
Last night I saw a wonderful counterexample, an adaptation of Heinlein's Destination Moon (1950). Of course actually having Heinlein involved in the writing and acting as a technical director probably helped. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042393/
If I had not caught that 1950s classic last night I probably would have offered 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Of course it had Arthur C. Clarke's involvement.
Perhaps the secret is to have "real" science fiction authors involved in a meaningful sense. I'm not suggesting that they can necessarily write screenplays, that is a different art than novels, but there can be serious collaboration. In such an environment CGI can be a great tool.
Pixar films are entirely CGI, and I don't hear anyone calling them soulless or lifeless... But hating on CGI is an unfortunate geek trope.
Watch something done by the SyFy channel rather than Pixar. Basically CGI is like everything else, it can be done poorly.
Geek tripe, hating CGI? Are you sure? I can see a nostalgic fascination with old school techniques, a respect for that art, but I don't know that there is an accompanying backlash against CGI, at least when well done. And by well done I don't necessarily mean in a technical sense. For example Han chasing storm troopers around the corner and finding the 6 or so real actors supplemented with 25 or so CGI troopers. It added nothing to the scene, probably made it worse (IMHO).
As a fellow cognitive scientist let me be the first to explain "why Starcraft 2?" The answer lies in the oft-cited measure of player skill at the game: actions per minute. This is an unprecedented numerical measure of expertise that lends itself well to the study of "expertise" -- a term which means something different in the study of the brain than it does to the everyday person. Expertise is nothing less than a figurative rewiring of your brain in order to better excel at a chosen repetitive task.
APM is a distorted metric. It does not distinguish between a meaningful action, a redundant action, a nervous "twitch" (i.e. multiple clicks rather than one), etc.
Furthermore it contains an additional distortion. Since it is a metric that players are evaluated by, and/or used in silly "pissing contests", it can be intentionally distorted. Why click on that point on the ground once when you can click on it five time rapidly? APM focused players often are manically clicking on empty ground issuing no unit orders when they have nothing to do for a second or two, they have rewired their brain to have them do "something" even if there is nothing useful to be done.
For the programmers reading along, Think of APM as the LOC (Lines of Code) of the Starcraft world. Both metrics can be meaningful in an idealized setting, but such is not the setting of most real world events.
So a declaration is irrelevant if we were attacked,...
In the sense that the state of war was created by a foreign nation and the President issuing immediate tactical orders to the military in response.
... and "more relevant" when we start the fight? What exactly does "more relevant" mean?
It creates the state of war.
If Congress disagreed they could enact a law saying that spending money on those operations was illegal. At that point the military would refuse the presidential order as it would now be an illegal order. That is the check and balance, not the formal declaration of war.
What congress would tell the military not to spend money on combat when they're already in the middle of a fight?
The Congress that wanted the US forces to disengage and withdraw. Congress threatened exactly such action during the Spanish American War when it learned that the US had attacked Spanish forces in the Philippines, not just in the Caribbean.
Where in the chain of command are the officers who will decide their commander's formerly legal orders have become illegal?
Most likely the joint chiefs.
On what grounds would Congress impeach the Pres
As you said in your original post, "whatever Congress agrees it to be".
It seems to me you're filtering and spinning the constitution to make it match what presidents have actually been doing, rather than looking at the text and the federalist papers to see what the framers actually said.
There is no filtering or spinning, the President is the Commander in Chief and the military will obey all lawful orders. Congress will control declaring war and spending on war. You introduced the notions that the President is limited to defensive operations in response to an active attack, can not take the fight to the attackers, can not operate in the enemy's home territory, etc. And you accuse me of spinning the Constitution? You are getting ridiculous. The distinctions I made regarding act or war, state of war and declaration of war are rooted in the Constitution and international law. I am sorry if the world does not work as you wish.
Every military commander is obliged to follow orders, including the commander-in-chief, whose orders are supposed to come from congress.
You just jumped the shark. The Constitutional office of Commander in Chief is the highest ranking military office. Congress has no Constitutional authority to order. Such a notion violates the concept of checks and balances, it puts the command, spending and declaration of war into a single branch of government.
On this point the framers were crystal clear. The Legislature makes the policy, Executive implements it. This separation of powers is nothing like our current reality, but it is the fundamental point of the constitution.
Legislative policy (as in formally stating the justification and goals of a war) and waging war (as in tactical decision making - which would include a response to an attack) are two separate things. The separation of powers gives the later to the executive.
This may be the answer to the Somalia pirate problem - space-based tracking.
Now adding a moderately powerful laser, say 10KW or so...
Actually just route commercial ships away from suspected pirates. Much like convoys were routed away from enemy submarines during WW2 when Ultra was up and running and decoding communications to and from the subs.
So it's your argument that the constitution gave Congress the power to write a formal document which is legally irrelevant?
Careful, I'm happy to discuss this topic as long as you are being serious and intelligent, as you have been so far.
My argument is that the ability of the President to order the military into combat is not dependent upon a declaration of war, that an act of war is one sufficient alternative. For example a state of war existed the moment Pearl Harbor was bombed and the President was free to order combat operations against the military forces of the attacking nation regardless of where those forces were located. If Congress disagreed they could enact a law saying that spending money on those operations was illegal. At that point the military would refuse the presidential order as it would now be an illegal order. That is the check and balance, not the formal declaration of war. Well that and Congress' power to impeach a President.
The formal declaration of war is a legal document more relevant when a nation wants to initiate a war, not respond to an act of war. It is also a notification to neutral parties that might get caught in the middle. That said international law also states that neutrals can not rely upon a lack of formal declarations when a state of war obviously exists. An example of where a declaration of war is more relevant would be the War of 1812 where the U.S. initiated the war over "intolerable grievances", not in response to an attack.
In short, a declaration of war is one way to initiate a state of war. Being attacked by a nation is another way to initiate a state of war. The declaration of war brings into play various international laws and conventions. However it is the state of war that makes various tactical orders by the President legal.
So that line in the constitution about the power to declare war belonging to congress - what exactly do you think that means?
A declaration of war is a formal document announcing a state of war between two nations. It is not the only path to a state of war, for example an attack can also create a state of war. Note that when President Roosevelt went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war he indicates that a state of war already exists.
Reminds me about accusations that part of the UAV software was either pirated or incorrectly used open source. Looks like this is nothing new.
I'm not familiar with the specific case that you refer to but keep in mind that the GPL doesn't require that derived code be given to anyone who asks. Only to those you distribute binaries to. If the derived work is strictly for use within an organization then distribution need not occur. So if a US government contractor uses GPL'd code in a UAV while acting as an employee/agent of the gov't then there is no violation as the military, border patrol, coast guard, fbi, etc use the UAV. If developed as a third party the UAV developer would only have to provide the source to the US gov't. Now if they sell a UAV to the local police department things could be interesting.
That, and because public corporations are legally required to be amoral sociopaths. It doesn't matter if Mr. Rogers is in charge of the corporation, his shareholders will sue him if he doesn't fuck over his neighbor for a buck.
That is untrue. The concept of increasing shareholder value does not have a timeframe restriction. A moral CEO is free to decide that shareholder value is best increased by the longer term decision to preserve the corporate reputation and not screw customers, suppliers, etc. Regrettably they do not always do so but this is not because they are required to act otherwise.
the president is free to order the military to locate, pursue and destroy the enemy forces even if those forces have disengaged and are withdrawing
I agree. Going after somebody who just attacked you is still self-defense.
No. It is well established in law that when an attacker disengages and attempts to leave you are no longer under imminent threat and the right to self defense no longer exists.
Sending soldiers to the perpetrators' country is what requires a declaration of war. If it were not so, we'd forever have what we have today - massive foreign deployments, years of war, all without a congressional declaration of war.
There is no such restriction in the Constitution. Pursuing an attacker into his national territory would be a legal order. Pre-emptively striking an attacker's other military assets in its national territory would also be a legal order.
it is good that Congress has the luxury of time and may fully deliberate whether a formal declaration of war is necessary
I agree with the sentiment. If an act were really an unambiguous act of war, I think the decision would be a no-brainer. Otherwise, I agree, they need to talk it out, while POTUS makes plans and waits for authorization to strike.
Not quite. What gives Congress the luxury of time is that the President is already acting, or more accurately the military is already acting. If it were the case that the President were waiting then Congress would not have the luxury of time and would be hurriedly providing authorization rather than deliberating the wiser path.
How does closing the barn door after the horse as left work for you?
The GP referred to people, plural. So there is an effect by making an example of an early adopter of such activities. Plus, it deters repeat offenses.:-)
It is impossible for a government, a corporation, or a committee to be moral. Morality requires a conscience and only an individual can have a conscience.
Wrong. For example a corporation can be as moral as those who run it. Keep in mind that many corporations are small. I've worked at corporations who lied and cheated both customers and employees, and I've worked at corporations who treated customers fairly, who treated subcontractors fairly, and who treated employees both fairly and equitably (ex. real profit sharing). I control a corporation, LLC actually, it is precisely as moral as I am. For example I've told a potential client that I can do that job but my experience is not a perfect fit for the task. YMMV.
"... however the president commands the military."
In the U.S. Constitution, that power has a big qualifier on it. "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." [Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1] My best reading is that he's not Commander in Chief until Congress officially taps him thus with a declaration of war.
That is an erroneous reading. "When called into the actual Service of the United States" is merely indicating that the president is not normally in command of the state militia. Note that the Commander in Chief of the state militia (or today's National Guard) is normally the Governor of the state. Also note that a declaration of war is not necessary to move the National Guard from state to federal service. National Guard and Air National Guard units served in combat during Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War and today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
> the president may order the US military
> to attack the perpetrators
The President may order the US military to defend against an active attack. Taking the fight to the attackers requires authorization.
The Constitution suggests no such limitation. As Command in Chief the President may order both defensive and offensive operations. In the Pearl Harbor example the president is free to order the military to locate, pursue and destroy the enemy forces even if those forces have disengaged and are withdrawing. Such would be a legal order.
> wait for the following day when congress got the
> paperwork
Congress may be incompetent, stupid, crazy, and deadlocked, but if there were a real attack on American soil, the most dysfunctional Congress we've ever had could get this done in the middle of the night. If Congress can't do it remotely, I'm sure a quorum of members could get individual direct transport to the capital.within a couple hours and pass something within 30 minutes. It would take at least that long to prove who started the cyber attack.
Modern history does not support this 30 minute hypothesis. It took a far more functional congress a day to declare war after Pearl Harbor, and that was with both an unambiguous attack and a diplomatic message from the enemy essentially breaking off negotiations and declaring war. And it is good that Congress has the luxury of time and may fully deliberate whether a formal declaration of war is necessary, or if the President's immediate response was sufficient for the moment and if diplomacy may be a better option moving forward.
If bouncy things were not competitive as a source of random information, then someone would be able to predict lottery powerball drawings, which are indeed governed by bouncy balls.
You have the GP's assertion wrong. He claimed that events describable by classical physics are just as random as quantum events. That is inherently false. Classical events are a practical source of randomness because of our insufficient description of the parameters of the event. That is quite different than quantum events where the parameters are inherently imprecise. With a sufficiently good description of the geometry of the cage, its rotation, the balls, etc would could predict powerball drawings.
Constitutionally, an "act of war" is whatever Congress agrees it to be. Such decisions are not the Executive's to make.
Actually they are. An "act of war" is something different from a "declaration of war". Congress has the ability to control declaring a war and the spending on a war, however the president commands the military. In response to an act of war the president may order the US military to attack the perpetrators, this would be a lawful order. For example as soon as the president learned of pearl harbor he could immediately order US forces to attack enemy forces, he did not have to wait for the following day when congress got the paperwork in order and formally declared war.
"the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is"
Nonsense. They are random in precisely the same way that a good bouncy roll of the dice are.
No. The bouncy dice are describable by classical physics. Our inability to predict is based upon our imprecise understanding of the path of the dice, their rotation, air density and movement, the geometry of the area landing in and bouncing about in, the understanding of the materials of the dice and objects it is bouncing against, etc.
In contrast this new method utilizes effects of quantum physics. That is inherently far less measurable and predictable.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from power and frequency restrictions (which can be limited in hardware), how might you run afoul of FCC regulations?
You might not be running a version, or a "minor" revision of a version, of the telephony software that was loaded on the device when it was tested. It may be more of a bureaucratic problem than a technical problem.
Isn't there a complication for phones? Jailbreaking your PS3 is one thing but a phone device connects to the phone network and falls under FCC jurisdiction in the U.S. Is it possible that jailbreaking may void the FCC license that allows the device to connect to the phone network?
I do research in textual web mining and from time to time I have other researchers ask me for my collections which I spider myself from copyrighted web sources. While my work is purely academic, I am covered by fair use. But since US intellectual property laws are obtuse and overbearing (imho), I cannot take the risk of sharing my collections with others for fear of running afoul of copyright law (since I can't control what is done with the collection once it is out of my hands and how do I know they would use it in a manner consistent with fair use). So it may be more than an unwillingness out of statistical fudging and more an unwillingness to become a target of copyright lawyers.
Why would that be an issue? The onus would be on the people you share the data with it do keep it in the fair use domain. An analogy would be a professor quoting some copyrighted text in a syllabus and then saying she couldn't give a copy of the syllabus to another professor (or student) because she can't control what they do with it.
There is a difference between copying a brief excerpt in a fair use context and copying the complete copyrighted work. The key point is that the fellow researchers want the complete data set, complete copies of copyrighted works. The original researcher is correct to fear legal consequences and regrettably should consult an attorney before sharing such a data set. Alternatively the original researcher should have logged the URLs where the original data was found and provided these URLs to fellow researchers, they could harvest their own copies. Admittedly some content may have been taken down or changed.
Watch 2001 again. A decent copy of it on a decent screen. No CGI, just models. It's the lighting - even with the all the physics in modern programming it's damn hard to get the light exactly correct. And Kubrik's team nailed it.
Ten or so years ago a local theatre offered a showing of 2001. Sometimes the bigger screen "hurts". For example in the African savannah scenes you can recognize the background as painted. A wonderful painting but it does hamper the "suspension of disbelief". Even so the movie deserves its place as one of the greatest sci fi movies ever.
I wouldn't sully that name by calling anything out of Hollywood by it. They barely manage 'fiction', never mind 'science'.
Last night I saw a wonderful counterexample, an adaptation of Heinlein's Destination Moon (1950). Of course actually having Heinlein involved in the writing and acting as a technical director probably helped.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042393/
If I had not caught that 1950s classic last night I probably would have offered 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Of course it had Arthur C. Clarke's involvement.
Perhaps the secret is to have "real" science fiction authors involved in a meaningful sense. I'm not suggesting that they can necessarily write screenplays, that is a different art than novels, but there can be serious collaboration. In such an environment CGI can be a great tool.
Pixar films are entirely CGI, and I don't hear anyone calling them soulless or lifeless ... But hating on CGI is an unfortunate geek trope.
Watch something done by the SyFy channel rather than Pixar. Basically CGI is like everything else, it can be done poorly.
Geek tripe, hating CGI? Are you sure? I can see a nostalgic fascination with old school techniques, a respect for that art, but I don't know that there is an accompanying backlash against CGI, at least when well done. And by well done I don't necessarily mean in a technical sense. For example Han chasing storm troopers around the corner and finding the 6 or so real actors supplemented with 25 or so CGI troopers. It added nothing to the scene, probably made it worse (IMHO).
As a fellow cognitive scientist let me be the first to explain "why Starcraft 2?" The answer lies in the oft-cited measure of player skill at the game: actions per minute. This is an unprecedented numerical measure of expertise that lends itself well to the study of "expertise" -- a term which means something different in the study of the brain than it does to the everyday person. Expertise is nothing less than a figurative rewiring of your brain in order to better excel at a chosen repetitive task.
APM is a distorted metric. It does not distinguish between a meaningful action, a redundant action, a nervous "twitch" (i.e. multiple clicks rather than one), etc.
Furthermore it contains an additional distortion. Since it is a metric that players are evaluated by, and/or used in silly "pissing contests", it can be intentionally distorted. Why click on that point on the ground once when you can click on it five time rapidly? APM focused players often are manically clicking on empty ground issuing no unit orders when they have nothing to do for a second or two, they have rewired their brain to have them do "something" even if there is nothing useful to be done.
For the programmers reading along, Think of APM as the LOC (Lines of Code) of the Starcraft world. Both metrics can be meaningful in an idealized setting, but such is not the setting of most real world events.
So a declaration is irrelevant if we were attacked, ...
In the sense that the state of war was created by a foreign nation and the President issuing immediate tactical orders to the military in response.
... and "more relevant" when we start the fight? What exactly does "more relevant" mean?
It creates the state of war.
If Congress disagreed they could enact a law saying that spending money on those operations was illegal. At that point the military would refuse the presidential order as it would now be an illegal order. That is the check and balance, not the formal declaration of war.
What congress would tell the military not to spend money on combat when they're already in the middle of a fight?
The Congress that wanted the US forces to disengage and withdraw. Congress threatened exactly such action during the Spanish American War when it learned that the US had attacked Spanish forces in the Philippines, not just in the Caribbean.
Where in the chain of command are the officers who will decide their commander's formerly legal orders have become illegal?
Most likely the joint chiefs.
On what grounds would Congress impeach the Pres
As you said in your original post, "whatever Congress agrees it to be".
It seems to me you're filtering and spinning the constitution to make it match what presidents have actually been doing, rather than looking at the text and the federalist papers to see what the framers actually said.
There is no filtering or spinning, the President is the Commander in Chief and the military will obey all lawful orders. Congress will control declaring war and spending on war. You introduced the notions that the President is limited to defensive operations in response to an active attack, can not take the fight to the attackers, can not operate in the enemy's home territory, etc. And you accuse me of spinning the Constitution? You are getting ridiculous. The distinctions I made regarding act or war, state of war and declaration of war are rooted in the Constitution and international law. I am sorry if the world does not work as you wish.
Every military commander is obliged to follow orders, including the commander-in-chief, whose orders are supposed to come from congress.
You just jumped the shark. The Constitutional office of Commander in Chief is the highest ranking military office. Congress has no Constitutional authority to order. Such a notion violates the concept of checks and balances, it puts the command, spending and declaration of war into a single branch of government.
On this point the framers were crystal clear. The Legislature makes the policy, Executive implements it. This separation of powers is nothing like our current reality, but it is the fundamental point of the constitution.
Legislative policy (as in formally stating the justification and goals of a war) and waging war (as in tactical decision making - which would include a response to an attack) are two separate things. The separation of powers gives the later to the executive.
This may be the answer to the Somalia pirate problem - space-based tracking. Now adding a moderately powerful laser, say 10KW or so...
Actually just route commercial ships away from suspected pirates. Much like convoys were routed away from enemy submarines during WW2 when Ultra was up and running and decoding communications to and from the subs.
Yeah, not nearly as fun as lasers.
So it's your argument that the constitution gave Congress the power to write a formal document which is legally irrelevant?
Careful, I'm happy to discuss this topic as long as you are being serious and intelligent, as you have been so far.
My argument is that the ability of the President to order the military into combat is not dependent upon a declaration of war, that an act of war is one sufficient alternative. For example a state of war existed the moment Pearl Harbor was bombed and the President was free to order combat operations against the military forces of the attacking nation regardless of where those forces were located. If Congress disagreed they could enact a law saying that spending money on those operations was illegal. At that point the military would refuse the presidential order as it would now be an illegal order. That is the check and balance, not the formal declaration of war. Well that and Congress' power to impeach a President.
The formal declaration of war is a legal document more relevant when a nation wants to initiate a war, not respond to an act of war. It is also a notification to neutral parties that might get caught in the middle. That said international law also states that neutrals can not rely upon a lack of formal declarations when a state of war obviously exists. An example of where a declaration of war is more relevant would be the War of 1812 where the U.S. initiated the war over "intolerable grievances", not in response to an attack.
In short, a declaration of war is one way to initiate a state of war. Being attacked by a nation is another way to initiate a state of war. The declaration of war brings into play various international laws and conventions. However it is the state of war that makes various tactical orders by the President legal.
So that line in the constitution about the power to declare war belonging to congress - what exactly do you think that means?
A declaration of war is a formal document announcing a state of war between two nations. It is not the only path to a state of war, for example an attack can also create a state of war. Note that when President Roosevelt went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war he indicates that a state of war already exists.
Reminds me about accusations that part of the UAV software was either pirated or incorrectly used open source. Looks like this is nothing new.
I'm not familiar with the specific case that you refer to but keep in mind that the GPL doesn't require that derived code be given to anyone who asks. Only to those you distribute binaries to. If the derived work is strictly for use within an organization then distribution need not occur. So if a US government contractor uses GPL'd code in a UAV while acting as an employee/agent of the gov't then there is no violation as the military, border patrol, coast guard, fbi, etc use the UAV. If developed as a third party the UAV developer would only have to provide the source to the US gov't. Now if they sell a UAV to the local police department things could be interesting.
That, and because public corporations are legally required to be amoral sociopaths. It doesn't matter if Mr. Rogers is in charge of the corporation, his shareholders will sue him if he doesn't fuck over his neighbor for a buck.
That is untrue. The concept of increasing shareholder value does not have a timeframe restriction. A moral CEO is free to decide that shareholder value is best increased by the longer term decision to preserve the corporate reputation and not screw customers, suppliers, etc. Regrettably they do not always do so but this is not because they are required to act otherwise.
the president is free to order the military to locate, pursue and destroy the enemy forces even if those forces have disengaged and are withdrawing
I agree. Going after somebody who just attacked you is still self-defense.
No. It is well established in law that when an attacker disengages and attempts to leave you are no longer under imminent threat and the right to self defense no longer exists.
Sending soldiers to the perpetrators' country is what requires a declaration of war. If it were not so, we'd forever have what we have today - massive foreign deployments, years of war, all without a congressional declaration of war.
There is no such restriction in the Constitution. Pursuing an attacker into his national territory would be a legal order. Pre-emptively striking an attacker's other military assets in its national territory would also be a legal order.
it is good that Congress has the luxury of time and may fully deliberate whether a formal declaration of war is necessary
I agree with the sentiment. If an act were really an unambiguous act of war, I think the decision would be a no-brainer. Otherwise, I agree, they need to talk it out, while POTUS makes plans and waits for authorization to strike.
Not quite. What gives Congress the luxury of time is that the President is already acting, or more accurately the military is already acting. If it were the case that the President were waiting then Congress would not have the luxury of time and would be hurriedly providing authorization rather than deliberating the wiser path.
How does closing the barn door after the horse as left work for you?
The GP referred to people, plural. So there is an effect by making an example of an early adopter of such activities. Plus, it deters repeat offenses. :-)
It is impossible for a government, a corporation, or a committee to be moral. Morality requires a conscience and only an individual can have a conscience.
Wrong. For example a corporation can be as moral as those who run it. Keep in mind that many corporations are small. I've worked at corporations who lied and cheated both customers and employees, and I've worked at corporations who treated customers fairly, who treated subcontractors fairly, and who treated employees both fairly and equitably (ex. real profit sharing). I control a corporation, LLC actually, it is precisely as moral as I am. For example I've told a potential client that I can do that job but my experience is not a perfect fit for the task. YMMV.
"... however the president commands the military."
In the U.S. Constitution, that power has a big qualifier on it. "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." [Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1] My best reading is that he's not Commander in Chief until Congress officially taps him thus with a declaration of war.
That is an erroneous reading. "When called into the actual Service of the United States" is merely indicating that the president is not normally in command of the state militia. Note that the Commander in Chief of the state militia (or today's National Guard) is normally the Governor of the state. Also note that a declaration of war is not necessary to move the National Guard from state to federal service. National Guard and Air National Guard units served in combat during Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War and today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
> the president may order the US military
> to attack the perpetrators
The President may order the US military to defend against an active attack. Taking the fight to the attackers requires authorization.
The Constitution suggests no such limitation. As Command in Chief the President may order both defensive and offensive operations. In the Pearl Harbor example the president is free to order the military to locate, pursue and destroy the enemy forces even if those forces have disengaged and are withdrawing. Such would be a legal order.
> wait for the following day when congress got the > paperwork
Congress may be incompetent, stupid, crazy, and deadlocked, but if there were a real attack on American soil, the most dysfunctional Congress we've ever had could get this done in the middle of the night. If Congress can't do it remotely, I'm sure a quorum of members could get individual direct transport to the capital.within a couple hours and pass something within 30 minutes. It would take at least that long to prove who started the cyber attack.
Modern history does not support this 30 minute hypothesis. It took a far more functional congress a day to declare war after Pearl Harbor, and that was with both an unambiguous attack and a diplomatic message from the enemy essentially breaking off negotiations and declaring war. And it is good that Congress has the luxury of time and may fully deliberate whether a formal declaration of war is necessary, or if the President's immediate response was sufficient for the moment and if diplomacy may be a better option moving forward.
I don't see what's to stop people from taking pot shots at them...
The SWAT team that will kick in your door and haul you away.
If bouncy things were not competitive as a source of random information, then someone would be able to predict lottery powerball drawings, which are indeed governed by bouncy balls.
You have the GP's assertion wrong. He claimed that events describable by classical physics are just as random as quantum events. That is inherently false. Classical events are a practical source of randomness because of our insufficient description of the parameters of the event. That is quite different than quantum events where the parameters are inherently imprecise. With a sufficiently good description of the geometry of the cage, its rotation, the balls, etc would could predict powerball drawings.
Constitutionally, an "act of war" is whatever Congress agrees it to be. Such decisions are not the Executive's to make.
Actually they are. An "act of war" is something different from a "declaration of war". Congress has the ability to control declaring a war and the spending on a war, however the president commands the military. In response to an act of war the president may order the US military to attack the perpetrators, this would be a lawful order. For example as soon as the president learned of pearl harbor he could immediately order US forces to attack enemy forces, he did not have to wait for the following day when congress got the paperwork in order and formally declared war.
"the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is"
Nonsense. They are random in precisely the same way that a good bouncy roll of the dice are.
No. The bouncy dice are describable by classical physics. Our inability to predict is based upon our imprecise understanding of the path of the dice, their rotation, air density and movement, the geometry of the area landing in and bouncing about in, the understanding of the materials of the dice and objects it is bouncing against, etc.
In contrast this new method utilizes effects of quantum physics. That is inherently far less measurable and predictable.
I just use the rand() function in Excel. Way less hassle than firing a laser through a diamond...
But not nearly as much fun. :-)
"Truly random numbers". I don't believe such a thing can possibly exist.
It is far easier to believe when you are dealing with quantum physics rather than classical physics.
Finally a reason for socially inept people to buy diamonds!
Industrial grade diamonds are cheap. They are already found in various consumer gadgets that geeks may already have. :-)