Where I live we don't believe in Socialist Luxuries like sidewalks, so walking for any distance if fraught with peril. Sometimes fences or landscaping push you into the street, too.
In fact, there was a scandal a few years back where kids were getting accidentally run down waiting for their school buses in places with no sidewalks.
(Oh, and in another part of the state, there was a scandal about the number of bikers being run down in traffic, because we also don't believe in Socialist Luxuries like bike lanes.)
I'm probably some kind of monster because I tend to give my old laptops to elderly people on fixed incomes, thus allowing them to "live above their station."
After all, once they get my ancient Powerbook (worth maybe $100.00 these days) they go from being Deserving Poor to being Undeserving Poor, according to some Slashdot posters.
When I was a kid, my D&D group met in the basement of a library. Now, it's possible that before the "D&D is a Satanic Suicide Cult" panic, my church might have allowed us to use their space.
However, even if they didn't believe in it, chances are they'd say "no dice" after the Moral Panic started, so they wouldn't have had to explain to angry parishioners why they were allowing Satanic Minions of Satan to meet on church property.
My Playbook now does exactly what I want it to do. It's a great remote terminal for my Linux box and a great tablet. I sincerely hope that upgrading to 10 will have no impact on this.
Incidentally, Playbooks, refurbished, have reached the "fun toy" price. Seriously, cheaper than the Kindle Fire I got Christmas 2011, and way ahead of it specs wise.
Oh, and the Playbook's cameras?
"PlayBook Features a 3 MP front-facing camera for video chatting over Wi-Fi and a rear-facing 5 MP camera, both of which can record 1080p video.[" -- BlackBerry PlayBook
State prosecutors who investigated the late Aaron Swartz had planned to let him off with a stern warning, but federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz took over and chose to make an example of the Internet activist, according to a report in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.
Hey, she did make an example out of Swartz, just not the kind of example she was hoping for.
He became an example of the result of the tyranny of the modern American State. (Honestly? He's not even the best example, but he's very prominent. Which is exactly why Ortiz and Heymann chose him. )
Incidentally, Shirly Sherrod lasted how long when that deceptively edited video of her was released, compared to how long Ortiz has lasted after an egregious miscarriage of Justice that she was responsible for was shown?
Seems the Obama administration has its priorities...
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. -- Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Did you know that inmates in federal prisons and federal prison camps consider it to be very bad manners for you to look into their cells or cubes as you walk past? By not knowing this one basic inmate rule it could lead you into a physical confrontation on your very first day inside. Always look straight ahead when walking past other inmate's houses.
Did you also know that when you call home using a prison's telephone that it's a violation of prison policy for someone else at your home, like your children, to pick up an extension line and join in on the conversation? You could lose your telephone privileges for up to six months. -- "I've Read Them All, This Is The Best Book Available For Helping First Time Inmates"
Prison sure sounds like fun, I'm surprised anyone would be anxious about going!
For me, the main thing I want MIT to do is to take a clear institutional position on the following points:
1. Do they believe that Aaron Swartz was indeed guilty of the felony counts he was charged with?
This question is important because it deals with the plea bargain. Swartz should only have taken the plea bargain if he was indeed guilty, legally. If not, the correct thing to do was stand trial and contest the case in court. The prosecutor, and her husband, tout the plea bargain as though that dispenses of the 35-50 year prison sentence, but if the charges were "trumped up" then it would be morally wrong to expect someone to accept a plea bargain to dispense with them.
In this case, "We don't know" is the same position as "No," because only if they believed he was definitely guilty, should he have taken the plea bargain. Plea bargains are only for guilty people, not innocent or possibly innocent ones.
I don't expect MIT to give a clear answer to this, but I can dream.
(This also doesn't determine whether Swartz should indeed have taken the plea bargain. That depends on whether he, himself, thought he was legally guilty or not, and we can't ask him about that. )
2. The next question goes beyond the legal dimension and to the moral dimension:
Does MIT, as an institution, believe that Swartz's crimes morally merited 35-50 years in a Federal Prison?
This has nothing to do with the letter of the law as written. MIT can take the position that these are good laws well applied and that if Swartz were found guilty a lengthy prison sentence was indeed appropriate. Or they can take the position that these were bad laws or that they were badly applied. In other words, they can take the position that he was morally in the right, but legally he was in trouble.
It also has nothing to do with what he would likely actually have gotten if he had been found guilty. Presumably the judge would have given a lighter sentence, but I believe the judge could have given him the entire 35-50 years. It was a possible outcome of a trial, therefore that's the baseline. The reason why I put "35-50" is because I've heard those numbers from different sources, some give a max of 35 and some give a max of 50. If MIT likes they can even say, "We believe Swartz deserved 35 years in prison but that 50 would be too much," as ridiculous as I consider that position to be.
Oh, and I encourage them to explain what punishment Swartz morally deserved for what he did, what kind of prison time, community service, fines or probation they think would be just. Obviously, they had the chance, before Swartz solved the problem with his belt, to take a position as the case was ongoing. I'd like them to take a clear and unambiguous position, now.
This is important. MIT is revered as having a "freewheeling" culture. This culture has enabled it to attract top talent from all over. People considering it as a school have the right to know it's moral position on the use of laws to prosecute "hacking" like what Aaron was doing.
Oh, I've quoted Aaron's family in my signature. MIT probably thinks that quote is unfair. Answering these questions would help to determine that.
The thing is, I really respect what the Indian government does for Indians. I've known a truly huge number of Indians since I started in IT... staggeringly huge, and I really like them. I find them to be good reliable friends.
Let's face it though, these laws aren't being put into place to help Indian techies (they do help them, but that's a side effect). They are being put into place to lower labor costs for large tech companies. Tech companies have decided that they are paying too much for labor, and they go to their stooges in Congress and say, "We're paying to much for labor, flood the market with H1-B's so labor will be cheaper." Their stooges in Congress think of the money they will get in graft, go "ch-ching" and pass the laws that the tech company owners want.
If there really is a labor shortage, more naturalized citizens is the right way to fill it, not the complex H1-B visa. Another fact about my Indian friends? They are great people but they move around the country like soldiers being stationed here, and then stationed there. It's got nothing to do with what they want, either. A contract runs out in sunny Georgia and they may next find themselves in icy NYC.
However, I don't feel particularly picked on because this happens all across the economy and the problem is that almost every law we get is based on graft (or increasing police state power) rather than the public good. It's why copyright length keeps getting extended. It's why we can't import drugs from where they are cheaper, and so on.
We've decided unchecked, rampant graft is going to be the order of the day in Washington, and we get a country that is run by corruption because of it.
Read, "4 Amendments and a Funeral" to see how Washington works. However, a caution, both political parties are currently driven by graft, don't fool yourself into seeing either as "the good guys."
I don't think you have to be a jihadist to worry that the U.S.'s policy for combating it is insufficiently cautious about "collateral damage".
Actually, the jihadists don't worry about this, especially if the people accidentally being killed are not particularly sympathetic to their goals. They'd love it if that person's extended family was radicalized and perhaps provided some new recruits. As with the Southern Cause in the US Civil War, some were fighting because they believed in the Southern Way of Life, and some were fighting because they hated the damned Yankee invaders.
Hell, they may consider him an infidel, but even a Muslim fundamentalist jihadi can read Mao. The principles of guerrilla warfare don't change based on ideology.
However, drones are perfect for a modern, relatively unpopular, US war. Air power has always been seen as cheap in terms of lives lost, and in this case you won't have a robot's family sitting outside Obama's house demanding why their robot was killed in some foreign war, even if someone should get lucky and bring one down.
At this point in GWoT, force protection (keeping Americans out of harm's way) is very important, because the American public is starting to get somewhat weary of the whole War, especially as the whole country turns into a dump being looted by politically connected Banksters. Too many body bags, and maybe some oil companies would have to pay bigger markups on their contracts instead of having the US Military strong-arming countries to get them bargain prices.
n 2009, the 69-year-old owner, Russ Caswell, received a letter from the DOJ indicating the government was pursuing a civil forfeiture case against him with the intention of seizing his family's motelâ"it was built in 1955 by Russ's fatherâ"and the surrounding property. Ms. Ortiz's office asserted that the motel had been the site of multiple crimes by its occupants over the years: 15 low-level drug offenses between 1994 and 2008 (out of an estimated 125,000 room rentals). Of those who stayed in the motel from 2001 to 2008,.05% were arrested for drug crimes on the property. Local and state officials in charge of those investigations never accused the Caswells of any wrongdoing.
Nor is the U.S. attorney charging Russ Caswell with a crime. The feds are using a vague but increasingly common procedure known as civil asset forfeiture. In criminal forfeiture, after a person is convicted of a crime the state must prove that the perpetrator's property had a sufficiently strong relationship to the crime to warrant seizure by the government. In civil forfeiture proceedings, the state asserts the property committed the crime, andâ"under civil lawâ"the burden of proof is on the defense to demonstrate their property is innocent.
"I've found... I'm responsible for the action of people I don't even know, I've never even met, and for the most part I have no control over them," Mr. Caswell told WBUR Boston. "And when they do something wrong, the government wants to steal my property for the actions of those people, which to me makes absolutely no sense. Itâ(TM)s more like we're in Russia or Venezuela or something."
According to the sworn testimony of a DEA agent operating out of Boston, it was his job to comb through news stories for properties that might be subject to forfeiture. When he finds a likely candidate, he goes to the Registry of Deeds, determines the value of the property in question, and refers it to the U.S. attorney for seizure. It is DEA policy to reject anything with less than $50,000 equity. -- Carmen Ortiz's Sordid Rap Sheet
The US Attorney's office is a breeding ground for monsters, and it certainly isn't any better under the current administration than previous ones.
In the old Roman Empire, this kind of property seizure was done by emperors like Caligula using similar methods.
Well, sure, but the courts didn't send Mildred and Richard Loving up the river, and they could have because the were both criminal lawbreakers as well as doubleplusungood crimethinkers.
The FBI and COINTELPRO used to have to do their dirty work in secret, as covert ops.
It could be a random brand name for all I know, like Yahoo or Twitter. Basically, it's a company that makes money providing students access to digitized scholarly article.
Oh, they have this on the about page:
We are deeply saddened to hear the news about Aaron Swartz. We extend our heartfelt condolences to Aaronâ(TM)s family, friends, and everyone who loved, knew, and admired him. He was a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the internet and the web from which we all benefit.
I'm surprised at the sympathy for the fearsome criminal who stole from them, and who the prosecutors felt needed to face 35-50 years at trial to protect us all from this monster.
The prosecutor [Heymann] even claimed Watt had psychopathic tendencies and was trying to bring down the entire financial system, Watt told Business Insider. Those accusations came after Watt admitted to liking the movie "Fight Club," according to Watt. "I think that he had a very bombastic manner of describing the crime and the alleged calculating manners of the co-defendants," Watt said.
Heymann does seem to be a particularly bad example of a bad bunch of people, an Ogre among the Orcs. The truth is, the corruption of the Justice Department goes all the way up to the President, and includes Eric Holder and Carmen Ortiz as well. (I'm not being partisan here, the previous administration was no better, but we are talking about today.)
Slashdot Mirror
I heard from a friend of a friend of an enemy that someone once used the Nook reader application to read a pirated book.
But I wouldn't trust a person like me, if I were you.
If you signed a contract, isn't suing replaced by "binding arbitration?"
Where I live we don't believe in Socialist Luxuries like sidewalks, so walking for any distance if fraught with peril. Sometimes fences or landscaping push you into the street, too.
In fact, there was a scandal a few years back where kids were getting accidentally run down waiting for their school buses in places with no sidewalks.
(Oh, and in another part of the state, there was a scandal about the number of bikers being run down in traffic, because we also don't believe in Socialist Luxuries like bike lanes.)
I'm probably some kind of monster because I tend to give my old laptops to elderly people on fixed incomes, thus allowing them to "live above their station."
After all, once they get my ancient Powerbook (worth maybe $100.00 these days) they go from being Deserving Poor to being Undeserving Poor, according to some Slashdot posters.
When I was a kid, my D&D group met in the basement of a library. Now, it's possible that before the "D&D is a Satanic Suicide Cult" panic, my church might have allowed us to use their space.
However, even if they didn't believe in it, chances are they'd say "no dice" after the Moral Panic started, so they wouldn't have had to explain to angry parishioners why they were allowing Satanic Minions of Satan to meet on church property.
Basically, just being a male is bad, in general.
My Playbook now does exactly what I want it to do. It's a great remote terminal for my Linux box and a great tablet. I sincerely hope that upgrading to 10 will have no impact on this.
Incidentally, Playbooks, refurbished, have reached the "fun toy" price. Seriously, cheaper than the Kindle Fire I got Christmas 2011, and way ahead of it specs wise.
Oh, and the Playbook's cameras?
"PlayBook Features a 3 MP front-facing camera for video chatting over Wi-Fi and a rear-facing 5 MP camera, both of which can record 1080p video.[" -- BlackBerry PlayBook
This is kind of a fun Website about the Soviet POW camps, as told by a Japanese soldier:
The Notes of Japanese soldier in USSR - Kiuchi Nobuo, retired Air Corps
No, we are built to cover as much ground as possible while expending as little energy as possibly. That's not lazy, that's a good survival strategy.
Hey, she did make an example out of Swartz, just not the kind of example she was hoping for.
He became an example of the result of the tyranny of the modern American State. (Honestly? He's not even the best example, but he's very prominent. Which is exactly why Ortiz and Heymann chose him. )
Incidentally, Shirly Sherrod lasted how long when that deceptively edited video of her was released, compared to how long Ortiz has lasted after an egregious miscarriage of Justice that she was responsible for was shown?
Seems the Obama administration has its priorities...
"could you imagine if every charge when to trial"
Oh, and let's not miss this gem:
Lucky thing that Aaron was just a young looking 26...
Prison sure sounds like fun, I'm surprised anyone would be anxious about going!
"The days of 'Club Fed'--think golf courses and lobster bakes--are long gone."
No, no, it's good that they never made a sequel. I'm from the alternate universe where they did. The angels weep for us.
For me, the main thing I want MIT to do is to take a clear institutional position on the following points:
1. Do they believe that Aaron Swartz was indeed guilty of the felony counts he was charged with?
This question is important because it deals with the plea bargain. Swartz should only have taken the plea bargain if he was indeed guilty, legally. If not, the correct thing to do was stand trial and contest the case in court. The prosecutor, and her husband, tout the plea bargain as though that dispenses of the 35-50 year prison sentence, but if the charges were "trumped up" then it would be morally wrong to expect someone to accept a plea bargain to dispense with them.
In this case, "We don't know" is the same position as "No," because only if they believed he was definitely guilty, should he have taken the plea bargain. Plea bargains are only for guilty people, not innocent or possibly innocent ones.
I don't expect MIT to give a clear answer to this, but I can dream.
(This also doesn't determine whether Swartz should indeed have taken the plea bargain. That depends on whether he, himself, thought he was legally guilty or not, and we can't ask him about that. )
2. The next question goes beyond the legal dimension and to the moral dimension:
Does MIT, as an institution, believe that Swartz's crimes morally merited 35-50 years in a Federal Prison?
This has nothing to do with the letter of the law as written. MIT can take the position that these are good laws well applied and that if Swartz were found guilty a lengthy prison sentence was indeed appropriate. Or they can take the position that these were bad laws or that they were badly applied. In other words, they can take the position that he was morally in the right, but legally he was in trouble.
It also has nothing to do with what he would likely actually have gotten if he had been found guilty. Presumably the judge would have given a lighter sentence, but I believe the judge could have given him the entire 35-50 years. It was a possible outcome of a trial, therefore that's the baseline. The reason why I put "35-50" is because I've heard those numbers from different sources, some give a max of 35 and some give a max of 50. If MIT likes they can even say, "We believe Swartz deserved 35 years in prison but that 50 would be too much," as ridiculous as I consider that position to be.
Oh, and I encourage them to explain what punishment Swartz morally deserved for what he did, what kind of prison time, community service, fines or probation they think would be just. Obviously, they had the chance, before Swartz solved the problem with his belt, to take a position as the case was ongoing. I'd like them to take a clear and unambiguous position, now.
This is important. MIT is revered as having a "freewheeling" culture. This culture has enabled it to attract top talent from all over. People considering it as a school have the right to know it's moral position on the use of laws to prosecute "hacking" like what Aaron was doing.
Oh, I've quoted Aaron's family in my signature. MIT probably thinks that quote is unfair. Answering these questions would help to determine that.
The monopolist doesn't buy competitors. He buys Senators, Congressmen, and Presidents. Much cheaper in the long run.
The competitors magically seem to disappear after that...
The thing is, I really respect what the Indian government does for Indians. I've known a truly huge number of Indians since I started in IT... staggeringly huge, and I really like them. I find them to be good reliable friends.
Let's face it though, these laws aren't being put into place to help Indian techies (they do help them, but that's a side effect). They are being put into place to lower labor costs for large tech companies. Tech companies have decided that they are paying too much for labor, and they go to their stooges in Congress and say, "We're paying to much for labor, flood the market with H1-B's so labor will be cheaper." Their stooges in Congress think of the money they will get in graft, go "ch-ching" and pass the laws that the tech company owners want.
If there really is a labor shortage, more naturalized citizens is the right way to fill it, not the complex H1-B visa. Another fact about my Indian friends? They are great people but they move around the country like soldiers being stationed here, and then stationed there. It's got nothing to do with what they want, either. A contract runs out in sunny Georgia and they may next find themselves in icy NYC.
However, I don't feel particularly picked on because this happens all across the economy and the problem is that almost every law we get is based on graft (or increasing police state power) rather than the public good. It's why copyright length keeps getting extended. It's why we can't import drugs from where they are cheaper, and so on.
We've decided unchecked, rampant graft is going to be the order of the day in Washington, and we get a country that is run by corruption because of it.
Read, "4 Amendments and a Funeral" to see how Washington works. However, a caution, both political parties are currently driven by graft, don't fool yourself into seeing either as "the good guys."
All day long, a tough gang of astrophysicists...
Actually, the jihadists don't worry about this, especially if the people accidentally being killed are not particularly sympathetic to their goals. They'd love it if that person's extended family was radicalized and perhaps provided some new recruits. As with the Southern Cause in the US Civil War, some were fighting because they believed in the Southern Way of Life, and some were fighting because they hated the damned Yankee invaders.
Hell, they may consider him an infidel, but even a Muslim fundamentalist jihadi can read Mao. The principles of guerrilla warfare don't change based on ideology.
However, drones are perfect for a modern, relatively unpopular, US war. Air power has always been seen as cheap in terms of lives lost, and in this case you won't have a robot's family sitting outside Obama's house demanding why their robot was killed in some foreign war, even if someone should get lucky and bring one down.
At this point in GWoT, force protection (keeping Americans out of harm's way) is very important, because the American public is starting to get somewhat weary of the whole War, especially as the whole country turns into a dump being looted by politically connected Banksters. Too many body bags, and maybe some oil companies would have to pay bigger markups on their contracts instead of having the US Military strong-arming countries to get them bargain prices.
The US Attorney's office is a breeding ground for monsters, and it certainly isn't any better under the current administration than previous ones.
In the old Roman Empire, this kind of property seizure was done by emperors like Caligula using similar methods.
The comments on this "The Tech," "MIT's oldest and largest newspaper & the first newspaper published on the web," online edition are very good:
Aaron Swartz commits suicide By Anne Cai
Well, sure, but the courts didn't send Mildred and Richard Loving up the river, and they could have because the were both criminal lawbreakers as well as doubleplusungood crimethinkers.
The FBI and COINTELPRO used to have to do their dirty work in secret, as covert ops.
Look, I guess it is an acronym, but they don't even explain it on their about page:
About JSTOR
It could be a random brand name for all I know, like Yahoo or Twitter. Basically, it's a company that makes money providing students access to digitized scholarly article.
Oh, they have this on the about page:
I'm surprised at the sympathy for the fearsome criminal who stole from them, and who the prosecutors felt needed to face 35-50 years at trial to protect us all from this monster.
Heymann does seem to be a particularly bad example of a bad bunch of people, an Ogre among the Orcs. The truth is, the corruption of the Justice Department goes all the way up to the President, and includes Eric Holder and Carmen Ortiz as well. (I'm not being partisan here, the previous administration was no better, but we are talking about today.)