After the shoe bomber, the TSA demanded that everyone remove their shoes. After the underwear bomber, I was half-expecting the TSA to order everyone to strip naked in the security line.
What gets me is that the chances of dying from terrorism are tiny. I saw this graphic showing leading causes of death in perspective. Heart disease and cancer are the two big ones. Terrorism is a tiny dot. I decided to look up the hard numbers too, figuring that the graphic could be exaggerating things.
There were about 28,000 deaths from terrorism world-wide in 2015 (Source). (If we limit it to US only, the number is much smaller.) Meanwhile, 610,000 people in the US die of heart disease every year. 17.7 million in the world (Source). You would need over 630 YEARS of terrorism deaths to equal 1 year of heart disease death.
So if we're supposed to be quaking in our boots over terrorism, what should we be doing over heart disease?!!!
Don't worry. The lithium batteries won't make it to the cargo hold. The laptops will just "disappear" during the bag checks. See? They're still keeping us safe!
I've had friends who lost expensive camera equipment that was packed in checked bags on domestic flights. The suitcases made it there just fine but the bags were obviously rummaged through and the equipment was gone. I'd never pack something expensive like a camera or laptop in my checked baggage. I'd sooner box it up and FedEx/UPS it to my destination (building the cost for that into the budget for my trip).
I saw this image online recently: https://i.redd.it/pcolaqktpx1z.jpg
It shows in a nice, graphical format, just how many people die from various causes. Heart disease and cancer are huge circles. Terrorism is a tiny dot. Yet, politicians (and security theater agencies like the TSA) act like we should be living each moment of our lives in fear that a terrorist will kill us. If we did, then we should be paralyzed with terror over heart disease and cancer so much that we give ourselves a heart attack.
The same thing is true of Harry Potter. I did love the movies, but years later my son and I read all of the books together. It's amazing how much more is in the books than was in the movies. There are whole storylines that were just dropped in the movies. I do understand the reasoning - making a "Completely Textually Accurate Harry Potter" movie would have made each movie 8 hours long and very boring - but the books have so much more depth to them compared to the movies.
Very true. People have criticized Snowden for fleeing the country, but there were whistle blowers before him who tried to go through the normal channels. They found themselves framed for crimes and placed under arrest while the information they tried to bring to light was buried. Had Snowden gone the usual route, he'd have faced the same fate. Fleeing the country was the only way to ensure that his information got out.
You can debate whether or not the information getting out was a good or bad thing, but if he thought leaking this information was good for the American people, then fleeing was the only way to ensure that it happened. I'm not anywhere close to "handles classified materials" and don't know what I'd do if I was presented with a Snowden/Winner situation. (Since I have a family, probably keep my mouth shut since I would need to think of the safety of my wife and kids as well as my own.)
Except that the law she's charged under explicitly keeps the jury from considering WHY she did it. If it's shown that she did it (and it's pretty clear she did it), then she's guilty of espionage under the law no matter what her motivation. It catches spies and whistle-blowers in the same net.
My first reaction would be that, since @realDonaldTrump is his personal account, he can do whatever he wants with it. Of course, with Sean Spicer calling his tweets "Official White House Statements", this muddies the waters a bit. If they're going to insist that these are official statements, I don't think we can excuse it as "It's just his personal account" anymore.
I was about to say "Yes, it is unconstitutional", when I realized one important point: Freedom of Speech doesn't involve Freedom To Have People Listen To You. A spammer can send me a spam e-mail and that's their right. I have the right to block it. A telemarketer can try calling me, but I have the right to not answer. They can't compel me to listen to the call or read the e-mail because of "Freedom of Speech." (Leaving aside, for the moment, that Free Speech only comes into play when the government does the restricting because, in the case of President Trump, he IS a government official doing the restricting.)
Twitter blocks don't prevent a person from seeing tweets or from replying to them. So Trump isn't keeping anyone from reading his tweets and responding "@realDonaldTrump You, sir, are a nitwit." It just means that he wouldn't see the tweets in his timeline. If he got someone banned from Twitter for that hypothetical tweet, then this WOULD be a First Amendment issue (because he's a government official).
I do think he's unnecessarily muddying the waters by mixing his personal and official Twitter accounts, but this is likely to add data retention requirements to his personal Twitter account, not adding any First Amendment issues by blocking users.
It's not just you. One of the headlines on Google News right up top was "Who is Reality Winner?" I kept wondering why Google News would put reality TV show news at the top of my feed. "I don't care who won the latest Reality TV show... Just tell me about the NSA leaking story." It's like a bad version of Who's On First.
How can someone work for the NSA and NOT be aware that they track everything? If I was an NSA leaker, I certainly wouldn't be e-mailing my leaks from my work computer/e-mail account. I'd set up a throwaway account (and even then would be looking over my shoulder every second).
You'd be surprised what some parents name their kids. I was once responsible for uploading baby photos and one of the names was "Secret Angel" (first and middle name). This was long ago enough that Secret would be a teen now. Knowing how kids are, I can't help but feel sorry for all of the teasing she probably gets over her name.
That and the hijackers exploited a "rule" about hijacking that was true until 9-11. Up until then, if your flight was hijacked, you sat still and did nothing. The plane was re-routed to somewhere like Cuba, the hijacker put on a big show to get attention to whatever it was he wanted attention on, and then everyone was released. So long as you kept quiet, you were inconvenienced but otherwise unharmed.
The people on the first two planes that were hijacked on 9-11 kept quiet assuming that this was the rule. The third plane got wind of what was going on and fought back. Sure, they didn't survive, but they went down fighting and ensuring that the hijackers didn't reach target #3.
Any future hijacker won't be able to rely on people abiding by pre-911 hijacking rules. Even if the hijacker is the "fly to Cuba" type, people will assume this is another 9-11 and will fight back. We've seen it in the "shoe bomber" and other hijack attempts. Passengers and crew fight back and subdue the hijacker. This exploit that the 9-11 hijackers used is closed for good.
Be warned, millenials! Nothing is private on the interwebs.
This is pretty much Rule #1 of Internet use: No matter what you post, no matter how private the message or restricted the forum, assume that it WILL get out. If you wouldn't say this to your spouse, parents, siblings, relatives, boss, co-workers, etc, then you should seriously reconsider saying it online.
My (admittedly non-lawyer) interpretation would be that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons... against unreasonable searches and seizures" means that a person should be free to move as they please without the government "searching and seizing" their locations. If the police want this data (and there can be very good reasons why they would need it), then the path is simple:
1) Convince a judge that this is needed. 2) Get said judge to issue a warrant. 3) Use the warrant to get the location data.
It's that simple. No Supreme Court case required and a proper balance struck between police ensuring safety and citizens' rights.
Yes, Nixon was a pretty decent President and had a good list of accomplishments. However, those were all overshadowed by Watergate. Had Watergate never happened, the public's view of Nixon would have been considerably improved.
If you want to hit Trump where it hurts, you get him in the one thing that he really values: himself. I don't want to see him assassinated. Beyond that fact that it's a bad idea to call for the death of any US President - no matter the reason - it wouldn't "fix" this problem. Instead, I want to see him kicked out of office, jailed, and for his name to become toxic. When people think "Nixon", they think of a crook. I want his name to represent so much worse to the point that nobody wants anything to do with the name "TRUMP". That would really hurt Donald as his name seems to be the thing he values above all else. (I will apologize to anyone who happens to have the Trump last name, though.)
Arguing can be done in a nice manner. You can disagree with the person's views without immediately jumping into personal attacks, foul language, and worse. All too often, people try to "argue" online not by refuting points and presenting evidence, but by shouting down the other people ("You're an idiot for believing X"), banning contrary opinions ("You don't think Y is the best thing ever? Banned!"), and even making threats like physical violence or doxxing ("John Smith disagrees with us. It'd be a shame if someone threw a rock at his house at 123 Someroad Lane.") if someone disagrees.
And, no, I'm not limiting this criticism to one side of any particular argument. There are many different people/communities that do this in an attempt to silence opposition and force their opinions on others. I will always welcome a calm and reasoned argument with someone online, but if someone "refutes" my evidence with personal attacks and the like, I ignore them.
It wasn't a harm but merely declining to bear the cost of Netflix's business model, and forcing even non-Netflix subscribers to pay for Netflix traffic in the process.
So if a site/service becomes popular, an ISP should have the right to slow down that site/service unless they pay the ISP extra money? What if the ISP has a competing service that's losing to the popular online service? Can the ISP slow down the popular online service so that their own service seems faster? And how is all of this NOT abuse of monopoly power if the ISP is the only one in town?
Except, as I stated in my previous post, many people can't change their ISP. If I'm upset with Netflix's service, I can switch online video providers. If I'm upset at my ISP's service, I have no other options. Complaints can pour in night and day, but the ISP knows they are a monopoly and consumers have no choice. The only people the ISP might be concerned about is the government and they've just given the green light to do whatever the ISP wants to do.
Sorry. The ISP bought legislation at the state level to declare such ventures to be 'illegal competition." And the Federal government will uphold those laws because of "states rights."
Ideally, I'd like to see the network infrastructure be government owned, but have companies able to sell service on the lines. This way, my ISP choice wouldn't just be Charter or Nothing. It would be Charter, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Google, and a dozen smaller companies. I could vote with my wallet without that meaning "no Internet access for me."
As a side benefit, if we were to do this, the marketplace might be healthy enough that we wouldn't need Network Neutrality rules. If Comcast starts abusing their network management, you could threaten to jump ship to any of the other dozen ISPs in the area.
If Comcast could do that they would have, they are ALREADY FREE to do so even under current rules.
And they already have. Part of the big Network Neutrality push came when Comcast slowed speeds to Netflix down and threatened to slow it down more if Netflix didn't pay up.
But this is stupid because it also blocks the highly desirable goal of giving traffic priority to Netflix, which many would pay extra for. What is wrong with letting most people do something that is beneficial for them and they would like? Preventing that is how we got the war on drugs.
Why should I pay extra for Netflix to be as speedy as possible? I pay for Internet access and all sites should be as fast as they can be. Obviously, server speed, network issues, etc. will affect site speed, but a site speed factor shouldn't be my ISP deciding that SITE X should go slow unless someone (me or Site X) pays for speedy delivery.
Why? Why does it have to be that way? What if that's what a lot of people want and are willing to pay for?
If people did not want that they would not pay for it and it would die off.
This assumes a healthy market. The ISP market is NOT a health market. It's a realm of monopolies. I currently have Internet access from Charter (Spectrum, previously Time Warner Cable). They are my only option in the area I live in. Suppose Charter told me that I'd need to pay an additional $5 a month for Netflix data to flow at a reasonable speed - otherwise it would slow down to the point that the service would be useless. What would my options be? Pay Charter and suddenly using Netflix is $5 more expensive a month (through no fault of Netflix's)? Don't pay and stop using Netflix (possibly paying for Charter's cable TV package which we subscribe to now)? How do I vote with my wallet?
And what if Charter decides to do this with groups of websites? Want to use social media? $5 a month. Online video? $5 a month per site. News sites? $5 a month.
What - beyond Net Neutrality rules - would prevent an ISP from doing this if they are the only ISP in the area?
Slashdot Mirror
Someone could take the book, whack the flight crew over the head with it, and take over the plane! We must ban all books immediately!
After the shoe bomber, the TSA demanded that everyone remove their shoes. After the underwear bomber, I was half-expecting the TSA to order everyone to strip naked in the security line.
What gets me is that the chances of dying from terrorism are tiny. I saw this graphic showing leading causes of death in perspective. Heart disease and cancer are the two big ones. Terrorism is a tiny dot. I decided to look up the hard numbers too, figuring that the graphic could be exaggerating things.
There were about 28,000 deaths from terrorism world-wide in 2015 (Source). (If we limit it to US only, the number is much smaller.) Meanwhile, 610,000 people in the US die of heart disease every year. 17.7 million in the world (Source). You would need over 630 YEARS of terrorism deaths to equal 1 year of heart disease death.
So if we're supposed to be quaking in our boots over terrorism, what should we be doing over heart disease?!!!
Don't worry. The lithium batteries won't make it to the cargo hold. The laptops will just "disappear" during the bag checks. See? They're still keeping us safe!
I've had friends who lost expensive camera equipment that was packed in checked bags on domestic flights. The suitcases made it there just fine but the bags were obviously rummaged through and the equipment was gone. I'd never pack something expensive like a camera or laptop in my checked baggage. I'd sooner box it up and FedEx/UPS it to my destination (building the cost for that into the budget for my trip).
I saw this image online recently: https://i.redd.it/pcolaqktpx1z.jpg
It shows in a nice, graphical format, just how many people die from various causes. Heart disease and cancer are huge circles. Terrorism is a tiny dot. Yet, politicians (and security theater agencies like the TSA) act like we should be living each moment of our lives in fear that a terrorist will kill us. If we did, then we should be paralyzed with terror over heart disease and cancer so much that we give ourselves a heart attack.
The same thing is true of Harry Potter. I did love the movies, but years later my son and I read all of the books together. It's amazing how much more is in the books than was in the movies. There are whole storylines that were just dropped in the movies. I do understand the reasoning - making a "Completely Textually Accurate Harry Potter" movie would have made each movie 8 hours long and very boring - but the books have so much more depth to them compared to the movies.
Very true. People have criticized Snowden for fleeing the country, but there were whistle blowers before him who tried to go through the normal channels. They found themselves framed for crimes and placed under arrest while the information they tried to bring to light was buried. Had Snowden gone the usual route, he'd have faced the same fate. Fleeing the country was the only way to ensure that his information got out.
You can debate whether or not the information getting out was a good or bad thing, but if he thought leaking this information was good for the American people, then fleeing was the only way to ensure that it happened. I'm not anywhere close to "handles classified materials" and don't know what I'd do if I was presented with a Snowden/Winner situation. (Since I have a family, probably keep my mouth shut since I would need to think of the safety of my wife and kids as well as my own.)
Except that the law she's charged under explicitly keeps the jury from considering WHY she did it. If it's shown that she did it (and it's pretty clear she did it), then she's guilty of espionage under the law no matter what her motivation. It catches spies and whistle-blowers in the same net.
My first reaction would be that, since @realDonaldTrump is his personal account, he can do whatever he wants with it. Of course, with Sean Spicer calling his tweets "Official White House Statements", this muddies the waters a bit. If they're going to insist that these are official statements, I don't think we can excuse it as "It's just his personal account" anymore.
I was about to say "Yes, it is unconstitutional", when I realized one important point: Freedom of Speech doesn't involve Freedom To Have People Listen To You. A spammer can send me a spam e-mail and that's their right. I have the right to block it. A telemarketer can try calling me, but I have the right to not answer. They can't compel me to listen to the call or read the e-mail because of "Freedom of Speech." (Leaving aside, for the moment, that Free Speech only comes into play when the government does the restricting because, in the case of President Trump, he IS a government official doing the restricting.)
Twitter blocks don't prevent a person from seeing tweets or from replying to them. So Trump isn't keeping anyone from reading his tweets and responding "@realDonaldTrump You, sir, are a nitwit." It just means that he wouldn't see the tweets in his timeline. If he got someone banned from Twitter for that hypothetical tweet, then this WOULD be a First Amendment issue (because he's a government official).
I do think he's unnecessarily muddying the waters by mixing his personal and official Twitter accounts, but this is likely to add data retention requirements to his personal Twitter account, not adding any First Amendment issues by blocking users.
It's not just you. One of the headlines on Google News right up top was "Who is Reality Winner?" I kept wondering why Google News would put reality TV show news at the top of my feed. "I don't care who won the latest Reality TV show... Just tell me about the NSA leaking story." It's like a bad version of Who's On First.
How can someone work for the NSA and NOT be aware that they track everything? If I was an NSA leaker, I certainly wouldn't be e-mailing my leaks from my work computer/e-mail account. I'd set up a throwaway account (and even then would be looking over my shoulder every second).
You'd be surprised what some parents name their kids. I was once responsible for uploading baby photos and one of the names was "Secret Angel" (first and middle name). This was long ago enough that Secret would be a teen now. Knowing how kids are, I can't help but feel sorry for all of the teasing she probably gets over her name.
That and the hijackers exploited a "rule" about hijacking that was true until 9-11. Up until then, if your flight was hijacked, you sat still and did nothing. The plane was re-routed to somewhere like Cuba, the hijacker put on a big show to get attention to whatever it was he wanted attention on, and then everyone was released. So long as you kept quiet, you were inconvenienced but otherwise unharmed.
The people on the first two planes that were hijacked on 9-11 kept quiet assuming that this was the rule. The third plane got wind of what was going on and fought back. Sure, they didn't survive, but they went down fighting and ensuring that the hijackers didn't reach target #3.
Any future hijacker won't be able to rely on people abiding by pre-911 hijacking rules. Even if the hijacker is the "fly to Cuba" type, people will assume this is another 9-11 and will fight back. We've seen it in the "shoe bomber" and other hijack attempts. Passengers and crew fight back and subdue the hijacker. This exploit that the 9-11 hijackers used is closed for good.
This is pretty much Rule #1 of Internet use: No matter what you post, no matter how private the message or restricted the forum, assume that it WILL get out. If you wouldn't say this to your spouse, parents, siblings, relatives, boss, co-workers, etc, then you should seriously reconsider saying it online.
My (admittedly non-lawyer) interpretation would be that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons... against unreasonable searches and seizures" means that a person should be free to move as they please without the government "searching and seizing" their locations. If the police want this data (and there can be very good reasons why they would need it), then the path is simple:
1) Convince a judge that this is needed.
2) Get said judge to issue a warrant.
3) Use the warrant to get the location data.
It's that simple. No Supreme Court case required and a proper balance struck between police ensuring safety and citizens' rights.
Yes, Nixon was a pretty decent President and had a good list of accomplishments. However, those were all overshadowed by Watergate. Had Watergate never happened, the public's view of Nixon would have been considerably improved.
If you want to hit Trump where it hurts, you get him in the one thing that he really values: himself. I don't want to see him assassinated. Beyond that fact that it's a bad idea to call for the death of any US President - no matter the reason - it wouldn't "fix" this problem. Instead, I want to see him kicked out of office, jailed, and for his name to become toxic. When people think "Nixon", they think of a crook. I want his name to represent so much worse to the point that nobody wants anything to do with the name "TRUMP". That would really hurt Donald as his name seems to be the thing he values above all else. (I will apologize to anyone who happens to have the Trump last name, though.)
Has it been demagnetized by Steven Hawking himself? Is the Hawk ok with this?
Arguing can be done in a nice manner. You can disagree with the person's views without immediately jumping into personal attacks, foul language, and worse. All too often, people try to "argue" online not by refuting points and presenting evidence, but by shouting down the other people ("You're an idiot for believing X"), banning contrary opinions ("You don't think Y is the best thing ever? Banned!"), and even making threats like physical violence or doxxing ("John Smith disagrees with us. It'd be a shame if someone threw a rock at his house at 123 Someroad Lane.") if someone disagrees.
And, no, I'm not limiting this criticism to one side of any particular argument. There are many different people/communities that do this in an attempt to silence opposition and force their opinions on others. I will always welcome a calm and reasoned argument with someone online, but if someone "refutes" my evidence with personal attacks and the like, I ignore them.
So if a site/service becomes popular, an ISP should have the right to slow down that site/service unless they pay the ISP extra money? What if the ISP has a competing service that's losing to the popular online service? Can the ISP slow down the popular online service so that their own service seems faster? And how is all of this NOT abuse of monopoly power if the ISP is the only one in town?
Except, as I stated in my previous post, many people can't change their ISP. If I'm upset with Netflix's service, I can switch online video providers. If I'm upset at my ISP's service, I have no other options. Complaints can pour in night and day, but the ISP knows they are a monopoly and consumers have no choice. The only people the ISP might be concerned about is the government and they've just given the green light to do whatever the ISP wants to do.
Sorry. The ISP bought legislation at the state level to declare such ventures to be 'illegal competition." And the Federal government will uphold those laws because of "states rights."
Ideally, I'd like to see the network infrastructure be government owned, but have companies able to sell service on the lines. This way, my ISP choice wouldn't just be Charter or Nothing. It would be Charter, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Google, and a dozen smaller companies. I could vote with my wallet without that meaning "no Internet access for me."
As a side benefit, if we were to do this, the marketplace might be healthy enough that we wouldn't need Network Neutrality rules. If Comcast starts abusing their network management, you could threaten to jump ship to any of the other dozen ISPs in the area.
And they already have. Part of the big Network Neutrality push came when Comcast slowed speeds to Netflix down and threatened to slow it down more if Netflix didn't pay up.
Why should I pay extra for Netflix to be as speedy as possible? I pay for Internet access and all sites should be as fast as they can be. Obviously, server speed, network issues, etc. will affect site speed, but a site speed factor shouldn't be my ISP deciding that SITE X should go slow unless someone (me or Site X) pays for speedy delivery.
This assumes a healthy market. The ISP market is NOT a health market. It's a realm of monopolies. I currently have Internet access from Charter (Spectrum, previously Time Warner Cable). They are my only option in the area I live in. Suppose Charter told me that I'd need to pay an additional $5 a month for Netflix data to flow at a reasonable speed - otherwise it would slow down to the point that the service would be useless. What would my options be? Pay Charter and suddenly using Netflix is $5 more expensive a month (through no fault of Netflix's)? Don't pay and stop using Netflix (possibly paying for Charter's cable TV package which we subscribe to now)? How do I vote with my wallet?
And what if Charter decides to do this with groups of websites? Want to use social media? $5 a month. Online video? $5 a month per site. News sites? $5 a month.
What - beyond Net Neutrality rules - would prevent an ISP from doing this if they are the only ISP in the area?