If North Korea's done this in any meaningful way, then their economic troubles are over. They won't be asking for aid or concessions, they'll be getting rich selling energy and possibly even technology. They won't be testing missiles, they'll be developing frickin' laser beams.
to help the widows with children... is a noble cause that many can't argue with. But look at it now, it is a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work.
I hear this a lot, but I've never been able to find a lot of evidence that a large portion of Social Security goes to "social leeches" who are just too lazy to work. Do you have data?
She also argued that prosecutors who deliberately manufacture evidence to convict innocent people should not be civilly liable for their actions.
Before you use her participation in support of the Pottawattamie prosecutors to extrapolate her entire character, I recommend reading the Pottawattamie County v. McGhee article over at SCOTUSWiki. Among other things, you'll find out that even the McGhee and Harrington side of the case agrees that prosecutors "enjoy immunity when they knowingly introduce false testimony during trial" based on the 1976 SCOTUS decision in Imbler v. Pachtman. All the legal wrangling was over drawing lines across contiguous situations, like whether or not that immunity extends to pre-trial conditions. The central idea of immunity for prosecutors during trial apparently wasn't even really being questioned, because much of the lawyering world apparently believes that if you open prosecutors to liability, it'll have a "chilling effect" on their ability to pursue justice even in situations where the defendant is guilty as sin because of the threat of being buried under lawsuits.
Now, from an ethical and liberty-focused perspective, I completely agree that a lot of this is ridiculous. I think that fabricating evidence is flat-out simply beyond the job description of any state officer, and so by definition, whether or not it happened pre-trial or during the trial, it's outside of official prosecutorial duties and can and should incur criminal and civil liability. But there are beings who walk the earth who see court cases very differently than a normal citizen does, who don't operate directly on matters of ethics and policy and justice and liberty, but instead on the law as the instrument which serves those matters, and who apparently see a prosecutors role as such an important one in actually pursuing justice that it's deserving of considerable latitude. I disagree and I think there's a cultural problem here that needs to be addressed by legal means: we're apparently going to need a law stating that fabrication of evidence is explicitly outside any public duty and that no immunity of any kind applies.
I'm unimpressed by Kagan's advocacy, and think everybody should contact their Senator -- particularly if they've got one that's on the judiciary committee -- if for no other reason to highlight this issue, which hasn't received anywhere near its due attention, but flogging Kagan in particular for it probably isn't going to address a systemic problem.
Before you use her participation in support of the Pottawattamie prosecutors to extrapolate her entire character, I recommend reading the Pottawattamie County v. McGhee article over at SCOTUSWiki. Among other things, you'll find out that even the McGhee and Harrington side of the case agrees that prosecutors "enjoy immunity when they knowingly introduce false testimony during trial" based on the 1976 SCOTUS decision in Imbler v. Pachtman. All the legal wrangling was over drawing lines across contiguous situations, like whether or not that immunity extends to pre-trial conditions. The central idea of immunity for prosecutors during trial apparently wasn't even really being questioned, because much of the lawyering world believes that if you open prosecutors to liability, it'll have a "chilling effect" on them.
Now, from an ethical and liberty-focused perspective, I completely agree that a lot of this is ridiculous. I think that fabricating evidence is flat-out simply beyond the job description of any state officer, and so by definition, whether or not it happened pre-trial or during the trial, it's outside of official prosecutorial duties and can and should incur criminal and civil liability. But there are beings who walk the earth who see court cases very differently than a normal citizen does, who don't operate directly on matters of ethics and policy and justice and liberty, but instead on the law as the instrument which serves those matters, and who apparently see a prosecutors role as such an important one in actually pursuing justice that it's deserving of considerable latitude. I disagree and I think there's a cultural problem here that needs to be addressed by legal means: we're apparently going to need a law stating that fabrication of evidence is explicitly outside any public duty and that no immunity of any kind applies.
I'm unimpressed by Kagan's advocacy, and think everybody should contact their Senator -- particularly if they've got one that's on the judiciary committee -- to highlight this issue, but flogging her in particular for it isn't going to address a systemic problem.
"I'm sorry sir, your idea has become too successful, we're going to have to take it away from you now."
You've got a mistranslation, here. It's more like:
"I'm sorry sir, you contributed your patented idea to standard X, you're not allowed to use your patent against anyone implementing X."
or even:
"I'm sorry sir, you contributed your patented idea to standard X, you're not allowed to use your patent against anyone using the reference implementation of X."
So, in short, nobody would have the force of their patent involuntarily stripped, it'd be a voluntary part of participating in some standardization activities.
At a minimum, I suspect it'd be helpful if someone came up with some good, marketable shorthand for a standard that is "open" in these ways.
Why would I ever want a website to have access to my camera or microphone?
Well, for one thing: chat.
Sure, you might not frequently use your computer for that, but lots of people do. Also, your favorite chat client, while cool, is difficult to integrate directly into a web community, and it's always kindof nice if you don't have to worry about installation but can just visit the website.
And as it turns out, there are also some other interesting things where it might occasionally be nice to have mic or camera access. Maybe you've seen some of those apps take ambient music in through a mic and tell you what a song is. Or the apps you show a barcode or even an object to and they'll tell you what it is. Why shouldn't those be available over the web... as long as there's security that ensures the mic and camera only work when you want them to?
Flash Is Comparatively and Generally Fairly Open
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Flash Is Not a Right
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· Score: 1
I don't really think you guys know what you mean by a "Closed Platform". Flash is just as closed as anything Apple or Microsoft puts out there.
Not really. If nothing else, Adobe doesn't insert themselves into distribution between developers and users. Apple does.
But there is something else: the Flash runtime has a published spec. It's arguably incomplete (I believe there are some missing bits relating to a Sorenson Codec and I'm not sure if they've got all of RTMP in there), but it's at least theoretically possible to re-implement the runtime. In practice, this has proven difficult, but there are projects like Gnash that are working on it.
Furthermore -- you don't need Adobe's tools to make something that targets the Flash runtime. At all. MTASC and Ming and a handful of others have successfully targeted it for a long time. Or, you can use Adobe's Open Source Flex SDK if you want.
By contrast, Apple controls distribution, doesn't have comparable documentation for their mobile runtime, would probably look poorly on reimplementation, and does look poorly on having a non-Apple toolchain target their platform.
Flash isn't as open as Linux, but there's a solid case to be made that it's more open than Apple's Mobile platform.
A "REALLY good reason" and a reasonable suspicion aren't necessarily the same thing.
you'd better believe it'll be the first question out of the court appointed lawyer's mouth.
If you're not a citizen, do you get a day in court and a court-provided lawyer?
If you do... after you've been in jail for a few days or weeks, what happens to the officer whose suspicion doesn't turn out to be "reasonable" by court standards... vs what happens to you while you're in jail?
4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
I read that as applying to situations in which you're attempting to get something (probably ID, a permit, or a license) from an Arizona state agency. I also don't think it's particularly clear that "State" means "any U.S. State" rather than "the state of Arizona."
Overall, I don't think it's clear that any ol' driver's license will do the job.
The answer isn't just "Let's ignore problems because the system is fucked up."
I don't think he said "ignore the problem." I suspect he (along with the rest of us) would be happy to see the INS adequately organized and funded. The issue in play at the moment is whether local police officers have a legal means to completely disrupt the lives of people who may be legit (citizens and legal immigrants) but not currently carrying everything they need to assuage any concerns about their citizenship.
They don't seem to want to forward solutions,
There's no shortage of other solutions forwarded, including generally increased immigration (which would help us offset some demographic problems associated with the boomers) and penalties for people who hire illegals ($1000 a pop, Arizona? Seriously? Why, that'd bring the $1500 you were paying a migrant for three months of labor before you were caught up to $2500, which means you'd end up paying roughly minimum wage. What a strong deterrent!). Instead we seemed to end up with something that focuses on immediate detention of people who for whatever reason aren't carrying their documentation.
They CANNOT walk up to a random person on the street and check their immigration status.
While the law doesn't grant statutory authority for officers to begin contact by requiring someone to show documentation without reasonable suspicion, you have to remember that police are largely free to do anything any citizen can do. That includes initiating conversation with someone and even asking probing questions. Many officers are trained to question people in ways that elicit answers which increase an officer's options under the law, and they get a chance to practice extensively. This, incidentally, is why it's generally a good idea to not talk to the police, but as officers will tell you, most people do anyway (heck, I'm familiar with the issue and my general impulse is to treat officers like other people and just talk to them).
In practice, an officer might see someone they wish to target, whether for completely legit reasons or shady ones, engage them in conversation, ask them where they're from, what they do for a living, and where they were born, and if during the answers the suspect says anything the officer can justify as even thinly "reasonably suspicious," then the officer can probably ask for proof of citizenship without fear of repercussion (even if his justification doesn't meet a standard a judge holds up in court, what's going to happen to the officer?).
It's not clear that California license, such as the one I carry, will do the job... #4 under the heading you're probably reading to support the assertion a driver's license is all you need is worded strangely, and seems to refer to applications to Arizona state agencies rather than officers. An officer may be within the law refusing to recognize an out-of-state license as proof.
An out-of-state visitor is also unlikely to have things like a birth certificate or social security card on them if for some reason a license isn't accepted. The question is... what do they do then?
You can safely orbit a black hole, if you're beyond the event horizon and pick a trajectory that ensures you stay this way.
I think Facebook might be best treated this way: create yourself a profile with limited content. Particularly don't give informative answers to specific questions. Include a URL to your personal website / blog. Make that public. Make an email address and phone number visible to friends. Update your status and comment to friends periodically, feed links to content you have elsewhere through it periodically. You get most of the advantages of Facebook's visibility and keep their grip off your content and personal information.
Altering your appearance is pretty easy. Altering your habits of motion like your gait, your hand gestures, even to some extent your patterns of facial expression.... not as easy.
On the other hand, every time I here a "waaah, cry cry, science is being mean to my bullshit creation myths, mommy make it stop!" my blood starts to boil and I get serious about implementing a method of punching people in the face over the internet.
Which is where we find out that you're apparently not actually serious about consent and medical privacy issues -- that whatever principled stance you ostensibly have about these things simply evaporates if you get a chance to push forward another agenda that's important to you.
I suppose there's nothing wrong with outright stating that you believe it's more important to knock down any religious or cultural origin narratives that conflict with the modern scientific ones. Tension between principles is inevitable, and it's there you find out who really believes in them But don't be surprised if you get attacked by people who are actually serious about consent and privacy issues... and are willing to let the marketplace of ideas handle issues of belief.
Other than commercial iPhone Apps, you don't have to buy anything from their store.
That's like saying that other than mainframe software and spares, nobody had to buy anything from IBM. Or that other than gasoline, nobody had to buy anything from Standard Oil.
Standard Oil? Wow. I've marveled at the stretch of some of the Apple-MS comparisons before, but this takes things to a whole new level. Whatever else you're doing on this topic, you should stop, because you're not actually thinking about it.
When you buy Apple, yes, you're limited in your distribution channels for software. The thing is, there's no reason you have to buy Apple. As neat a product as the iPhone may be, they're so far from the only smartphone on the market that it's laughable to suggest they have any kind of monopoly. They have their platform, they control it tightly, I don't like that, you probably don't like that, but it's not the same as controlling an entire market. Nobody has to buy into Apple's ecosystem if they want a phone or even a smartphone.
Concerns about Apple buying ARM are probably well-founded enough, since they're a major player in the mobile device processor market, major enough that for the first time, it's possible that Slashdotters could make reasonable Apple-as-monopolist comments instead of facile ones. Probably not great for the industry in the short-to-mid term, but a fantastic bright new future for Apple-hate hobbyists!
And here I'd thought I'd seen all of the facile Apple-Microsoft comparisons.
This isn't the PC OEM industry. There's one manufacturer, they make both the hardware and the software of the product, and they're essentially a single package. There's no OS "tax" on this device any more than there's a battery tax or a touchscreen tax or cellular radio tax.
It's been 13 years and they still haven't done it lock, stock and barrel.
They did with CS5, and Apple's chosen a curious way to welcome them to the finish line.
The iPhone OS platform isn't going to be held back like the OS X Cocoa proper platform.
You know the funny thing is, this may be about a relationship soured by Adobe camping out on Carbon, but it's certainly not about policies that are going to help Apple avoid that problem in the future. The fact is, the deprecated Carbon APIs and aging codebase of today is the blessed API and freshly-updated C/C++ source of yesterday. And today's approved APIs and fresh Obj/C/++ code are tomorrow's deprecated API and legacy codebase. If anybody ever produces something that embodies the killer app for Apple's mobile platform as fully as these media creation and publishing tools did for Apple's Desktop, Apple's insistence on some particular API today isn't going to have an extra ounce of power to move the third party along to another one.
And then there's the fact that they're apparently prohibiting XCode as an intermediate target, which can't have a thing to do with your argument.
Seeing one closed off, 'play by our rules or gtfo' company, whining about another closed off 'play by our rules or gtfo' company is golden.
Flash has some particularly closed bits (client-server communication protocols and Sorenson codecs, IIRC), but in general, it's relatively open. SWF has a published (though arguably incomplete) format.
Not to mention that Adobe doesn't insert itself between developers and deployment, and they've done plenty to signal that when the HTML 5 revolution arrives, they're happy to target that as well.
All in all, they're doing pretty well on the "openness." And they're almost inarguably doing more to reassure the world they're committed to a growing platforms where developers have options than Apple is.
So what happens when Apple needs to change an API and it breaks everyone's $6000 CS5 suite and every app that was compiled with it?
Apple's changes to its mobile platform are going to break a desktop app?
Okay, I don't know what you're smoking there, but let's address the idea of concerns about forward direction of the platform and third-party compilers.
First of all, if we're talking about the APIs, particularly the documented APIs, then Adobe's compiler isn't going to have a problem that every iPhone app is going to have when it's time to move them on. An app built in XCode that relies APIs that go away or change is going to have to be re-built using new APIs as surely as an app built in Flash is.
If we're talking about changes at the binary level that aren't really about library calls -- opcodes, data alignment and bit/byte order, stuff like that, or even stuff related to how the code executes in the context of the operating system -- then yeah, you have a genuine point. But the thing is, if that's the central concern, then all Apple has to do is require people to build their final binaries with Apple's toolchain. Make it a policy that third-party tools have to use XCode as an intermediate target.
Of course, as I pointed out, rather than making it a policy, Apple outright bans it as an option. Which would seem to imply this isn't a QC/compatibility issue. It's a control issue.
It would be very funny if Adobe, just for spite, decided to stop making it's high end graphic design products compatible with Apple hardware.
This would fall squarely under the domain of the old saying about cutting off your nose to spite your face. The fact is, that aspect of the Adobe-Apple relationship is symbiotic. Apple's market has expanded beyond creatives, so it's not as strong a tie as it used to be, but that market is still profitable for both of them.
The other thing is, Adobe has plenty of other options. Here's what I'd do if I were running the company:
1) Hit other mobile platforms *hard*. Their public statements suggest they're doing this, but they need to make sure Flash Player 10.1 mobile is tight, doesn't take much longer to come to market, and supports as many features of the desktop runtime as possible.
2) Target HTML5. Again, they're doing this. But they could be doing more. For example, you may or may not know that an iPhone owner can actually cache an HTML5 app encountered on the web via Mobile Safari to their homescreen for offline use (in fact, this was originally the only blessed method of creating third-party iPhone apps). While this isn't an ideal method of taking advantage of the full capabilities of the device (no way to access geolocation features, accelerometer, and contacts, limited audio API, and you're running interpreted rather than native code), there's no gatekeeper. Particularly since Trudy Muller apparently just publicly reaffirmed Apple's commitment to HTML5, they could have CS5 target that. Heck, they could run their own App Gallery or Store that people visit through Safari. Now that could get interesting. Would Apple stay committed to HTML5 -- or would their QC impulses and control issues override that commitment?
3) Target OpenGLES/C/XCode. Personally, I think it'd be interesting to see whether Apple is really going to stick to their apparent policy of "originally" written Obj/C/++ code and if they're really going to go after libraries. If CS5 essentially generated a library that could be used in an XCode project, it'd be stepping into a grey area. I have no doubt that Apple has the disposition and capacity to selectively apply the 3.3.1 license clauses to single out Adobe and apps created in that way... but they'd have to at a minimum invest in a program to fingerprint binaries for something like this, or demand source inspection as a condition of approval, and continue to invest in PR to offset the problems here.
4) Continue to improve Flash as a Content Creation Tool.
#2 and #3 are risky. Particularly #3, of course -- Apple's at their most capricious as a gatekeeper, but even #2 is. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Apple remove the ability to save HTML5 apps to the homescreen for offline use if they ever got a whiff of the notion that people would see it as a viable alternative. The PR fallout would be bigger, but ultimately, I think they don't care and won't care as long as they're as competitive as they are right now in the smartphone market. So what does Adobe announce? A strategy that's pretty much #1 and #4. No surprise. I'd love to see 'em go for the gusto, but the fact is that all of these approaches require investment, and nobody wants to put big investments in something that might be pissed down the drain by a capricious partner.
Slashdot Mirror
If North Korea's done this in any meaningful way, then their economic troubles are over. They won't be asking for aid or concessions, they'll be getting rich selling energy and possibly even technology. They won't be testing missiles, they'll be developing frickin' laser beams.
I have my doubts, though.
to help the widows with children... is a noble cause that many can't argue with. But look at it now, it is a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work.
I hear this a lot, but I've never been able to find a lot of evidence that a large portion of Social Security goes to "social leeches" who are just too lazy to work. Do you have data?
She also argued that prosecutors who deliberately manufacture evidence to convict innocent people should not be civilly liable for their actions.
Before you use her participation in support of the Pottawattamie prosecutors to extrapolate her entire character, I recommend reading the Pottawattamie County v. McGhee article over at SCOTUSWiki. Among other things, you'll find out that even the McGhee and Harrington side of the case agrees that prosecutors "enjoy immunity when they knowingly introduce false testimony during trial" based on the 1976 SCOTUS decision in Imbler v. Pachtman. All the legal wrangling was over drawing lines across contiguous situations, like whether or not that immunity extends to pre-trial conditions. The central idea of immunity for prosecutors during trial apparently wasn't even really being questioned, because much of the lawyering world apparently believes that if you open prosecutors to liability, it'll have a "chilling effect" on their ability to pursue justice even in situations where the defendant is guilty as sin because of the threat of being buried under lawsuits.
Now, from an ethical and liberty-focused perspective, I completely agree that a lot of this is ridiculous. I think that fabricating evidence is flat-out simply beyond the job description of any state officer, and so by definition, whether or not it happened pre-trial or during the trial, it's outside of official prosecutorial duties and can and should incur criminal and civil liability. But there are beings who walk the earth who see court cases very differently than a normal citizen does, who don't operate directly on matters of ethics and policy and justice and liberty, but instead on the law as the instrument which serves those matters, and who apparently see a prosecutors role as such an important one in actually pursuing justice that it's deserving of considerable latitude. I disagree and I think there's a cultural problem here that needs to be addressed by legal means: we're apparently going to need a law stating that fabrication of evidence is explicitly outside any public duty and that no immunity of any kind applies.
I'm unimpressed by Kagan's advocacy, and think everybody should contact their Senator -- particularly if they've got one that's on the judiciary committee -- if for no other reason to highlight this issue, which hasn't received anywhere near its due attention, but flogging Kagan in particular for it probably isn't going to address a systemic problem.
As I said before, she's evil.
Before you use her participation in support of the Pottawattamie prosecutors to extrapolate her entire character,
I recommend reading the Pottawattamie County v. McGhee article over at SCOTUSWiki. Among other things, you'll find out that even the McGhee and Harrington side of the case agrees that prosecutors "enjoy immunity when they knowingly introduce false testimony during trial" based on the 1976 SCOTUS decision in Imbler v. Pachtman. All the legal wrangling was over drawing lines across contiguous situations, like whether or not that immunity extends to pre-trial conditions. The central idea of immunity for prosecutors during trial apparently wasn't even really being questioned, because much of the lawyering world believes that if you open prosecutors to liability, it'll have a "chilling effect" on them.
Now, from an ethical and liberty-focused perspective, I completely agree that a lot of this is ridiculous. I think that fabricating evidence is flat-out simply beyond the job description of any state officer, and so by definition, whether or not it happened pre-trial or during the trial, it's outside of official prosecutorial duties and can and should incur criminal and civil liability. But there are beings who walk the earth who see court cases very differently than a normal citizen does, who don't operate directly on matters of ethics and policy and justice and liberty, but instead on the law as the instrument which serves those matters, and who apparently see a prosecutors role as such an important one in actually pursuing justice that it's deserving of considerable latitude. I disagree and I think there's a cultural problem here that needs to be addressed by legal means: we're apparently going to need a law stating that fabrication of evidence is explicitly outside any public duty and that no immunity of any kind applies.
I'm unimpressed by Kagan's advocacy, and think everybody should contact their Senator -- particularly if they've got one that's on the judiciary committee -- to highlight this issue, but flogging her in particular for it isn't going to address a systemic problem.
Congress is about the way "most American's live."
Most Americans are apparently lawyers and/or successful businessmen, then.
"I'm sorry sir, your idea has become too successful, we're going to have to take it away from you now."
You've got a mistranslation, here. It's more like:
"I'm sorry sir, you contributed your patented idea to standard X, you're not allowed to use your patent against anyone implementing X."
or even:
"I'm sorry sir, you contributed your patented idea to standard X, you're not allowed to use your patent against anyone using the reference implementation of X."
So, in short, nobody would have the force of their patent involuntarily stripped, it'd be a voluntary part of participating in some standardization activities.
At a minimum, I suspect it'd be helpful if someone came up with some good, marketable shorthand for a standard that is "open" in these ways.
Why would I ever want a website to have access to my camera or microphone?
Well, for one thing: chat.
Sure, you might not frequently use your computer for that, but lots of people do. Also, your favorite chat client, while cool, is difficult to integrate directly into a web community, and it's always kindof nice if you don't have to worry about installation but can just visit the website.
And as it turns out, there are also some other interesting things where it might occasionally be nice to have mic or camera access. Maybe you've seen some of those apps take ambient music in through a mic and tell you what a song is. Or the apps you show a barcode or even an object to and they'll tell you what it is. Why shouldn't those be available over the web... as long as there's security that ensures the mic and camera only work when you want them to?
I don't really think you guys know what you mean by a "Closed Platform". Flash is just as closed as anything Apple or Microsoft puts out there.
Not really. If nothing else, Adobe doesn't insert themselves into distribution between developers and users. Apple does.
But there is something else: the Flash runtime has a published spec. It's arguably incomplete (I believe there are some missing bits relating to a Sorenson Codec and I'm not sure if they've got all of RTMP in there), but it's at least theoretically possible to re-implement the runtime. In practice, this has proven difficult, but there are projects like Gnash that are working on it.
Furthermore -- you don't need Adobe's tools to make something that targets the Flash runtime. At all. MTASC and Ming and a handful of others have successfully targeted it for a long time. Or, you can use Adobe's Open Source Flex SDK if you want.
By contrast, Apple controls distribution, doesn't have comparable documentation for their mobile runtime, would probably look poorly on reimplementation, and does look poorly on having a non-Apple toolchain target their platform.
Flash isn't as open as Linux, but there's a solid case to be made that it's more open than Apple's Mobile platform.
A "REALLY good reason" and a reasonable suspicion aren't necessarily the same thing.
you'd better believe it'll be the first question out of the court appointed lawyer's mouth.
If you're not a citizen, do you get a day in court and a court-provided lawyer?
If you do... after you've been in jail for a few days or weeks, what happens to the officer whose suspicion doesn't turn out to be "reasonable" by court standards... vs what happens to you while you're in jail?
#4 actually reads differently:
I read that as applying to situations in which you're attempting to get something (probably ID, a permit, or a license) from an Arizona state agency. I also don't think it's particularly clear that "State" means "any U.S. State" rather than "the state of Arizona."
Overall, I don't think it's clear that any ol' driver's license will do the job.
The answer isn't just "Let's ignore problems because the system is fucked up."
I don't think he said "ignore the problem." I suspect he (along with the rest of us) would be happy to see the INS adequately organized and funded. The issue in play at the moment is whether local police officers have a legal means to completely disrupt the lives of people who may be legit (citizens and legal immigrants) but not currently carrying everything they need to assuage any concerns about their citizenship.
They don't seem to want to forward solutions,
There's no shortage of other solutions forwarded, including generally increased immigration (which would help us offset some demographic problems associated with the boomers) and penalties for people who hire illegals ($1000 a pop, Arizona? Seriously? Why, that'd bring the $1500 you were paying a migrant for three months of labor before you were caught up to $2500, which means you'd end up paying roughly minimum wage. What a strong deterrent!). Instead we seemed to end up with something that focuses on immediate detention of people who for whatever reason aren't carrying their documentation.
the reason this law is getting so much negative attention is because it makes the President look bad
Which President?
to have states enact laws to enforce federal laws that aren't being enforced.
Have ICE/INS had their resources limited, or been ordered to stand down?
They CANNOT walk up to a random person on the street and check their immigration status.
While the law doesn't grant statutory authority for officers to begin contact by requiring someone to show documentation without reasonable suspicion, you have to remember that police are largely free to do anything any citizen can do. That includes initiating conversation with someone and even asking probing questions. Many officers are trained to question people in ways that elicit answers which increase an officer's options under the law, and they get a chance to practice extensively. This, incidentally, is why it's generally a good idea to not talk to the police, but as officers will tell you, most people do anyway (heck, I'm familiar with the issue and my general impulse is to treat officers like other people and just talk to them).
In practice, an officer might see someone they wish to target, whether for completely legit reasons or shady ones, engage them in conversation, ask them where they're from, what they do for a living, and where they were born, and if during the answers the suspect says anything the officer can justify as even thinly "reasonably suspicious," then the officer can probably ask for proof of citizenship without fear of repercussion (even if his justification doesn't meet a standard a judge holds up in court, what's going to happen to the officer?).
It's not clear that California license, such as the one I carry, will do the job... #4 under the heading you're probably reading to support the assertion a driver's license is all you need is worded strangely, and seems to refer to applications to Arizona state agencies rather than officers. An officer may be within the law refusing to recognize an out-of-state license as proof.
An out-of-state visitor is also unlikely to have things like a birth certificate or social security card on them if for some reason a license isn't accepted. The question is... what do they do then?
You can safely orbit a black hole, if you're beyond the event horizon and pick a trajectory that ensures you stay this way.
I think Facebook might be best treated this way: create yourself a profile with limited content. Particularly don't give informative answers to specific questions. Include a URL to your personal website / blog. Make that public. Make an email address and phone number visible to friends. Update your status and comment to friends periodically, feed links to content you have elsewhere through it periodically. You get most of the advantages of Facebook's visibility and keep their grip off your content and personal information.
Altering your appearance is pretty easy. Altering your habits of motion like your gait, your hand gestures, even to some extent your patterns of facial expression.... not as easy.
But change you can run diffs against!
On the other hand, every time I here a "waaah, cry cry, science is being mean to my bullshit creation myths, mommy make it stop!" my blood starts to boil and I get serious about implementing a method of punching people in the face over the internet.
Which is where we find out that you're apparently not actually serious about consent and medical privacy issues -- that whatever principled stance you ostensibly have about these things simply evaporates if you get a chance to push forward another agenda that's important to you.
I suppose there's nothing wrong with outright stating that you believe it's more important to knock down any religious or cultural origin narratives that conflict with the modern scientific ones. Tension between principles is inevitable, and it's there you find out who really believes in them But don't be surprised if you get attacked by people who are actually serious about consent and privacy issues... and are willing to let the marketplace of ideas handle issues of belief.
Other than commercial iPhone Apps, you don't have to buy anything from their store.
That's like saying that other than mainframe software and spares, nobody had to buy anything from IBM. Or that other than gasoline, nobody had to buy anything from Standard Oil.
Standard Oil? Wow. I've marveled at the stretch of some of the Apple-MS comparisons before, but this takes things to a whole new level. Whatever else you're doing on this topic, you should stop, because you're not actually thinking about it.
When you buy Apple, yes, you're limited in your distribution channels for software. The thing is, there's no reason you have to buy Apple. As neat a product as the iPhone may be, they're so far from the only smartphone on the market that it's laughable to suggest they have any kind of monopoly. They have their platform, they control it tightly, I don't like that, you probably don't like that, but it's not the same as controlling an entire market. Nobody has to buy into Apple's ecosystem if they want a phone or even a smartphone.
Concerns about Apple buying ARM are probably well-founded enough, since they're a major player in the mobile device processor market, major enough that for the first time, it's possible that Slashdotters could make reasonable Apple-as-monopolist comments instead of facile ones. Probably not great for the industry in the short-to-mid term, but a fantastic bright new future for Apple-hate hobbyists!
"Bundled-with?"
And here I'd thought I'd seen all of the facile Apple-Microsoft comparisons.
This isn't the PC OEM industry. There's one manufacturer, they make both the hardware and the software of the product, and they're essentially a single package. There's no OS "tax" on this device any more than there's a battery tax or a touchscreen tax or cellular radio tax.
It's been 13 years and they still haven't done it lock, stock and barrel.
They did with CS5, and Apple's chosen a curious way to welcome them to the finish line.
The iPhone OS platform isn't going to be held back like the OS X Cocoa proper platform.
You know the funny thing is, this may be about a relationship soured by Adobe camping out on Carbon, but it's certainly not about policies that are going to help Apple avoid that problem in the future. The fact is, the deprecated Carbon APIs and aging codebase of today is the blessed API and freshly-updated C/C++ source of yesterday. And today's approved APIs and fresh Obj/C/++ code are tomorrow's deprecated API and legacy codebase. If anybody ever produces something that embodies the killer app for Apple's mobile platform as fully as these media creation and publishing tools did for Apple's Desktop, Apple's insistence on some particular API today isn't going to have an extra ounce of power to move the third party along to another one.
And then there's the fact that they're apparently prohibiting XCode as an intermediate target, which can't have a thing to do with your argument.
Unfortunately, they're just bundling the Flash VM in an app with the bytecode for the app.
Do you have a cite for that? While this isn't necessarily incompatible with Adobe's statements that "CS5 build[s] applications for iPhone that are then installed as native applications", this isn't the word on the street (which is that the bytecode doesn't run on a VM but is actually targeted to native code).
Seeing one closed off, 'play by our rules or gtfo' company, whining about another closed off 'play by our rules or gtfo' company is golden.
Flash has some particularly closed bits (client-server communication protocols and Sorenson codecs, IIRC), but in general, it's relatively open. SWF has a published (though arguably incomplete) format.
You could theoretically implement your own version of their runtime, though that's proven difficult, but implementing other tools which target Adobe's runtime is not only allowed, it's been done with MTASC and Ming and a handful of others. And the basic Flex SDK is open source.
Not to mention that Adobe doesn't insert itself between developers and deployment, and they've done plenty to signal that when the HTML 5 revolution arrives, they're happy to target that as well.
All in all, they're doing pretty well on the "openness." And they're almost inarguably doing more to reassure the world they're committed to a growing platforms where developers have options than Apple is.
So what happens when Apple needs to change an API and it breaks everyone's $6000 CS5 suite and every app that was compiled with it?
Apple's changes to its mobile platform are going to break a desktop app?
Okay, I don't know what you're smoking there, but let's address the idea of concerns about forward direction of the platform and third-party compilers.
First of all, if we're talking about the APIs, particularly the documented APIs, then Adobe's compiler isn't going to have a problem that every iPhone app is going to have when it's time to move them on. An app built in XCode that relies APIs that go away or change is going to have to be re-built using new APIs as surely as an app built in Flash is.
If we're talking about changes at the binary level that aren't really about library calls -- opcodes, data alignment and bit/byte order, stuff like that, or even stuff related to how the code executes in the context of the operating system -- then yeah, you have a genuine point. But the thing is, if that's the central concern, then all Apple has to do is require people to build their final binaries with Apple's toolchain. Make it a policy that third-party tools have to use XCode as an intermediate target.
Of course, as I pointed out, rather than making it a policy, Apple outright bans it as an option. Which would seem to imply this isn't a QC/compatibility issue. It's a control issue.
It would be very funny if Adobe, just for spite, decided to stop making it's high end graphic design products compatible with Apple hardware.
This would fall squarely under the domain of the old saying about cutting off your nose to spite your face. The fact is, that aspect of the Adobe-Apple relationship is symbiotic. Apple's market has expanded beyond creatives, so it's not as strong a tie as it used to be, but that market is still profitable for both of them.
The other thing is, Adobe has plenty of other options. Here's what I'd do if I were running the company:
1) Hit other mobile platforms *hard*. Their public statements suggest they're doing this, but they need to make sure Flash Player 10.1 mobile is tight, doesn't take much longer to come to market, and supports as many features of the desktop runtime as possible.
2) Target HTML5. Again, they're doing this. But they could be doing more. For example, you may or may not know that an iPhone owner can actually cache an HTML5 app encountered on the web via Mobile Safari to their homescreen for offline use (in fact, this was originally the only blessed method of creating third-party iPhone apps). While this isn't an ideal method of taking advantage of the full capabilities of the device (no way to access geolocation features, accelerometer, and contacts, limited audio API, and you're running interpreted rather than native code), there's no gatekeeper. Particularly since Trudy Muller apparently just publicly reaffirmed Apple's commitment to HTML5, they could have CS5 target that. Heck, they could run their own App Gallery or Store that people visit through Safari. Now that could get interesting. Would Apple stay committed to HTML5 -- or would their QC impulses and control issues override that commitment?
3) Target OpenGLES/C/XCode. Personally, I think it'd be interesting to see whether Apple is really going to stick to their apparent policy of "originally" written Obj/C/++ code and if they're really going to go after libraries. If CS5 essentially generated a library that could be used in an XCode project, it'd be stepping into a grey area. I have no doubt that Apple has the disposition and capacity to selectively apply the 3.3.1 license clauses to single out Adobe and apps created in that way... but they'd have to at a minimum invest in a program to fingerprint binaries for something like this, or demand source inspection as a condition of approval, and continue to invest in PR to offset the problems here.
4) Continue to improve Flash as a Content Creation Tool.
#2 and #3 are risky. Particularly #3, of course -- Apple's at their most capricious as a gatekeeper, but even #2 is. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Apple remove the ability to save HTML5 apps to the homescreen for offline use if they ever got a whiff of the notion that people would see it as a viable alternative. The PR fallout would be bigger, but ultimately, I think they don't care and won't care as long as they're as competitive as they are right now in the smartphone market. So what does Adobe announce? A strategy that's pretty much #1 and #4. No surprise. I'd love to see 'em go for the gusto, but the fact is that all of these approaches require investment, and nobody wants to put big investments in something that might be pissed down the drain by a capricious partner.