This is just an illustration, that manufacturing is a solved problem. Design, research, and development is where the minds and ideas are or should be going.
The growing emphasys on the Intellectual Property — the kind, that can be stolen by simple copying (thus leaving the original owner, seemingly, unhurt) — is another illustration of the same trend, like it or not.
FBI Puts Antiwar Protesters on Criminal Database; Canada Uses It To Ban Protesters From Entry
Whatever the merits of the list, it was not used to persecute these people in the USA. In fact, one hysterical clown from "Code Pink" (the outfit, whose members were denied entry to Canada) was recently allowed rather close to the Secretary of State. She and the other members of the organization were only ejected from the congressional hearing after the confrontation.
The complaints are directed at Canada:
"The Canadian government should certainly not accept this FBI database as the criteria for entering the country."
We allow all sorts of lunacy here in the US, but I don't blame the Canadians for desireing (so to speak) to keep foreign lunatics out of their country.
Exactly. It is most tiresome to see these lamentations, when things actually improve.
The article talks about corporations that have laid off IT staff and replaced them with technologies like mashups and wikis that can help people get things done without involving IT.
For hundreds of years business communications consisted of paper letters. I doubt, anybody — including Zonk — would prefer writing and mailing a paper letter to an e-mail, even if that means disappearance of several professions (ink- and quill-makers, typists, typewriter-engineers, etc.).
But somehow, he appears to view the availability of Wiki (which replaces circulating a document around) as a "threat" — to any one but, an IT-worker. Well, even that IT-worker is now relieved of the rather mundane responsibilities and can instead move on to a better paying job elsewhere.
He — Travoltus — is (or claims to be) a manager in a "fairly large IT outfit". Who but not his ilk are responsible for companies preferring to hire ready talent, instead of nurturing it in-house from the early apprentice stages?
Your politically-slanted rant was foolish — there is nothing particularly "Republican" about the practice...
I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one.
Good for you. But the topic of my post was that most of things an American is buying do not rise in price, when the dollar is falling, and that the earlier poster's assertions, that the dollar's fall negates all benefits of the higher salaries, is thus without merit.
You chose to attack (with an ad-hominem, no less) my secondary point, used merely for illustration — that the anxiety of would-be techie immigrants is the proof of how lucky we are to be in this field at this time and in this place. Your objection is self-contradictory:
A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE. [... vs...] Those H-1 visas are coming here to compete with rock bottom wages, too.
Right. A born-raised-and-educated American has "absolutely NO CHANCE", while the immigrants — who need to not only find a job (overcoming the long physical and cultural differences), but to also jump through numerous hoops to get the coveted visa — find countless thousands of opportunities. They would've found even more, had the protectionist quota on H-1 visas not been set so low.
Such a fool, indeed... Care to post some links to actual numbers of freshly-graduated ("newb") American engineers unable to find employment?.. Put up or shut up, so to speak.
If you're not spending more than 75% of your income on imports, then you either must live in one of the few places in the United States where Agriculture and manufacturing hasn't been utterly destroyed by imports, or you actually believe "Made in America" means something more than parts created in Mexico & China and shipped here for assembly.
Your single biggest expense, most likely, is housing, which is still priced in dollars.
Next after that are various services — the labour of fellow Americans, mostly, as well as immigrants (legal and otherwise), which are all priced in dollars too. This labor is the biggest part of the price of those "Made in America" items, which you dismiss as merely assembled here. It is also a big part of the retail price of just about anything you buy (wherever it is made)...
Manufacturing? China's currency is pegged to the dollar at the moment, and will be for a while. China-made stuff is thus not getting more expensive, whatever dollar/euro ratio is — that covers nearly all manufactured items sold in US — for better or worse.
What did I miss? Oh, yeah, imported wines and cheeses...
Amazing. A few months ago we were lamenting, how the techies are underpaid, and how all tech jobs are outsourced to India (as if Indians are any less deserving). Now comes the news of tech-salaries growing rather quickly, but the lamentations don't cease!
The H-1 visas are all "sold-out" within hours every year — hundreds of thousands of people dream of coming here to work (white-collar work) for the salary you seem to dismiss as insufficient... Maybe, you ought to pack up and leave to make room for fresh immigrants — evidently, your family has used up its time in this country, if the latest generation (you) is so unappreciative.
Yeah, but it's in American Dollars, so the amount actually decreased.
Amount of what? Of computers? Of TVs? Of cars? Of T-shirts?
The inflation is related to the value of currency against others, but that's not the whole of it... The stuff made in the US — and in dollar-pegged countries such as China — is not getting more expensive automatically, when the dollar falls against euro.
There is oversight and regulations of even a completely private thing like an individual's credit history. Banks can not simply claim: "we don't like this guy" — there are laws regulating, what records can be kept, and procedures allowing people to dispute inaccuracies.
The "terror list", which, allegedly, is used to not simply cause extra scrutiny, but to also deny boarding sometimes, is maintained by the (Executive) government and is in sore need of similar regulations. As a minimum, one must be able to inquire, whether he or she are on the list and to challenge the placing both in administrative proceedings or in courts.
Passing regulations that ensure that the cockpits of passenger aircraft are unable to be accessed from the passenger carrying part of the plane.
Agreed. Even the 9/11 perpetrators realized this — that the same attack will not be repeated. This is why they timed their attacks to coincide — and even then the last one failed, because the passengers have learned about the earlier ones. There will be no other airliner turned into a missile again...
But an old-fashioned bomb could still be smuggled aboard — including liquid explosives disguised as a water bottle. The TSA goons harassing passengers in the airports may not be catching 100% of the stuff, leaving another attack possible. But their work makes it difficult...
The problem from where I'm sitting is that billions are being spent on a tiny fraction of deaths that occur in our countries. Where are the billions of dollars of funding to research heart-disease treatment, improving car safety, cancer treatments or the plethora of other much more likely ways you'll meet your sticky end?
There are two reasons. First, a terrorist attack — besides giving the terrorists bragging rights and inspiring more — is insulting. "Ha, ha! All your superiority and we still blow you up!". The indignity makes us want to remove that particular threat to our lives — however minuscule it really is. Indeed, even in Israel, which is attacked by terrorists daily, far more people die from routine automotive accidents.
For some reason, we don't consider deaths from cancer or heart decease in the 21st century undignifying...
The second reason is, at least in the US, an individual's health is their responsibility to a very large degree. So are the safe driving habits and choosing a vehicle. Protection against terrorism, on the other hand, is decidedly a matter for the government — not even Libertarians dispute that. So the government is doing (or trying to do), what it is supposed to do (and what it failed to do on 9/11 2001).
We only need to look at those brave monks in Burma a few weeks ago to see what real defiance looks like. We've lost our back-bone and passed all sorts of onerous laws because we're afraid.
Well, the monks are standing up to their oppressive government — not external threats. You can't really compare — the Burmese can't do anything else but revolt (note, that it was the hike of fuel prices in Myanmar, not the oppression, that caused the most recent revolt, BTW)...
We are not "afraid", we are cautious and — unlike the Burmese — we are far more trustful of our government. And for good reasons...
Granted, a helicopter would not work on the airless Moon. Granted, a wheeled (or caterpillared) rover may not be suitable for large distances either.
But there may be other designs. For example, the macropods are able to hop over long distances using relatively little energy. The tendons in their large (macro) legs (pods) act as springs allowing them to reuse about 70% of the energy for the next jump (humans only reuse 5-10% on each step).
I suppose, a vehicle could be built to use the same principle. It may not work well on Earth (due to the remaining limitations of our technology), but on Moon, with its 5 times lesser gravity, jumping should be quite efficient...
What if root beer was difficult to transport far from the farm and only grew well in the US. Or Japan had a steep tariff on root beer. Or laws or companies conspired to prohibit you from making said device even if there were demand? What if the root beer made in Japan was a drastically inferior quality and no one would drink it?
That would be lamentable... Can you demonstrate anything of the kind actually happening with the products listed in the article (or closely related ones)?
Most of today's consumer-electronics available in US are designed and/or made elsewhere.
That some of the stuff is not available here is not, in itself, the sign of US lagging behind, but rather that of US consumers not being interested enough for the companies to introduce these particular products here.
If root beer is not (widely) available in Japan, it is because the Japanese don't like root beer — not because they can't afford it, or don't know where to get it.
Uh-oh, "morally"... Morally the music-trading sites (like Napster) are indefensible too — except on Slashdot, which insists, the individual abusers should be targeted, not napsters themselves.
Of course not. Neither was ratting on Anne Frank (if I am to continue my analogy). Someone else did the killing.
Nobody "did the killing". Anne died of malnutrition at the camp. Her father survived, for example. But ratting the family out meant condemning them to gross hardships of the camps. Sale of sensorship software does nothing of the kind. So, no, you should be continuing your (mis)analogy.
The problem isn't the fact that this is new technology. The fact is that Websense or anyone else could have denied Burma the purchase. But they won't, because they don't care about anything else but profit. THAT is the problem.
Khmm, this reminds me of the arguments in the file-sharing debate... When content-owners were going after the makers of the software used primarily to exchange copyrighted media files (against the wishes of the copyright-holders), all of the freedom-loving Slashdotters were defending the said software-makers. Software is just a tool, it was said — it can also be used to download Linux distributions (a fraction of 1%, I strongly suspect). You can't sue the software-makers (nor the web-site hosters) — sue the individual abusers instead. That was the cry, and the gloating over how difficult it would be to nail such individuals made the moderators reach for the "Insightful".
Now comes a story about a maker of the software, which is used legitimately world-wide, and we are bashing them to smithereens over a (perfectly legal) sale to a rogue customer — which may still be using it. Says the article: "if a connection found to exist in 2005 still holds."
If I hadn't ratted on Anne Frank, my neighbor would have anyway, right?
Come, come, let's not get hysterical (and approach the Godwin Law's boundaries).
Censoring software is not killing anybody — it prevents (or makes difficult) an activity, that did not even exist during the revolutions of the (very recent) pre-Internet past...
Reinforced concrete barriers help keep skidding cars from hitting the oncoming traffic.
Steel armor plates reduce the impact of improvised explosive devices.
Kibbutz sets the clock based on the terrorist rocket-salvoes timings.
In other words, the presence of a work-around does not justify the actions which cause the problem, which, in this case, is "music piracy" also well known as thievery.
The answer is obvious if you think about it: those "pretty graphics" are a huge number crunching problem. That's all there is to it. GPU's, however, aren't very good at tasks that don't do exactly the same thing huge numbers of times.
Well, maybe there ought to be numerical co-processors then — again?
Modern GPUs have (I think -- I don't keep up to date) 256 bit wide memory interfaces, running at close to gigahertz speed. This means they can transfer to and from their memory at about 4 times the rate a PC can. This is possible because (1) graphics card manufacturers don't mind the types of memory they use changing on a virtually model-by-model basis and (2) they also don't mind being stuck with non-expandable memory that's soldered directly onto the card right next to the GPU.
Terrific. Now how much of the performance edge, do you think, is due to this inflexibility? The article is talking about a 25-fold gain — which suggests, the GPU is 24 times faster than the CPU. I think, I'd be willing to sacrifice flexibility for this kind of performance jump...
So why did my CS course have a module where we learned how the hardware worked?
Because practice is different from theory. But they are normally getting closer — few people program in assembly these days, for example. We hardly use different memory models (FAR-pointers anyone?). We rarely even worry about the distinction between RAM and virtual memory in our code. With 64-bit addressing one can even use mmap freely (because size_t and off_t are equally wide). Life is good — you can write a readable (enjoyable even) program without sacrificing performance.
Except for these GPUs, which throw programming back to the machine-instructions.
Why is the GPU a processor dedicated to nothing but "pretty graphics" so much more powerful than the central multi-purpose processor even at the things like number-crunching?
Is it because the GPU engineers can completely redo the thing from scratch whenever they want to, whereas the CPU-designers are held back by the backwards-compatibility issues?
Computer Science teaches, programmers aren't supposed to have to do "tricks" like this — you code, and the translator (compiler or intepreter) will translate from your programming language to the hardware instructions. It never quite worked this way, but it was much closer — even when the floating-point co-processor (such as x87) was only available in some machines.
Now, it would be of course obviously that I had to remove most of his finger nails
None of that happened. The alleged victim of coercion did not even allege torture — not even the non-disfiguring kind (like waterboarding). So let's not go off-tangent and change subject. Thank you...
This is why a confession should never be trusted on its own — without other evidence. Nor is it really trusted on its own by the courts in free countries, such as ours — as evidenced by this very case.
They may have coerced an admission from him, that it was his device, but without details on where he got it, and how he used it, that admission is quite worthless even if he were scared for his family's life enough to not backpaddle from the addmission in court... I'm quite proud, that he was not sufficiently scared, though...
And, finally, we only know the details of the coercion from one side. The FBI agent, according to the article, merely "did not contest" the fact of coercion. That's not an admission of guilt by any measure...
According to the article — which we all read, did not we — the contraption is built in part from the pieces of a 747, which crashed nearby some years ago.
This points at two things at once
the well-inspected/X-rayed construction can still fall from the sky.
The guy's implement may be using some aviation-grade pieces after all...
That said, I'm afraid, the regulations/inspections you consider "essential" are not really such — I sense the "sour grapes" sentiment. Sure, it is far riskier to fly in this guy's machine than in a factory-built helicopter. But the fact, that it flies at all — and that he is still a student, who works on the copter in between studying and repairing other people's electronics to supplement his income — are rather remarkable. If a 24-year old in the dirt-poor Nigeria can do this, where is my flying car in the US?
It is now 9:35am and the title of the write-up has already been revised — without even the customary note to the effect — but the write-up itself still laments the "thrashing of the Fourth Amendment".
Apparently, there is nothing the Law Enforcement part of the government can do, that would be "legal" in the predominant opinion here.
All things considered, that's, probably, a good thing — even if incorrect or exaggerated...
Slashdot Mirror
This is just an illustration, that manufacturing is a solved problem. Design, research, and development is where the minds and ideas are or should be going.
The growing emphasys on the Intellectual Property — the kind, that can be stolen by simple copying (thus leaving the original owner, seemingly, unhurt) — is another illustration of the same trend, like it or not.
You — and the millions of his other fans — are still free to write him in next year.
The title of TFA:
Whatever the merits of the list, it was not used to persecute these people in the USA. In fact, one hysterical clown from "Code Pink" (the outfit, whose members were denied entry to Canada) was recently allowed rather close to the Secretary of State. She and the other members of the organization were only ejected from the congressional hearing after the confrontation.
The complaints are directed at Canada:
We allow all sorts of lunacy here in the US, but I don't blame the Canadians for desireing (so to speak) to keep foreign lunatics out of their country.
Exactly. It is most tiresome to see these lamentations, when things actually improve.
For hundreds of years business communications consisted of paper letters. I doubt, anybody — including Zonk — would prefer writing and mailing a paper letter to an e-mail, even if that means disappearance of several professions (ink- and quill-makers, typists, typewriter-engineers, etc.).
But somehow, he appears to view the availability of Wiki (which replaces circulating a document around) as a "threat" — to any one but, an IT-worker. Well, even that IT-worker is now relieved of the rather mundane responsibilities and can instead move on to a better paying job elsewhere.
But does it support DNS?..
He — Travoltus — is (or claims to be) a manager in a "fairly large IT outfit". Who but not his ilk are responsible for companies preferring to hire ready talent, instead of nurturing it in-house from the early apprentice stages?
Your politically-slanted rant was foolish — there is nothing particularly "Republican" about the practice...
Good for you. But the topic of my post was that most of things an American is buying do not rise in price, when the dollar is falling, and that the earlier poster's assertions, that the dollar's fall negates all benefits of the higher salaries, is thus without merit.
You chose to attack (with an ad-hominem, no less) my secondary point, used merely for illustration — that the anxiety of would-be techie immigrants is the proof of how lucky we are to be in this field at this time and in this place. Your objection is self-contradictory:
Right. A born-raised-and-educated American has "absolutely NO CHANCE", while the immigrants — who need to not only find a job (overcoming the long physical and cultural differences), but to also jump through numerous hoops to get the coveted visa — find countless thousands of opportunities. They would've found even more, had the protectionist quota on H-1 visas not been set so low.
Such a fool, indeed... Care to post some links to actual numbers of freshly-graduated ("newb") American engineers unable to find employment?.. Put up or shut up, so to speak.
Do you seriously accuse Travoltus, who — in his sig — uses the term "neo-Conservative" as a derogative, of being a Republican?..
He-he :) Go ahead, the two of you, bite each other's heads off...
Your single biggest expense, most likely, is housing, which is still priced in dollars.
Next after that are various services — the labour of fellow Americans, mostly, as well as immigrants (legal and otherwise), which are all priced in dollars too. This labor is the biggest part of the price of those "Made in America" items, which you dismiss as merely assembled here. It is also a big part of the retail price of just about anything you buy (wherever it is made)...
Manufacturing? China's currency is pegged to the dollar at the moment, and will be for a while. China-made stuff is thus not getting more expensive, whatever dollar/euro ratio is — that covers nearly all manufactured items sold in US — for better or worse.
What did I miss? Oh, yeah, imported wines and cheeses...
Amazing. A few months ago we were lamenting, how the techies are underpaid, and how all tech jobs are outsourced to India (as if Indians are any less deserving). Now comes the news of tech-salaries growing rather quickly, but the lamentations don't cease!
The H-1 visas are all "sold-out" within hours every year — hundreds of thousands of people dream of coming here to work (white-collar work) for the salary you seem to dismiss as insufficient... Maybe, you ought to pack up and leave to make room for fresh immigrants — evidently, your family has used up its time in this country, if the latest generation (you) is so unappreciative.
Amount of what? Of computers? Of TVs? Of cars? Of T-shirts?
The inflation is related to the value of currency against others, but that's not the whole of it... The stuff made in the US — and in dollar-pegged countries such as China — is not getting more expensive automatically, when the dollar falls against euro.
There is oversight and regulations of even a completely private thing like an individual's credit history. Banks can not simply claim: "we don't like this guy" — there are laws regulating, what records can be kept, and procedures allowing people to dispute inaccuracies.
The "terror list", which, allegedly, is used to not simply cause extra scrutiny, but to also deny boarding sometimes, is maintained by the (Executive) government and is in sore need of similar regulations. As a minimum, one must be able to inquire, whether he or she are on the list and to challenge the placing both in administrative proceedings or in courts.
Agreed. Even the 9/11 perpetrators realized this — that the same attack will not be repeated. This is why they timed their attacks to coincide — and even then the last one failed, because the passengers have learned about the earlier ones. There will be no other airliner turned into a missile again...
But an old-fashioned bomb could still be smuggled aboard — including liquid explosives disguised as a water bottle. The TSA goons harassing passengers in the airports may not be catching 100% of the stuff, leaving another attack possible. But their work makes it difficult...
There are two reasons. First, a terrorist attack — besides giving the terrorists bragging rights and inspiring more — is insulting. "Ha, ha! All your superiority and we still blow you up!". The indignity makes us want to remove that particular threat to our lives — however minuscule it really is. Indeed, even in Israel, which is attacked by terrorists daily, far more people die from routine automotive accidents.
For some reason, we don't consider deaths from cancer or heart decease in the 21st century undignifying...
The second reason is, at least in the US, an individual's health is their responsibility to a very large degree. So are the safe driving habits and choosing a vehicle. Protection against terrorism, on the other hand, is decidedly a matter for the government — not even Libertarians dispute that. So the government is doing (or trying to do), what it is supposed to do (and what it failed to do on 9/11 2001).
Well, the monks are standing up to their oppressive government — not external threats. You can't really compare — the Burmese can't do anything else but revolt (note, that it was the hike of fuel prices in Myanmar, not the oppression, that caused the most recent revolt, BTW)...
We are not "afraid", we are cautious and — unlike the Burmese — we are far more trustful of our government. And for good reasons...
Yep. The only thing more endearing would be "Moon wallabies".
Granted, a helicopter would not work on the airless Moon. Granted, a wheeled (or caterpillared) rover may not be suitable for large distances either.
But there may be other designs. For example, the macropods are able to hop over long distances using relatively little energy. The tendons in their large (macro) legs (pods) act as springs allowing them to reuse about 70% of the energy for the next jump (humans only reuse 5-10% on each step).
I suppose, a vehicle could be built to use the same principle. It may not work well on Earth (due to the remaining limitations of our technology), but on Moon, with its 5 times lesser gravity, jumping should be quite efficient...
That would be lamentable... Can you demonstrate anything of the kind actually happening with the products listed in the article (or closely related ones)?
Most of today's consumer-electronics available in US are designed and/or made elsewhere.
That some of the stuff is not available here is not, in itself, the sign of US lagging behind, but rather that of US consumers not being interested enough for the companies to introduce these particular products here.
If root beer is not (widely) available in Japan, it is because the Japanese don't like root beer — not because they can't afford it, or don't know where to get it.
Uh-oh, "morally"... Morally the music-trading sites (like Napster) are indefensible too — except on Slashdot, which insists, the individual abusers should be targeted, not napsters themselves.
Nobody "did the killing". Anne died of malnutrition at the camp. Her father survived, for example. But ratting the family out meant condemning them to gross hardships of the camps. Sale of sensorship software does nothing of the kind. So, no, you should be continuing your (mis)analogy.
Khmm, this reminds me of the arguments in the file-sharing debate... When content-owners were going after the makers of the software used primarily to exchange copyrighted media files (against the wishes of the copyright-holders), all of the freedom-loving Slashdotters were defending the said software-makers. Software is just a tool, it was said — it can also be used to download Linux distributions (a fraction of 1%, I strongly suspect). You can't sue the software-makers (nor the web-site hosters) — sue the individual abusers instead. That was the cry, and the gloating over how difficult it would be to nail such individuals made the moderators reach for the "Insightful".
Now comes a story about a maker of the software, which is used legitimately world-wide, and we are bashing them to smithereens over a (perfectly legal) sale to a rogue customer — which may still be using it. Says the article: "if a connection found to exist in 2005 still holds."
Come, come, let's not get hysterical (and approach the Godwin Law's boundaries).
Censoring software is not killing anybody — it prevents (or makes difficult) an activity, that did not even exist during the revolutions of the (very recent) pre-Internet past...
In other words, the presence of a work-around does not justify the actions which cause the problem, which, in this case, is "music piracy" also well known as thievery.
Well, maybe there ought to be numerical co-processors then — again?
Terrific. Now how much of the performance edge, do you think, is due to this inflexibility? The article is talking about a 25-fold gain — which suggests, the GPU is 24 times faster than the CPU. I think, I'd be willing to sacrifice flexibility for this kind of performance jump...
Because practice is different from theory. But they are normally getting closer — few people program in assembly these days, for example. We hardly use different memory models (FAR-pointers anyone?). We rarely even worry about the distinction between RAM and virtual memory in our code. With 64-bit addressing one can even use mmap freely (because size_t and off_t are equally wide). Life is good — you can write a readable (enjoyable even) program without sacrificing performance.
Except for these GPUs, which throw programming back to the machine-instructions.
Why is the GPU a processor dedicated to nothing but "pretty graphics" so much more powerful than the central multi-purpose processor even at the things like number-crunching?
Is it because the GPU engineers can completely redo the thing from scratch whenever they want to, whereas the CPU-designers are held back by the backwards-compatibility issues?
Computer Science teaches, programmers aren't supposed to have to do "tricks" like this — you code, and the translator (compiler or intepreter) will translate from your programming language to the hardware instructions. It never quite worked this way, but it was much closer — even when the floating-point co-processor (such as x87) was only available in some machines.
What's up?
None of that happened. The alleged victim of coercion did not even allege torture — not even the non-disfiguring kind (like waterboarding). So let's not go off-tangent and change subject. Thank you...
This is why a confession should never be trusted on its own — without other evidence. Nor is it really trusted on its own by the courts in free countries, such as ours — as evidenced by this very case.
They may have coerced an admission from him, that it was his device, but without details on where he got it, and how he used it, that admission is quite worthless even if he were scared for his family's life enough to not backpaddle from the addmission in court... I'm quite proud, that he was not sufficiently scared, though...
And, finally, we only know the details of the coercion from one side. The FBI agent, according to the article, merely "did not contest" the fact of coercion. That's not an admission of guilt by any measure...
According to the article — which we all read, did not we — the contraption is built in part from the pieces of a 747, which crashed nearby some years ago.
This points at two things at once
That said, I'm afraid, the regulations/inspections you consider "essential" are not really such — I sense the "sour grapes" sentiment. Sure, it is far riskier to fly in this guy's machine than in a factory-built helicopter. But the fact, that it flies at all — and that he is still a student, who works on the copter in between studying and repairing other people's electronics to supplement his income — are rather remarkable. If a 24-year old in the dirt-poor Nigeria can do this, where is my flying car in the US?
It is now 9:35am and the title of the write-up has already been revised — without even the customary note to the effect — but the write-up itself still laments the "thrashing of the Fourth Amendment".
Apparently, there is nothing the Law Enforcement part of the government can do, that would be "legal" in the predominant opinion here.
All things considered, that's, probably, a good thing — even if incorrect or exaggerated...