And yet, if the ones implementing this scheme were the UK, or Germany, or France, or Japan, fingerprinting all visitors including Americans... would you feel like you're been treated like a good-intentioned tourist, or like a potential criminal?
Of course, I'd feel offended. That's why I mentioned the reason of pride. But that's emotion. Statistically, it does not make much sense to target Americans only — that's my point...
Brasil already fingerprints and photographs US citizens (and only US citizens) visiting Brasil...
This last August they did not... An urban myth?
It makes no sense — except for the pride. An American visiting Brazil is far less likely to be a criminal, than a Brazilian visiting US... We go there as mostly as tourists (thus having money for leisure). Many of them come here for work (in need of money)...
Fingerprint databases are a very useful crime-fighting tool. The only objection to fingerprinting everyone (somewhere in elementary school) is the indignity of (mis)treating every citizen as a (potential) criminal.
Americans, however, are surprisingly tolerant of the government-imposed indignities — judging, for example, by their willingness to stand barefeet and beltless (belt's buckles are often metallic, you see) on the dirty floor in front of the TSA officers... Removing your footwear for inspection used to be optional (you could elect to be searched instead), but is now required since no one was objecting — except for a few freaks, like yours truly.
Fingerprinting non-citizens will not even raise the proverbial eye-brow of the nation...
"Above market" means lots of things, most of which don't make starbucks look very good once the general conditions in Ethiopia are added to the discussion.
What would you rather they do instead? Stop buying Ethiopian coffee at all? Pay even more for the stuff grown in Ethiopia and thus attract even more growers to the already saturated market?
If Oxfam were really concerned about the third-world farmers, they would've been making noise against Europe's farmer-subsidies, against the smaller-but-still-significant American ones, and against Japan's protectionism. Instead Oxfam goes against a prominent corporation — they are well aware of the shortness of the attention span of their contributors... Much easier to bash a corporation (especially an American one), than to be "against the small farmers", is not it?
I'm sure, there are plenty of cases of planted evidence and other police wrong-doing. I'm not sure, how inclusive your link is, but even on it, there are cases, where innocence is far from clear (cases 2 and 4, for example — I did not read it all). I also think, "technicality" should mean things more serious than "misspelled name". You may be right about it being an "urban legend", but with only 123 people exonerated in 33 years nationwide, someone is perfectly justified fighting for the unborn instead of the convicted — there are many orders of magnitude more abortions per year...
If one — as the fetus-defenders do — believes, that "abortion is murder", there is no contradiction at all in their choosing to fight for them. I don't agree with them, but they are not inconsistent...
Yes, but the post I responded to specified "a murder he didn't commit." People have been cleared of their crimes while on death row, but the only groups pushing to clear these old cases are basically left-wing. There aren't any right-wing organizations I know of that even address the issue of innocents being sent to death row.
It is very rare, that the actual innocence is proven by these "liberal" lawyers — much more often, they find some sort of a technicality or flat-out bullshit (like during O.J. Simpson's trial). They (except for the youngest of the participating paralegals) aren't often motivated by the justice or fairness either — making a name and/or "sticking it to the man" and/or fighting death penalty are frequently the drivers.
Also, lawyers are the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party (they overtook trade unions long ago)...
All this may explain, why you don't hear about conservatives fighting for death-row inmates. May also be, it is rarely "their" kind of people — theirs usually can afford decent legal defense before the verdict...
So you believe 100% of the laws are 100% correct, none flawed, open to misinterpretation or just plain wrong/outdated?
The best way to get rid of such flaws, IMO, is to enforce all such laws strictly and on everyone. The resulting outcry will get the bad laws fixed/repealed very quickly.
For a practical example, I advocate using the automatic road toll-collection systems to enforce speeding laws:
"You entered the highway T seconds ago at exit N. You are now exiting the highway at exit K, which is X miles away from N. Your average speed was thus X/T, which is D miles per hour above the posted speed limit. Here is your $50 ticket (the minimum speeding fine in Massachusetts) — please, pay or appeal within 21 days. Have a nice day."
Once every motorist starts getting these, the speed limit will climb up to a reasonable level very quickly...
He/she knows its not legally [emphasis mine] defined as murder, the author wants to know why it is not.
Because it is far less reprehensible than murder. Far less even, than negligent homicide... Pharmaceutical companies are not blamed for people getting sick — only for not providing medicines. "Crimes of omission" are almost always less reprehensible, than those actually committed.
Basic legal maxims include the belief that a person is responsible for the consequences of his actions if he is aware of what the outcome of his actions is highly likely to be and chooses to proceed with those actions.
In your example you are talking about the inaction of not helping a drowning kid. There is no action here... A visitor to a child care facility — even if he is a hated Big Pharma CEO, a gay-basher, or a Microsoft user — is not legally responsible for the death (moral responsibility remains between him and his conscience). Employees of the said facility are responsible, of course — but their crime would be that of "negligent homicide" at the most, not "murder".
And no amount of hot air is going to change that...
[...] is that person not morally [emphasis yours] responsible for the death of that person?
Morally — maybe. Legally — no.
And if so, why don't we classify it as murder?
We don't classify it as "rape" or "grand larceny" either. Because it does not fit the definition of the term. For example, "that person" did not even kill "that person" — he did not even put her into the pool, much less caused her to drown. Is it really that difficult to understand? I guess it is — for someone, who is yet to grasp the differences between "action" and "inaction", and between "moral" and "legal" responsibilities...
Why isn't this murder? Watching someone die a slow painful death when you could keep them alive
It is not "murder" by definition. Look it up. Watching someone die is not even "negligent homicide"... Heck, such passivity is not even illegal at all in most cases. It most certainly is not murder.
The real question our philosophers and ethicists are yet to answer, is:
Is 100% effective law-enforcement desirable?
The security cameras allow us to place a (virtual) police officer on every corner and between — a single real officer can have eyes and ears of 5 or 10, while working in a comfortable environment. That's a dramatic boom to law-enforcement. Whether or not that is a good thing depends on the answer to the above question...
And before you reach for the "Reply" link to type: "It depends on the laws," — yes, thank you, I know. It depends on a number of other things too, and even the obvious dependency on the laws is not as straightforward... For example, rogue law-makers would not exist either...
Apartheid. The Dutch word for apartness. What is the wall for if not apartness?
There is nothing wrong with "apartness" in itself — one keeps one's saving account apart from checking without any moral concerns... Had Carter used "apartness" in the title of his recent inflammatory book, that would've been fine. But he used "Apartheid", which is very distinct from "apartness".
Apartheid is disliked because it — in South Africa — kept citizens of the same country apart from each other based on race. Nothing of the kind exists in the region called Palestine... That's was and remains my point.
This is not a new problem — certainly not one of the 21st century or brought upon us by the evil Bush-nazis.
These problems (secrecy vs. accountability) are generally solved by Congressional oversight, which is done by lawmakers with security clearances... Presumably, their desire to be re-elected keeps them vigilant — especially, when they belong to a party different from the Administration's. That, really, is the best guarantee you can have. If you think, this act of censorship was unwarranted, pressure your lawmaker(s) to demand explanations. Explanations, which can not be given to you directly because of the (alleged) security implications...
Just a reminder — the two reviewing boards described in the article weren't invented by today... I'm quite certain, this is not the first time, one of them blocked something either.
From the write-up and the article, it is clear, that the beef we have with the system is its invasion of our privacy. That is not the meaning given to the term (in)secure in the context.
Does the system have flaws, that could allow a terrorist to bypass it? That would've made it "insecure"...
But, I guess, "Secure Flight System proven too invasive" just is not as good a sound-bite...
These concerns are between the cell-phone users and their service-providers. Governments and airlines need not interfere. The etiquette (or lack thereof) of chatting for hours is similar.
Airlines and the governments have been lying through their teethes to us on this and other matters for a long time... It is good thing, someone is finally breaking ranks:
Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft's navigation systems. At least, that's what you've always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn't sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it. We will have to come clean about this next year, when we introduce in-flight calling across the Veritas fleet. At that point the prospect of taking a cut of the sky-high calling charges will miraculously cause our safety concerns about mobile phones to evaporate.
But I dread the government's intervention even more. Having dealt with smoking, they are already after trans-fats. Web-sites can't be far down the list.
The only benefit I could see would be the ability to mmap() large files, thanks to the larger memory space. Woo.
Nothing to sneeze at here. This ability (afforded by sizeof off_t == sizeof size_t) is a boon. The ugly I/O-and-process loops can go away now, with the I/O part handled by the kernel.
Not many currently are, but all kernels can be a lot smarter about that I/O than a (portable) application will ever be. Kernel knows about itself (presumably), the hardware, and the other processes currently running — factors, that a portable app can not be expected to take into account.
Having mmap-ed a file, you should be able to madvise the kernel on your planned usage (random? sequentional?). mmap offers huge potential, but its use was hampered by the differences in the above-mentioned sizeofs. Whereas a lot of smart optimizations went into the implementations of read and write, mmap was often just implemented, but not optimized by the OSes. This may now change...
There is still a potential problem with mmap-ing too many large files into the same process and thus running out of address-space anyway. But, practically, this is not going to affect anyone for a very long time — I don't think, any apps relies on being able to have more than a few thousands file-descriptors simultaniously and those on the higher end of this estimate hold most of these assets in sockets rather than mmap-able files/devices.
You can start many applications with the additional switch/3G, which will cause Windows to split the 4Gb of the process' address space 3:1 between user and kernel space instead of the default 2:2. But that's it...
Windows is not the only OS like this. On AIX 32-bit processes are also limited to 2Gb, for example, while on Solaris you have your entire 4Gb.
That said, if maximum memory is not an issue for your program (as is usually the case), it is quite convenient (and fast) to have the same address space across user and kernel parts of the process. And 64-bit gives you both (even if all the pointer-fields in your structures double in size...)
most effective Russian leader since Catherine the Great
Catherine's sorry record aside, your comparison is very useful here to underline the Russians' longing for Tsarism to the underinformed foreigners...
He's the reason post-Soviet Russia is no longer getting raped by foreign capitalists.
Nope. The only reason for Russia's current wealth and weight is the High Oil Price. When it goes down again (and it will), Russia will be hurting again. It happened twice already: the first time's result was USSR's crumble, the second's — Russia default.
You better be ready for the third time... I have it on good authority, that the price of oil is the sole variable in Russian bankers' financial models — you don't have anything else worthy of consideration as far as Economics is concerned.
But the surface is very cold; it's about minus 178C.
It is a lot warmer in Antarctica and the easy-to-reach place has plenty of oxygen and water. If we really are running out of room, the continent should be colonized first...
Heck, if the "Global Warming" fear-mongering is even partially true, the continent will only become better — and it already is much better than any extra-terrestrial body.
That no settlements (as in "villages", not science labs) exist even on this much more habitable place is just a sign, how far off space colonization really is... I think, some South America's country(ies) tried to pay people to live there (just to claim territory, pretty much), but it still failed...
When, in the last 40 years, has America made a product worth buying? Everything stamped "Made in America" should really be stamped "Packaged in America".
Enough for you? All of this is made in America with only some of the most routine and least interesting bits outsourced to other countries. And only because they aren't good enough yet...
Not that there is anything wrong with being "packaged in America".
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, I'd feel offended. That's why I mentioned the reason of pride. But that's emotion. Statistically, it does not make much sense to target Americans only — that's my point...
This last August they did not... An urban myth?
It makes no sense — except for the pride. An American visiting Brazil is far less likely to be a criminal, than a Brazilian visiting US... We go there as mostly as tourists (thus having money for leisure). Many of them come here for work (in need of money)...
Fingerprint databases are a very useful crime-fighting tool. The only objection to fingerprinting everyone (somewhere in elementary school) is the indignity of (mis)treating every citizen as a (potential) criminal.
Americans, however, are surprisingly tolerant of the government-imposed indignities — judging, for example, by their willingness to stand barefeet and beltless (belt's buckles are often metallic, you see) on the dirty floor in front of the TSA officers... Removing your footwear for inspection used to be optional (you could elect to be searched instead), but is now required since no one was objecting — except for a few freaks, like yours truly.
Fingerprinting non-citizens will not even raise the proverbial eye-brow of the nation...
What would you rather they do instead? Stop buying Ethiopian coffee at all? Pay even more for the stuff grown in Ethiopia and thus attract even more growers to the already saturated market?
If Oxfam were really concerned about the third-world farmers, they would've been making noise against Europe's farmer-subsidies, against the smaller-but-still-significant American ones, and against Japan's protectionism. Instead Oxfam goes against a prominent corporation — they are well aware of the shortness of the attention span of their contributors... Much easier to bash a corporation (especially an American one), than to be "against the small farmers", is not it?
I'm sure, there are plenty of cases of planted evidence and other police wrong-doing. I'm not sure, how inclusive your link is, but even on it, there are cases, where innocence is far from clear (cases 2 and 4, for example — I did not read it all). I also think, "technicality" should mean things more serious than "misspelled name". You may be right about it being an "urban legend", but with only 123 people exonerated in 33 years nationwide, someone is perfectly justified fighting for the unborn instead of the convicted — there are many orders of magnitude more abortions per year...
If one — as the fetus-defenders do — believes, that "abortion is murder", there is no contradiction at all in their choosing to fight for them. I don't agree with them, but they are not inconsistent...
It is very rare, that the actual innocence is proven by these "liberal" lawyers — much more often, they find some sort of a technicality or flat-out bullshit (like during O.J. Simpson's trial). They (except for the youngest of the participating paralegals) aren't often motivated by the justice or fairness either — making a name and/or "sticking it to the man" and/or fighting death penalty are frequently the drivers.
Also, lawyers are the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party (they overtook trade unions long ago)...
All this may explain, why you don't hear about conservatives fighting for death-row inmates. May also be, it is rarely "their" kind of people — theirs usually can afford decent legal defense before the verdict...
... were invented for news-distribution and forum-like conversations in the times, real-time connectivity is expensive/slow/not available.
What's next? Using e-mail during instant-messaging downtime gets Slashdot's front-page prominence?
Now imagine MPAA/RIAA posting some fake wares in a manner, that would allow them to easily catch the illegal downloaders.
Would that receive as favorable a write-up from Slashdot editors?
The best way to get rid of such flaws, IMO, is to enforce all such laws strictly and on everyone. The resulting outcry will get the bad laws fixed/repealed very quickly.
For a practical example, I advocate using the automatic road toll-collection systems to enforce speeding laws:
"You entered the highway T seconds ago at exit N. You are now exiting the highway at exit K, which is X miles away from N. Your average speed was thus X/T, which is D miles per hour above the posted speed limit. Here is your $50 ticket (the minimum speeding fine in Massachusetts) — please, pay or appeal within 21 days. Have a nice day."
Once every motorist starts getting these, the speed limit will climb up to a reasonable level very quickly...
Because it is far less reprehensible than murder. Far less even, than negligent homicide... Pharmaceutical companies are not blamed for people getting sick — only for not providing medicines. "Crimes of omission" are almost always less reprehensible, than those actually committed.
In your example you are talking about the inaction of not helping a drowning kid. There is no action here... A visitor to a child care facility — even if he is a hated Big Pharma CEO, a gay-basher, or a Microsoft user — is not legally responsible for the death (moral responsibility remains between him and his conscience). Employees of the said facility are responsible, of course — but their crime would be that of "negligent homicide" at the most, not "murder".
And no amount of hot air is going to change that...
Morally — maybe. Legally — no.
We don't classify it as "rape" or "grand larceny" either. Because it does not fit the definition of the term. For example, "that person" did not even kill "that person" — he did not even put her into the pool, much less caused her to drown. Is it really that difficult to understand? I guess it is — for someone, who is yet to grasp the differences between "action" and "inaction", and between "moral" and "legal" responsibilities...
The real question our philosophers and ethicists are yet to answer, is: Is 100% effective law-enforcement desirable?
The security cameras allow us to place a (virtual) police officer on every corner and between — a single real officer can have eyes and ears of 5 or 10, while working in a comfortable environment. That's a dramatic boom to law-enforcement. Whether or not that is a good thing depends on the answer to the above question...
And before you reach for the "Reply" link to type: "It depends on the laws," — yes, thank you, I know. It depends on a number of other things too, and even the obvious dependency on the laws is not as straightforward... For example, rogue law-makers would not exist either...
Mmm, exactly what Hitler did to them? You mean, Jews are burning millions of Arabs in ovens, uh?..
Anyway, here is a useful link for you. Remember to logout, loser.
There is nothing wrong with "apartness" in itself — one keeps one's saving account apart from checking without any moral concerns... Had Carter used "apartness" in the title of his recent inflammatory book, that would've been fine. But he used "Apartheid", which is very distinct from "apartness".
Apartheid is disliked because it — in South Africa — kept citizens of the same country apart from each other based on race. Nothing of the kind exists in the region called Palestine... That's was and remains my point.
Because there is no Apartheid there. Carter's clumsy world-play fools only ignoramuses with an attention span measured in nano-units:
There simply is not anything like this in the region called Palestine.
This is not a new problem — certainly not one of the 21st century or brought upon us by the evil Bush-nazis.
These problems (secrecy vs. accountability) are generally solved by Congressional oversight, which is done by lawmakers with security clearances... Presumably, their desire to be re-elected keeps them vigilant — especially, when they belong to a party different from the Administration's. That, really, is the best guarantee you can have. If you think, this act of censorship was unwarranted, pressure your lawmaker(s) to demand explanations. Explanations, which can not be given to you directly because of the (alleged) security implications...
Just a reminder — the two reviewing boards described in the article weren't invented by today... I'm quite certain, this is not the first time, one of them blocked something either.
From the write-up and the article, it is clear, that the beef we have with the system is its invasion of our privacy. That is not the meaning given to the term (in)secure in the context.
Does the system have flaws, that could allow a terrorist to bypass it? That would've made it "insecure"...
But, I guess, "Secure Flight System proven too invasive" just is not as good a sound-bite...
These concerns are between the cell-phone users and their service-providers. Governments and airlines need not interfere. The etiquette (or lack thereof) of chatting for hours is similar.
Airlines and the governments have been lying through their teethes to us on this and other matters for a long time... It is good thing, someone is finally breaking ranks:
But I dread the government's intervention even more. Having dealt with smoking, they are already after trans-fats. Web-sites can't be far down the list.
Nothing to sneeze at here. This ability (afforded by sizeof off_t == sizeof size_t) is a boon. The ugly I/O-and-process loops can go away now, with the I/O part handled by the kernel.
Not many currently are, but all kernels can be a lot smarter about that I/O than a (portable) application will ever be. Kernel knows about itself (presumably), the hardware, and the other processes currently running — factors, that a portable app can not be expected to take into account.
Having mmap-ed a file, you should be able to madvise the kernel on your planned usage (random? sequentional?). mmap offers huge potential, but its use was hampered by the differences in the above-mentioned sizeofs. Whereas a lot of smart optimizations went into the implementations of read and write, mmap was often just implemented, but not optimized by the OSes. This may now change...
There is still a potential problem with mmap-ing too many large files into the same process and thus running out of address-space anyway. But, practically, this is not going to affect anyone for a very long time — I don't think, any apps relies on being able to have more than a few thousands file-descriptors simultaniously and those on the higher end of this estimate hold most of these assets in sockets rather than mmap-able files/devices.
You can start many applications with the additional switch /3G, which will cause Windows to split the 4Gb of the process' address space 3:1 between user and kernel space instead of the default 2:2. But that's it...
Windows is not the only OS like this. On AIX 32-bit processes are also limited to 2Gb, for example, while on Solaris you have your entire 4Gb.
That said, if maximum memory is not an issue for your program (as is usually the case), it is quite convenient (and fast) to have the same address space across user and kernel parts of the process. And 64-bit gives you both (even if all the pointer-fields in your structures double in size...)
Catherine's sorry record aside, your comparison is very useful here to underline the Russians' longing for Tsarism to the underinformed foreigners...
Nope. The only reason for Russia's current wealth and weight is the High Oil Price. When it goes down again (and it will), Russia will be hurting again. It happened twice already: the first time's result was USSR's crumble, the second's — Russia default.
You better be ready for the third time... I have it on good authority, that the price of oil is the sole variable in Russian bankers' financial models — you don't have anything else worthy of consideration as far as Economics is concerned.
It is a lot warmer in Antarctica and the easy-to-reach place has plenty of oxygen and water. If we really are running out of room, the continent should be colonized first...
Heck, if the "Global Warming" fear-mongering is even partially true, the continent will only become better — and it already is much better than any extra-terrestrial body.
That no settlements (as in "villages", not science labs) exist even on this much more habitable place is just a sign, how far off space colonization really is... I think, some South America's country(ies) tried to pay people to live there (just to claim territory, pretty much), but it still failed...
Untruths, partial truths, and diversions. What else can one expect from a self-proclaimed Marxist?
Computers (Intel, IBM, AMD, Sun, SGI, Compaq, HP, Digital), airplanes (Cessna, Boing, Lokheed), movies (gasp, Hollywood), music (RIAA!), weapons, software (Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Sybase), network hardware (Cisco, Lucent), web-services (EBay, Amazon).
Enough for you? All of this is made in America with only some of the most routine and least interesting bits outsourced to other countries. And only because they aren't good enough yet...
Not that there is anything wrong with being "packaged in America".