>Sure, there are some non-citizens at Gitmo, but I happen to believe that most, if not all, were actively plotting against this country, or knowingly helping others who were.
Why are you confident that only some manageable number of therapies will be required?
To put it another way, what evidence is there against the idea that each of the myriad processes in our metabolisms are going to fall apart eventually given that there's never been selective pressure for extreme longevity?
>>"so everyone can log in and check how/whether his/her vote is counted (after the elections)"
>So that thugs/corporate masters/Mugabe can sit people down and check they voted 'correctly'?
Chaum came up with a voting system in which you could leave the polling place with a token that didn't reveal the content of your vote, but which would allow you to log in and check that your vote had been counted correctly, again without revealing what your vote was. You and the abusive spouse standing over your shoulder wouldn't see that you had voted for Elvis, but you would get evidence that whatever your vote was had been added to the totals unchanged.
This sounds impossible but it can be done with Crypto High Magic. The obvious problem is that nobody except a few cryptographers would understand this system's guarantees. In contrast, everyone understands looking at a ballot box before the polls open to make sure it's empty.
As others have pointed out, one question is whether that actually was his name harvested by a bot as opposed to a real person with the same name.
The next question is whether his state has a law like this: "Any person whose name, portrait, or picture is used without having first obtained the written consent of such person... for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade, such persons may maintain a suit in equity against the person, firm or corporation so using such person's name, portrait, or picture to prevent and restrain the use thereof; and may also sue and recover damage for any injuries sustained by reason of such use. And if the defendant shall have knowingly used such person's name, portrait or picture in such manner as is forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this chapter, the jury, in its discretion, may award exemplary damages." Code of Virginia, Section 8.01-40
>President Bush didn't lie about anything re:Iraq.
"We've removed an ally of al Qaeda" "He has trained and financed al Qaeda-type organizations before, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations." "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." "Saddam Hussein . . . is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon." "The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year." "We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents."
I hope that was just a trial balloon, but my relative who watches Fox now thinks that if the "wrong people" win the election we'll end up in a Stalinist state. If you believe that Senator Obama is the Manchurian Candidate, aren't you obliged to stop him from taking power?
You correctly point out the implications of a perpetual war. But wait, there's more.
Any statement about the President's "inherent" powers is deeply, critically wrong. The President has *enumerated* powers, by the most deliberate design. The Constitution explains in black and white that any powers not specifically called out belong to the individual states or to the people. Beyond that, the power to make regulations for the armed forces (NSA is part of DoD) is exclusively Congress's (Article I, Section 8).
>It concerns me that the anti-privacy people have time on their side, because after a few more years, they will just point out how so many people haven't been enjoying much privacy anyway, so what's the big deal?
My understanding of legal theory in the US - I am not a lawyer - I have never been to law school - Don't make decisions based on what I say - If you really need to know a point of law ask a lawyer - What do you call someone who gets legal advice on Slashdot? "Inmate". is that in gray situations of commercial law judges can include in their reasoning the "ordinary course of business". There may be a genuine legal risk if we allow privacy invasions to go unchallenged.
At a guess, you couldn't get away with a warning on a clinical trial consent form that says "may cause neutropenia". You have to explain what neutropenia is and how it can affect the patient, otherwise you're getting uninformed consent. The ethical standard is "informed consent".
What fraction of software users understand the implications of "monitoring software"? One of my colleagues had a client who wanted to install a piece of software I won't name which enrolls users in surveys of online behavior. My colleague had to explain the implications of the software installing a new trusted root certificate into the browser. His client decided not to install the software, but had required USD(mumble) worth of a professional's time to be able to make that decision.
The standard you suggest, "make the user aware" and "make it clear", is the right one but it's not easy to accomplish.
The battery-gobbling RF transmitter has just got to be off when the phone is on standby, but can malware intercept the power-off request and turn off the display and keyboard while leaving the tower-tracking logic running? If it were set to wake itself up every five minutes to acquire a tower but to sleep in between, it would be good for tracking and might not noticeably affect battery life.
For people who worry about things like this but still want to be reachable, there's the option of giving out a pager number instead of your mobile number and only turning on the phone to call back numbers sent to the pager.
>the U.S. was never intended to institute a true separation of church and state, at least that's not what the U.S. Constitution says we should be doing.
Article VI, Section 3. Before there was a Bill of Rights, the Founders had made sure that government would be independent of religion.
>But there is nothing wrong with a state *having* a religion which is what our (U.S. that is) Constitution was trying to accomplish.
It's kind of ironic that in the US the people who want the government to display their religious symbols and give money to their churches tend to be Christian. It's ironic because if they believed their own religion they'd believe in separation of church and state. Jesus said flat out "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). When Jesus was asked about paying taxes, he outlined a separation of church and state: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." (Matthew 22:21). Caesar's things are separate from God's things. Before Jesus, the faithful were warned about trusting earthly authority: "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save" (Psalm 146:3).
The problem the US has is with people who have religious followers and want political power. Such people are only too happy to make their flocks believe that anything that interferes with their lust for power is somehow anti-religious.
Re:I don't understand why you object to surveillan
on
The Privacy Paradox
·
· Score: 1
I get the joke, but:
One of the best short answers to this idea came from Bruce Schneier, who suggested thinking about whether you changed at all when you moved out of your parents's house into the dorms, and whether your behavior changed again when you went back home to visit.
The varnish on a Stradivarius is what biochemist Joseph Nagyvary thinks is relevant. Cheaper varnishes may be too rubbery and as a result damp high frequencies. He's built some violins based on his ideas, though apparently a good musician can still tell the difference between one of his and a Stradivarius.
One problem with the wood density idea is that not all Stradivarius violins have the sound for which they're famous.
>The goal isn't to vote for who you think will win, you don't get points for picking the right one.
I wish more people understood this. I had a conversation once with people who insisted they were intelligent and independent-thinking but wouldn't vote for a third-party candidate: Me: Do you understand that a vote isn't a bet about who will win? Them: Yes. Me: So why not vote for the candidate you prefer? Them: You're throwing away your vote. Me: How are you throwing away your vote if it's for a candidate you want? Them: He hasn't got a chance. etc.
There is however a real problem with simple plurality voting, as opposed to more sophisticated and accurate voting systems. A vote for your first choice is a vote against your second choice. If diphtheria and smallpox are on the major party tickets, your vote for vaccination on a third-party ticket can help smallpox win. A system like range voting would allow you to express your preferences without having to guess the outcome, but the current system is like a bad UI where you have to tweak your input to get the right results out.
In a plurality system like we've got, if there are two major candidates, then unless the two are interchangeable a third-party vote can have paradoxical results.
Our intuitions about safety don't work because there may be nothing to trigger our alarms.
My advice to minors about posting personal information is to ask themselves whether they'd be OK with having the creepiest person in the neighborhood see it. The creepiest person online is obviously a lot worse, but the creepiest person in the neighborhood is a concrete concept that their brain's safety module has already sized up.
Slashdot Mirror
>They're exactly the same
Not according to their voting records. The ACLU legislative scorecard shows Obama voting for civil liberties 80% of the time, McCain 17%.
>Sure, there are some non-citizens at Gitmo, but I happen to believe that most, if not all, were actively plotting against this country, or knowingly helping others who were.
Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost for a satirical newspaper article
Prisoners held after being cleared by military tribunals
>Do either of you have first-hand experience with someone who spoke out against the government and then "heard the fed knocking"?
The time to pull the fire alarm is before the building is engulfed. When it's possible to be charged for filming Katrina refugees or convicted for holding a "No War for Oil" sign it is time to acknowledge a problem.
Why are you confident that only some manageable number of therapies will be required?
To put it another way, what evidence is there against the idea that each of the myriad processes in our metabolisms are going to fall apart eventually given that there's never been selective pressure for extreme longevity?
What if mastering a prosthetic interface is like learning to speak a language without an accent, something that's almost impossible to do as an adult?
What if people who grew up before this technology gets perfected won't be able to compete in the workforce?
>>"so everyone can log in and check how/whether his/her vote is counted (after the elections)"
>So that thugs/corporate masters/Mugabe can sit people down and check they voted 'correctly'?
Chaum came up with a voting system in which you could leave the polling place with a token that didn't reveal the content of your vote, but which would allow you to log in and check that your vote had been counted correctly, again without revealing what your vote was. You and the abusive spouse standing over your shoulder wouldn't see that you had voted for Elvis, but you would get evidence that whatever your vote was had been added to the totals unchanged.
This sounds impossible but it can be done with Crypto High Magic. The obvious problem is that nobody except a few cryptographers would understand this system's guarantees. In contrast, everyone understands looking at a ballot box before the polls open to make sure it's empty.
>Should our elected officials be making secret votes? No, so why should anyone else?
Because they're supposed to be accountable to us for their votes, because they work for us.
Sovereigns don't have to answer to others. That's what sovereignty is about. If the people are to be sovereign, they should get secret ballots.
As others have pointed out, one question is whether that actually was his name harvested by a bot as opposed to a real person with the same name.
The next question is whether his state has a law like this:
"Any person whose name, portrait, or picture is used without having first obtained the written consent of such person... for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade, such persons may maintain a suit in equity against the person, firm or corporation so using such person's name, portrait, or picture to prevent and restrain the use thereof; and may also sue and recover damage for any injuries sustained by reason of such use. And if the defendant shall have knowingly used such person's name, portrait or picture in such manner as is forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this chapter, the jury, in its discretion, may award exemplary damages." Code of Virginia, Section 8.01-40
>President Bush didn't lie about anything re:Iraq.
"We've removed an ally of al Qaeda"
"He has trained and financed al Qaeda-type organizations before, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations."
"Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
"Saddam Hussein . . . is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."
"The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year."
"We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents."
There's a good argument that it's not a lie if he believed it himself. The counterargument is that lying to yourself is wrong and damaging.
>He's going to be out of office via the normal process come next January.
That is what the Constitution calls for.
This administration is claiming that the Commander in Chief's inherent wartime authority allows him to override the Constitution.
In 2004, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge asked DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, how to postpone a national election. Soaries, mirabile dictu, told him to get authority from Congress. Over in Congress, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee responded "...we're preparing for all of these contingencies now".
I hope that was just a trial balloon, but my relative who watches Fox now thinks that if the "wrong people" win the election we'll end up in a Stalinist state. If you believe that Senator Obama is the Manchurian Candidate, aren't you obliged to stop him from taking power?
>the president's inherent war time powers
You correctly point out the implications of a perpetual war. But wait, there's more.
Any statement about the President's "inherent" powers is deeply, critically wrong. The President has *enumerated* powers, by the most deliberate design. The Constitution explains in black and white that any powers not specifically called out belong to the individual states or to the people. Beyond that, the power to make regulations for the armed forces (NSA is part of DoD) is exclusively Congress's (Article I, Section 8).
>things like our civil rights being eroded.
Bumper sticker: "I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway"
>It concerns me that the anti-privacy people have time on their side, because after a few more years, they will just point out how so many people haven't been enjoying much privacy anyway, so what's the big deal?
My understanding of legal theory in the US
- I am not a lawyer
- I have never been to law school
- Don't make decisions based on what I say
- If you really need to know a point of law ask a lawyer
- What do you call someone who gets legal advice on Slashdot? "Inmate".
is that in gray situations of commercial law judges can include in their reasoning the "ordinary course of business". There may be a genuine legal risk if we allow privacy invasions to go unchallenged.
At a guess, you couldn't get away with a warning on a clinical trial consent form that says "may cause neutropenia". You have to explain what neutropenia is and how it can affect the patient, otherwise you're getting uninformed consent. The ethical standard is "informed consent".
What fraction of software users understand the implications of "monitoring software"? One of my colleagues had a client who wanted to install a piece of software I won't name which enrolls users in surveys of online behavior. My colleague had to explain the implications of the software installing a new trusted root certificate into the browser. His client decided not to install the software, but had required USD(mumble) worth of a professional's time to be able to make that decision.
The standard you suggest, "make the user aware" and "make it clear", is the right one but it's not easy to accomplish.
Is violating my security policy a bad thing?
If it hooks the keyboard driver and has a network connection, is it protecting my keystrokes to the level I consider necessary?
The battery-gobbling RF transmitter has just got to be off when the phone is on standby, but can malware intercept the power-off request and turn off the display and keyboard while leaving the tower-tracking logic running? If it were set to wake itself up every five minutes to acquire a tower but to sleep in between, it would be good for tracking and might not noticeably affect battery life.
For people who worry about things like this but still want to be reachable, there's the option of giving out a pager number instead of your mobile number and only turning on the phone to call back numbers sent to the pager.
>the U.S. was never intended to institute a true separation of church and state, at least that's not what the U.S. Constitution says we should be doing.
Article VI, Section 3. Before there was a Bill of Rights, the Founders had made sure that government would be independent of religion.
>But there is nothing wrong with a state *having* a religion which is what our (U.S. that is) Constitution was trying to accomplish.
"..the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion", treaty ratified 1797.
It's kind of ironic that in the US the people who want the government to display their religious symbols and give money to their churches tend to be Christian. It's ironic because if they believed their own religion they'd believe in separation of church and state. Jesus said flat out "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). When Jesus was asked about paying taxes, he outlined a separation of church and state: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." (Matthew 22:21). Caesar's things are separate from God's things. Before Jesus, the faithful were warned about trusting earthly authority: "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save" (Psalm 146:3).
The problem the US has is with people who have religious followers and want political power. Such people are only too happy to make their flocks believe that anything that interferes with their lust for power is somehow anti-religious.
I get the joke, but:
One of the best short answers to this idea came from Bruce Schneier, who suggested thinking about whether you changed at all when you moved out of your parents's house into the dorms, and whether your behavior changed again when you went back home to visit.
Worse, what if one of the sites in the searches that it prefetches for you has illegal content?
Then you show up in that site's logs when the police raid them.
>You could post your own flash videos on your own web site.
How will that help when the reported problem is that Google is being ordered to turn over the *viewing* histories of its users?
The varnish on a Stradivarius is what biochemist Joseph Nagyvary thinks is relevant. Cheaper varnishes may be too rubbery and as a result damp high frequencies. He's built some violins based on his ideas, though apparently a good musician can still tell the difference between one of his and a Stradivarius.
One problem with the wood density idea is that not all Stradivarius violins have the sound for which they're famous.
One of my contacts inside the company wanted to set up a technical reference bookshelf for her people, sort of a micro-library.
She couldn't get the bookshelf to put the books on because it wasn't an approved item of furniture.
I'm hearing complaints like that more and more, though I haven't heard anyone say it's quantitatively as bad as a government job.
>The goal isn't to vote for who you think will win, you don't get points for picking the right one.
I wish more people understood this. I had a conversation once with people who insisted they were intelligent and independent-thinking but wouldn't vote for a third-party candidate:
Me: Do you understand that a vote isn't a bet about who will win?
Them: Yes.
Me: So why not vote for the candidate you prefer?
Them: You're throwing away your vote.
Me: How are you throwing away your vote if it's for a candidate you want?
Them: He hasn't got a chance.
etc.
There is however a real problem with simple plurality voting, as opposed to more sophisticated and accurate voting systems. A vote for your first choice is a vote against your second choice. If diphtheria and smallpox are on the major party tickets, your vote for vaccination on a third-party ticket can help smallpox win. A system like range voting would allow you to express your preferences without having to guess the outcome, but the current system is like a bad UI where you have to tweak your input to get the right results out.
In a plurality system like we've got, if there are two major candidates, then unless the two are interchangeable a third-party vote can have paradoxical results.
>NONE of these 'cures' are actually used on a daily basis.
Gleevec. 89% five-year survival rate: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/23/2408
Our intuitions about safety don't work because there may be nothing to trigger our alarms.
My advice to minors about posting personal information is to ask themselves whether they'd be OK with having the creepiest person in the neighborhood see it. The creepiest person online is obviously a lot worse, but the creepiest person in the neighborhood is a concrete concept that their brain's safety module has already sized up.
>eradicate cancer in mice
Why would I want to eradicate cancer in mice?