You didn't read the article, did you? Or maybe you're joking.
What the article so painstakingly describes is a democratic structure. People making individual decisions based on their own preferences, knowledge, and best judgement is the very definition of a democratic structure.
What you are describing, in contrast, is a system with the authority to monitor everyone's decisions and force certain people to make certain decisions. All while punishing those who made decisions that resulted in their success simply because everyone else did not enjoy similar success. At that point you've already decided for everyone else what is "fair" and what decisions are "right".
The sooner people realize this, the sooner we will have implemented a just society.
If by "just" you mean "totalitarian", then I guess you're right.
Ignorance of sex is far worse than exposure to it. You are just forcing your child to learn about it from someone else in an uncontrolled setting.
Huh? A child browsing the Internet with no supervision, possibly with adults all around them browsing unrestricted though pornography, is about as "uncontrolled" a setting as you're likely to find. It's ultimately up to a parent to choose the place and time to introduce the proverbial birds and bees with her child, not accidental encounters with random people in public places.
Damn it. Look. Believe it or not, there are actually parents out there that don't mind their children looking at naked people. I know that sounds amazing, but it is quite true. What gives you the right to enforce your misguided sense of morality on them?
Nothing, but nor do you have the right to enforce your particular brand of child-rearing with someone elses' children. The possibility that your particular interpretation of what's better for children may happen to be different than mine does not automatically make yours the default for everyone's children.
The solution seems pretty simple to me. A set of computers in a children's area of the library should be judiciously filtered. Computers in the adult section of the library should not be filtered.
The password idea is actually a pretty good one. And parents who wish to give unrestricted access to their own children should always be free to do so, in writing. Just like when they get a library card for their kid right now.
You're probably right. But there other other hazardous chemicals on board that have nothing to do with the fuel system. Depending on the type of debris, the size of the chunks that survived (still unclear even now), and the type of chemicals it does seem possible that there'd be residue of these chemicals on some surviving chunks of the fuselage.
There are also pyrotechnic bolts and fastners that may not have exploded by themselves on the way down, but which could go off if mishandled.
For more on this topic and see section IV, part 3 of the excellent sci.space Columbia Loss FAQ:
No, the shuttle doesn't use an RTG, and it wasn't carrying any other kind of radioactive cargo. The destruction of an RTG is also very, very unlikely to release any radioactive dust or debris, even after re-entry.
More info on RTGs from NASA: http://spacepwr.jpl.nasa.gov/rtgs.htm
I doubt that caller was unsuspecting if they had that many tickets logged. I get this from time to time where I work. I ALWAYS cc their manager and copy in the procedures for contacting the help desk. It makes a difference.
Sure, anyone who answers support phone calls gets this from time to time. And I suspect that most of us in the tech industry have also gathered a few contacts for when we feel the need to deliberately bypass first-tier support.
But I think there's a difference between sending a polite reminder of help desk policy (with a CC to the boss as reinforcement) and calling the person's supervisor and chewing them out.
Sure, or drive to the Eastern Shore without paying to cross the Maryland Bay Bridge. But that's not a general tax that everyone pays simply by virtue of being in the state, it's a usage fee for a particular resource (tollways and bridges.)
Exactly. There's no reason at all for MS to sabotage their own web pages.
This is just a simple mistake. Opera 7 was only released last Thursday, after all. It's quite likely that someone screwed up the CSS (by editing the wrong value, for example) and simply forgot to test it again after making the change. It happens.
You're misunderstanding the original purpose of sales taxes. The state provides certain physical resources to the public which cost money for that state to maintain. In the course of doing business the retailer makes use of these resources. The tax on sales was intended as a means for businesses and their customers to recompense the state for that portion of the resources that were used for their own benefit, and in so doing ensure that the services still meet the needs of the general public that pays for them with their own state taxes. That's what state governments are for, after all.
Using that original justification it does not make sense to tax a customer of Amazon.com, for example, for a sale in Iowa if they have no physical presence in Iowa. Why should the state benefit from a sale that they had no active role in facilitiating, and which has no cost for the state of Iowa or its citizens? It makes no more sense than forcing a resident of one state to pay state taxes in some other state where they don't live, just because they happened to drive through one day.
Taxes aren't supposed to be government tribute or a means for a locality to grab some extra funding by whatever means they think they can get away with. They're supposed to be coupled to actual expenditures, not whatever the captive market will bear. I realize that's seldom the case, but that's a problem, and not a desirable thing that we should perpetuate out of bad habit.
Retnal scans, for example, could be used to filter out suspects by race (based on eye color), or provide insight into the quality of someone's vision.
What information will that have given you that you couldn't have gathered by simply looking at the person's photo? Or examining the vision restriction codes on their driver's license? Or checking for purchases to optometrists?
While this may seem trivial, this type of information, especially medical information, is _supposed_ to be protected by the Constitution..
The Consitution states that you have a right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. It doesn't say that no one is allowed to look at you, watch your movements in public places, or collect publically available information about you. Those may or may not be good practices, but they are not explictly forbidden by the Consitution.
Look, there are lots and lots of good reasons why biometrics should not be used for identification purposes. (The difficulty of revoking a corrupted or false identifier, for example.) You're really stretching to make retinal scans into a medical privacy issue.
Maybe it was worse earlier, but right now it sounds to me like the CNN and MSNBC coorespondents and experts are dismissing sabotage and terrorist attacks as quickly as they come up.
When anything blows up you've always got to consider the possibility that it wasn't an accident. In this case the possibility is vanishingly small and there's no further reason to consider it. Raising the issue is irresponsiuble, but so is refusing to address the questions that we all know some people are asking.
Well sure, the worldwide standard of living goes up, but that means that the Western standard of living goes down. Take a look at how much the average American consumes (in terms of food, natural resources, etc) and pollutes. Can you imagine if every citizen of India and China did the same?
No, it's not a zero-sum game. Americans may consume more, relatively speaking, but the American economy and the products of American agriculture, science, and industry also contribute far more to the rest of the world than those of either China or India, to use your examples. And they're also far less polluting and far more efficient than their Chinese or Indian counterparts.
First, the graduate school has this policy that any graduate student must hold a 3.0 GPA at all times. Since our department pays for the students' tuitions, we represent an investment for them. So, unless there is a reason to give out a C (like an obviously sub-par student), it is foolish to give out those low grades since it ends up being a waste of money for the department. They've put money into each of us, so why should they disqualify us by holding the "average student = C" mantra over us? It makes no sense because of that silly graduate school 3.0 GPA policy.
How is the source of the money for your tution related to the grade you earn?
That doesn't mean that C's aren't given out. But they're all about sending messages to the student...
As my grandpappy used to say, if you want to send a message, use Western Union. If a student is doing poor work then a professor has many means of conveying their concerns. Grades are not a private means of coded communication between the professor and the student, they're a matter of academic record indended to indicate a student's competence and ability....It's just shifting everything up to make sure that any money spent on students isn't wasted.
It sounds more like gaming the system to produce a desired result. Yeah, I understand why it's being done, but it's an ugly kludge that decouples the results from reality. Whenever an insitution bends rules to accomodate other rules that they (in the collective sense) created then it makes me worry.
If that GPA rule is truly a poor indicator of the student's progress or qualifications (and it probably is) then they should damn well change the rule and replace it with something better, not manipulate the GPA to satisfy the faulty requirements.
Hear it from the players players themselves [c2.com].
A brief excerpt:
I think this is almost always the case if you have a OnsiteCustomer, since the GoldOwner usually cannot be full time on site. ScrumMethodology tries to balance this by having the GoldOwner in the DemoAfterSprint meeting (roughly equivalent to XP's IterationPlanning).
Ack. Whatever its merits as a development technique, XP has clearly suceeded in generating a remarkably high concentration of silly buzzwords.
I sell a lot of junk on Half and eBay and though I have a 240something rating, there are some buyers who simply will not bid if you have a single negative rating. I can certainly understand that, and I may or may not take the time to dig down as to why negative points were received. I don't blame the idiot for giving me the negative point -- I blame eBay for not employing common sense in removing it.
Yeah, if there's ever a legit case for removing a feedback comment then you've described it.
Don't take it so seriously, though. I'm sure it's damned annoying, but cranky customers are hardly exclusive to online selling. Anyone who's used eBay for any length of time knows that there are stupid and irrational bidders (and sellers) out there who leave stupid and irrational feedback. I'm very careful, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy from someone with the positive feedback stats you descibe.
Besides, you knew eBay's feedback policies when you decided to sell your stuff there, and it sounds like you've had a fairly profitable relationship thus far.
No, it is flamebait. It's a cowardly pseudo-accusation without any evidence at all to back it up.
Why is it a conflict of interest for a public official to publish their memoirs? And if you're going to publish your memoirs, you pretty much have to work with a publisher to do it. Shocking! Are you suggesting that all of the publishers who made bids were complicit in the plot, or was HarperCollins just feeling generous?
Writing memoirs is hardly an unusual practice, and given Thomas' controversial past and relatively high profile among Supreme Court justices it's not surprising that his memoirs were attractive enough to publishers to warrant a bidding war.
Without copyright, people would still write music and songs. And without patents, for other market-led reasons, people will still create and improve designs. Can you imagine that?
I don't think any of us have trouble imagining that. You, however, appear to misunderstand the proper purpose of the patent system, as stated in the sentence before the one you chose to quote.
As has already been explained about eight billion times already, a patent requires that the patent holder make their information public. They have to explain exactly what they do and how they do it, and anyone in the world with the proper knowledge can see the document and understand what's going on.
In return for giving up this otherwise proprietary knowledge, the company is granted a temporary monopoly on whatever it is they've patented. This gives them a chance to make some money off their invention, which seems only fair since they're telling us how to do it, too. Once this time is up, anyone can make use of the same techniques.
The inventor benefits because they get recognition for their work. The company benefits because they have a head start on the competition. The industry benefits because the pool of knowledge is increased for everyone. And the general public benefits not only from this same knowledge (you can look at patents too, remember) but also because of the useful things that are created based on that knowledge. That's why patents are a good thing.
Without copyright, people would still write music and songs. And without patents, for other market-led reasons, people will still create and improve designs. Can you imagine that?
This wins the ass-backward award for today. Did you read the story about what SCO are trying to do WITH patents? Don't you think that creating a $100+ Linux tax because they filed some obvious software tricks first is 'bullying smaller inventors' and keeping them 'out of the market' WITH patents?
Patents are a tool. Like any tool they can be used for both good and bad purposes. If you have incompentent and overwhelmed people in the Patent Office then you're likely to get bad patents. But the answer is to fix the problem, not ignore it because it's difficult.
Yeah, I was thinking that too. And they're usually right. Even a fairly well-maintained computer might need an updated driver, a good defragging, a new cooling fan, or other minor stuff. It's running perfectly because whatever's wrong is not causing a noticiable problem - yet.
Good Software is not about more features! Good Software is about doing it safely, reliably and securely. Good software is about doing it well, not doing more.
The problem with this view is that your unnecessary, "bloat" feature may be my part of my essential workflow. I never use the equation editor, footnotes, or fancy citations in Word, but mathematics instructor, secretary, and lawyer I know use those features it all the time.
OS developers are much too quick to write things off as unnecessary without considering how other people actually use the software. This limits the potential user base to that subset of users that have needs similar to those of the developer. And leaving things out because they're not "done well" is not generally preferable to putting them in and taking the time to do them well.
Writing software is an art form. It is an exercise in restraint and thinking before you do it, not in gluttony or adding more crap to already crappy software.
Commercial software developers and designers have realized that ultimately it's not about them, it's about the users. When you're developing for yourself it's an art. When you're developing for someone else it's a combination of talent, down-to-earth engineering, and intelligent compromise.
It's like building a house. If I want a seperate bathroom for the kids then it's not up to the architect or the contractor to veto my request just because they feel it would be "bloated". They do need to bring their professional knowledge to the task and advise on the best way to accomplish the goal, but rejecting it out of hand based on personal preferences is disrespectful and counterproductive.
I think that's what frustrates me most about this problem. Open source development has the potential to be far more responsive and interactive than closed source development has ever been, but closed minded attitudes and the lack of design experience are preventing that potential from being realized.
This kind of behavior should definitely be considered a "chilling effect".
Huh? Why? The convenience store down the street has security cameras. If there's a crime committed then the police will see the video. If the camera also happens to catch me browsing through the dirty magazines then I might be embarrased. Therefore the police shouldn't be able to watch security videos, right?
If it is an ongoing investigation, what information would be gleaned from those logs that would possibly be helpful to them? That the person in question reads cryptome?
Perhaps we should find out the answers to those questions before we go making random unsupportable accusations against people we know nothing about. Apparently the people who do know these things thought there was a good enough reason to issue the subpoena. Perhaps they're wrong, or perhaps they're overestimating how useful the log file might be, but I don't think it's a valid assumption to assume they're all running dog fascist pigs just because they asked Cryptome for some information.
I'm not a lawyer either, but if they could prove that you had recieved the subpoena before the logs were destroyed, and that you knew your inaction would result in their destruction, then I think you'd be in trouble. Destruction of evidence is nothing to sneeze at.
It's really the same thing as shipping boxes of files down to the shredder and then "forgetting" to tell the employee operating the machine that they shouldn't destroy those documents.
Because the WTC towers weren't monuments to anything. They were big office buildings with a prominent place in the city.
Now, however, whatever takes its place will, indeed, need to serve as a monument.
BTW, there were quite a few people who suggested rebuilding the towers to the original specs. The people who owned the propery and the city didn't feel that was the best course of action.
Slashdot Mirror
American Express and VISA already allow you to generate a single-use number. It's only good for a single transaction at a single point in time.
But a per-transaction scheme can't, by definition, handle recurring payments.
You didn't read the article, did you? Or maybe you're joking.
What the article so painstakingly describes is a democratic structure. People making individual decisions based on their own preferences, knowledge, and best judgement is the very definition of a democratic structure.
What you are describing, in contrast, is a system with the authority to monitor everyone's decisions and force certain people to make certain decisions. All while punishing those who made decisions that resulted in their success simply because everyone else did not enjoy similar success. At that point you've already decided for everyone else what is "fair" and what decisions are "right".
The sooner people realize this, the sooner we will have implemented a just society.
If by "just" you mean "totalitarian", then I guess you're right.
Ignorance of sex is far worse than exposure to it. You are just forcing your child to learn about it from someone else in an uncontrolled setting.
Huh? A child browsing the Internet with no supervision, possibly with adults all around them browsing unrestricted though pornography, is about as "uncontrolled" a setting as you're likely to find. It's ultimately up to a parent to choose the place and time to introduce the proverbial birds and bees with her child, not accidental encounters with random people in public places.
Damn it. Look. Believe it or not, there are actually parents out there that don't mind their children looking at naked people. I know that sounds amazing, but it is quite true. What gives you the right to enforce your misguided sense of morality on them?
Nothing, but nor do you have the right to enforce your particular brand of child-rearing with someone elses' children. The possibility that your particular interpretation of what's better for children may happen to be different than mine does not automatically make yours the default for everyone's children.
The solution seems pretty simple to me. A set of computers in a children's area of the library should be judiciously filtered. Computers in the adult section of the library should not be filtered.
The password idea is actually a pretty good one. And parents who wish to give unrestricted access to their own children should always be free to do so, in writing. Just like when they get a library card for their kid right now.
You're probably right. But there other other hazardous chemicals on board that have nothing to do with the fuel system. Depending on the type of debris, the size of the chunks that survived (still unclear even now), and the type of chemicals it does seem possible that there'd be residue of these chemicals on some surviving chunks of the fuselage.
There are also pyrotechnic bolts and fastners that may not have exploded by themselves on the way down, but which could go off if mishandled.
For more on this topic and see section IV, part 3 of the excellent sci.space Columbia Loss FAQ:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html
No, the shuttle doesn't use an RTG, and it wasn't carrying any other kind of radioactive cargo. The destruction of an RTG is also very, very unlikely to release any radioactive dust or debris, even after re-entry.
More info on RTGs from NASA:
http://spacepwr.jpl.nasa.gov/rtgs.htm
I doubt that caller was unsuspecting if they had that many tickets logged. I get this from time to time where I work. I ALWAYS cc their manager and copy in the procedures for contacting the help desk. It makes a difference.
Sure, anyone who answers support phone calls gets this from time to time. And I suspect that most of us in the tech industry have also gathered a few contacts for when we feel the need to deliberately bypass first-tier support.
But I think there's a difference between sending a polite reminder of help desk policy (with a CC to the boss as reinforcement) and calling the person's supervisor and chewing them out.
Sure, or drive to the Eastern Shore without paying to cross the Maryland Bay Bridge. But that's not a general tax that everyone pays simply by virtue of being in the state, it's a usage fee for a particular resource (tollways and bridges.)
Exactly. There's no reason at all for MS to sabotage their own web pages.
This is just a simple mistake. Opera 7 was only released last Thursday, after all. It's quite likely that someone screwed up the CSS (by editing the wrong value, for example) and simply forgot to test it again after making the change. It happens.
You're misunderstanding the original purpose of sales taxes. The state provides certain physical resources to the public which cost money for that state to maintain. In the course of doing business the retailer makes use of these resources. The tax on sales was intended as a means for businesses and their customers to recompense the state for that portion of the resources that were used for their own benefit, and in so doing ensure that the services still meet the needs of the general public that pays for them with their own state taxes. That's what state governments are for, after all.
Using that original justification it does not make sense to tax a customer of Amazon.com, for example, for a sale in Iowa if they have no physical presence in Iowa. Why should the state benefit from a sale that they had no active role in facilitiating, and which has no cost for the state of Iowa or its citizens? It makes no more sense than forcing a resident of one state to pay state taxes in some other state where they don't live, just because they happened to drive through one day.
Taxes aren't supposed to be government tribute or a means for a locality to grab some extra funding by whatever means they think they can get away with. They're supposed to be coupled to actual expenditures, not whatever the captive market will bear. I realize that's seldom the case, but that's a problem, and not a desirable thing that we should perpetuate out of bad habit.
Wow, sounds like you do need a change. I suspect you'll soon be reminded that people are the same all over.
I do hope you're more patient and friendly with your students than you were with that unsuspecting caller.
Retnal scans, for example, could be used to filter out suspects by race (based on eye color), or provide insight into the quality of someone's vision.
..
What information will that have given you that you couldn't have gathered by simply looking at the person's photo? Or examining the vision restriction codes on their driver's license? Or checking for purchases to optometrists?
While this may seem trivial, this type of information, especially medical information, is _supposed_ to be protected by the Constitution
The Consitution states that you have a right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. It doesn't say that no one is allowed to look at you, watch your movements in public places, or collect publically available information about you. Those may or may not be good practices, but they are not explictly forbidden by the Consitution.
Look, there are lots and lots of good reasons why biometrics should not be used for identification purposes. (The difficulty of revoking a corrupted or false identifier, for example.) You're really stretching to make retinal scans into a medical privacy issue.
Maybe it was worse earlier, but right now it sounds to me like the CNN and MSNBC coorespondents and experts are dismissing sabotage and terrorist attacks as quickly as they come up.
When anything blows up you've always got to consider the possibility that it wasn't an accident. In this case the possibility is vanishingly small and there's no further reason to consider it. Raising the issue is irresponsiuble, but so is refusing to address the questions that we all know some people are asking.
Hmmm... yah. Can't be. Those inumerable people against globalisation must all be out of their minds.
No, they're simply naive and easily manipulated.
Well sure, the worldwide standard of living goes up, but that means that the Western standard of living goes down. Take a look at how much the average American consumes (in terms of food, natural resources, etc) and pollutes. Can you imagine if every citizen of India and China did the same?
No, it's not a zero-sum game. Americans may consume more, relatively speaking, but the American economy and the products of American agriculture, science, and industry also contribute far more to the rest of the world than those of either China or India, to use your examples. And they're also far less polluting and far more efficient than their Chinese or Indian counterparts.
First, the graduate school has this policy that any graduate student must hold a 3.0 GPA at all times. Since our department pays for the students' tuitions, we represent an investment for them. So, unless there is a reason to give out a C (like an obviously sub-par student), it is foolish to give out those low grades since it ends up being a waste of money for the department. They've put money into each of us, so why should they disqualify us by holding the "average student = C" mantra over us? It makes no sense because of that silly graduate school 3.0 GPA policy.
...It's just shifting everything up to make sure that any money spent on students isn't wasted.
How is the source of the money for your tution related to the grade you earn?
That doesn't mean that C's aren't given out. But they're all about sending messages to the student...
As my grandpappy used to say, if you want to send a message, use Western Union. If a student is doing poor work then a professor has many means of conveying their concerns. Grades are not a private means of coded communication between the professor and the student, they're a matter of academic record indended to indicate a student's competence and ability.
It sounds more like gaming the system to produce a desired result. Yeah, I understand why it's being done, but it's an ugly kludge that decouples the results from reality. Whenever an insitution bends rules to accomodate other rules that they (in the collective sense) created then it makes me worry.
If that GPA rule is truly a poor indicator of the student's progress or qualifications (and it probably is) then they should damn well change the rule and replace it with something better, not manipulate the GPA to satisfy the faulty requirements.
A brief excerpt:
Ack. Whatever its merits as a development technique, XP has clearly suceeded in generating a remarkably high concentration of silly buzzwords.
Yeah, if there's ever a legit case for removing a feedback comment then you've described it.
Don't take it so seriously, though. I'm sure it's damned annoying, but cranky customers are hardly exclusive to online selling. Anyone who's used eBay for any length of time knows that there are stupid and irrational bidders (and sellers) out there who leave stupid and irrational feedback. I'm very careful, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy from someone with the positive feedback stats you descibe.
Besides, you knew eBay's feedback policies when you decided to sell your stuff there, and it sounds like you've had a fairly profitable relationship thus far.
Nevermind, the satellite just picked up someone playing Cosmic Ark.
No, it is flamebait. It's a cowardly pseudo-accusation without any evidence at all to back it up.
Why is it a conflict of interest for a public official to publish their memoirs? And if you're going to publish your memoirs, you pretty much have to work with a publisher to do it. Shocking! Are you suggesting that all of the publishers who made bids were complicit in the plot, or was HarperCollins just feeling generous?
Writing memoirs is hardly an unusual practice, and given Thomas' controversial past and relatively high profile among Supreme Court justices it's not surprising that his memoirs were attractive enough to publishers to warrant a bidding war.
Without copyright, people would still write music and songs. And without patents, for other market-led reasons, people will still create and improve designs. Can you imagine that?
I don't think any of us have trouble imagining that. You, however, appear to misunderstand the proper purpose of the patent system, as stated in the sentence before the one you chose to quote.
As has already been explained about eight billion times already, a patent requires that the patent holder make their information public. They have to explain exactly what they do and how they do it, and anyone in the world with the proper knowledge can see the document and understand what's going on.
In return for giving up this otherwise proprietary knowledge, the company is granted a temporary monopoly on whatever it is they've patented. This gives them a chance to make some money off their invention, which seems only fair since they're telling us how to do it, too. Once this time is up, anyone can make use of the same techniques.
The inventor benefits because they get recognition for their work. The company benefits because they have a head start on the competition. The industry benefits because the pool of knowledge is increased for everyone. And the general public benefits not only from this same knowledge (you can look at patents too, remember) but also because of the useful things that are created based on that knowledge. That's why patents are a good thing.
Without copyright, people would still write music and songs. And without patents, for other market-led reasons, people will still create and improve designs. Can you imagine that?
This wins the ass-backward award for today. Did you read the story about what SCO are trying to do WITH patents? Don't you think that creating a $100+ Linux tax because they filed some obvious software tricks first is 'bullying smaller inventors' and keeping them 'out of the market' WITH patents?
Patents are a tool. Like any tool they can be used for both good and bad purposes. If you have incompentent and overwhelmed people in the Patent Office then you're likely to get bad patents. But the answer is to fix the problem, not ignore it because it's difficult.
Yeah, I was thinking that too. And they're usually right. Even a fairly well-maintained computer might need an updated driver, a good defragging, a new cooling fan, or other minor stuff. It's running perfectly because whatever's wrong is not causing a noticiable problem - yet.
Good Software is not about more features! Good Software is about doing it safely, reliably and securely. Good software is about doing it well, not doing more.
The problem with this view is that your unnecessary, "bloat" feature may be my part of my essential workflow. I never use the equation editor, footnotes, or fancy citations in Word, but mathematics instructor, secretary, and lawyer I know use those features it all the time.
OS developers are much too quick to write things off as unnecessary without considering how other people actually use the software. This limits the potential user base to that subset of users that have needs similar to those of the developer. And leaving things out because they're not "done well" is not generally preferable to putting them in and taking the time to do them well.
Writing software is an art form. It is an exercise in restraint and thinking before you do it, not in gluttony or adding more crap to already crappy software.
Commercial software developers and designers have realized that ultimately it's not about them, it's about the users. When you're developing for yourself it's an art. When you're developing for someone else it's a combination of talent, down-to-earth engineering, and intelligent compromise.
It's like building a house. If I want a seperate bathroom for the kids then it's not up to the architect or the contractor to veto my request just because they feel it would be "bloated". They do need to bring their professional knowledge to the task and advise on the best way to accomplish the goal, but rejecting it out of hand based on personal preferences is disrespectful and counterproductive.
I think that's what frustrates me most about this problem. Open source development has the potential to be far more responsive and interactive than closed source development has ever been, but closed minded attitudes and the lack of design experience are preventing that potential from being realized.
This kind of behavior should definitely be considered a "chilling effect".
Huh? Why? The convenience store down the street has security cameras. If there's a crime committed then the police will see the video. If the camera also happens to catch me browsing through the dirty magazines then I might be embarrased. Therefore the police shouldn't be able to watch security videos, right?
If it is an ongoing investigation, what information would be gleaned from those logs that would possibly be helpful to them? That the person in question reads cryptome?
Perhaps we should find out the answers to those questions before we go making random unsupportable accusations against people we know nothing about. Apparently the people who do know these things thought there was a good enough reason to issue the subpoena. Perhaps they're wrong, or perhaps they're overestimating how useful the log file might be, but I don't think it's a valid assumption to assume they're all running dog fascist pigs just because they asked Cryptome for some information.
I'm not a lawyer either, but if they could prove that you had recieved the subpoena before the logs were destroyed, and that you knew your inaction would result in their destruction, then I think you'd be in trouble. Destruction of evidence is nothing to sneeze at.
It's really the same thing as shipping boxes of files down to the shredder and then "forgetting" to tell the employee operating the machine that they shouldn't destroy those documents.
Because the WTC towers weren't monuments to anything. They were big office buildings with a prominent place in the city.
Now, however, whatever takes its place will, indeed, need to serve as a monument.
BTW, there were quite a few people who suggested rebuilding the towers to the original specs. The people who owned the propery and the city didn't feel that was the best course of action.