This is dead long before it even starts. It's retarded. Why in the world would would a cellphone manufacture stick a third-party OS on their phones, tossing whatever work they've already done, with no support whatsoever? I guess Google assumes that manufacturers will build around it, but what's the incentive? This is a Linux hack, and there are already Linux hacks with a longer track record.
I guess I'm one of the few people willing to spend more money on games, IF those games are large, fun, and expansive. Take, for example, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. A huge game with lots of content, easily worth it's $60 price tag. I personally would have split the game up into 2 parts, with a cliffhanger in the middle, making the total $120. I think this would have been more than fair.
Or MMORPGs, which cost $20 a month. Lots of people paying for those. Likewise, I could easily see an FPS like Battlefield 2 charging a monthly fee IF there was new content on regular basis.
What this guy is talking about amounts to abandoning the "hardcore" in favor of more casual gaming, and I think that's a serious mistake in the long run. Consoles can't compete on "free", and that's where the casual market is going.
individual right to keep and bear arms Most 2nd Amendment advocates believe that the purpose of this amendment was to ensure that the public was adequately armed such that they could successfully mount an armed campaign against the government. Many at the Constitutional convention opposed a standing army for this very reason. Do you believe that either Bush (or Clinton) did anything to make it easier to mount an armed rebellion against the federal government? I'd argue no. Recent "domestic terror" legislation (Clinton did some of this too) has made being a dissident, especially an armed dissident, much harder in the United States.
We right wingers are just a bunch of rednecks that would just as soon not have a federal government at all. Right-wingers are confused. While many of them would like to see a smaller federal government, less taxes, less regulation on their business affairs, etc. their politicians and policymakers aren't interested in these things at all. They don't want to reduce the size of the federal government in general, just the parts they don't like. The parts that don't provide them a revenue stream through sweetheart deals. The BEST sweetheart government deals are in defense, because you can hide most of your fraud and abuse under the veil of "TOP SECRET". Right-wingers have bought into a "Fortress America" mentality, where Americans are good people doing good in the world, but everybody else is basically evil or indifferent. Based on this reasoning we "need" an extremely extensive defense and intelligence infrastructure.
You don't install apps in/home (usually, I have done it on occasion) and I never suggested you did. You claimed that you could copy the/home directory to a separate partition, completely wipe out the rest of the system, reinstall from scratch, and then copy over/home and the system will work EXACTLY as it did before with all applications and settings intact. I don't know how this is possible if you're not sticking all your apps in/home and going crazy with symlinks and scripting to make it all work. It certainly *IS* possible. I've run into a number of unix systems built this way. It eats up shitloads of disc space.
A profile is not an app. Linux users don't HAVE profiles. They have a home directory. They have login scripts. They have config files. None of this is centralized. User-specific config files are scattered ALL OVER. Many apps don't HAVE a user-specific config file, they just add entries to a central file.
There are lots of things Linux does better than Windows. User management isn't one of them.
Granted, that issue could exist in Linux with text-based config files as opposed to a Registry - except that most of those will refer to/home - which, no matter what partition it's on will still refer to the correct location. Except this isn't true. Most config files are not stored in/home. Having pointers to/home doesn't count for shit if you don't have the actual files.
C:\users is not the same as/home in behavior. True, which is why usually "C:" is defined with the "%systemroot%" variable. "%systemroot%\users" is the same as "C:\users" or "X:\users" depending on what the root drive is. You could also just refer to the relative path like so ".\users". You can also mount partitions as folders, but I'm not sure that works with the "special" folders like "users".
Not to sound like a Star Trek plot, but we're after a definition for the purposes of ethics. If, for example, one were to change scientific definitions such that someone with a genetic defect was not considered human, ethically, we would still consider that person a human, and treat them as such. Ethics are arbitrary (arguing about the existence of objective morality is beyond the scope of this discussion), scientific definitions are not. Scientific definitions aren't "changed" in the manner you describe for exactly that reason. Someone with any genetic defect is still considered human because we define human based on a human genotype. If it's genetically human, it's human.
None of this is really relavent to the question at hand. This is a LEGAL issue, not a moral or scientific one. It's the legal definition of human that matters, and that definition is arbitrary. I don't think it's a wise idea to legally define a fetus a human, even for a special case, as it opens to door to lots of other legal issues. Ex. Is someone a U.S. citizen of they were conceived in the United States? Is imprisoning a pregnant woman a violation of the fetus' due process rights? Should harm to a fetus be handled independently by criminal courts?
Abortion laws don't address any of these questions because they do not address whether or not the fetus is human. They put doctors in jail for performing specific procedures. It is the PROCEDURE that is illegal, the "humanness" of the fetus is not discussed. These are the laws that are being pursued. Arguments about whether or not a fetus is human or whether or not the murder statute should be used are red herrings because that is not the policy being pursued.
For the purposes of determining whether or not aborting a pregnancy is killing a human being, science doesn't really apply, just as it wouldn't apply in the scenario I just mentioned. Aborting a pregnancy is clearly ending the life of the fetus, which is clearly human, so abortion is clearly "killing a human".
As I said before, this is a legal issue. The reason why American society pays so much attention to science when making laws is because most Americans realize that scientific knowledge is basically objective, and therefore forms a good foundation of facts which informs lawmakers how their laws will affect the real world. The alternative is law based on arbitrary morality, for example , Rabbinical law. In that case, it's a set of ancient documents that provide the common basis.
Huh? How do you think an electronic tap works. In order to implement the tap you have to have the equipment to do it. As you say, it takes about 2 minutes for the phone company employee to install the tap. They do that by issuing a couple of commands to their electronic phone switch. The phone companies are required, by law, to provide tapping equipment to the government. These traps are set up on a per-connection basis. The government has to provide a warrant which indicates specifically which lines/IPs are to be tapped. This is how it worked before Bush's surveillance program(s).
What do you think the equipment that Klein installed does? Klein didn't install the actual boxes. The boxes that were installed work as I described in earlier posts. They siphon ALL traffic going through them looking for information. No warrants or information about suspects is provided to the carrier.
If both endpoints are domestic they have the ability to get a warrant for a floating wiretap. That means that when Al Foobari comes into the country law enforcement can get a warrant tied to Al Foobari, not to specific phones that Al Foobari uses. So if our suspected terrorist is seen entering a private residence, that residence's phone is immediately monitored. If he's seen using a pay phone, that pay phone is immediately monitored. If he uses the phone at a local coffee shop, it's monitored. In theory, yes. In practice, no. Logistically, this is difficult to make work because this does not translate to unlimited wiretapping authority. The carriers can, and do, ask for some sort of evidence that Al Foobari is in X house or has an association with X number. Al Foobari goes into a friend's house to make a phone call, in that time the agent has to know he's going in, contact the phone company, arrange the trap, and hope this is all done by the time he makes the call. And then remove the trap when he leaves. This is a PITA.
It would be much easier for the agents if they blanket authority and just "add" associates of Al Foobari to the wiretapping pool. Foobari might go to Bob's house, so you wiretap Bob. Even better, you can wiretap everyone Al Foobari calls, and then everyone THEY call, etc. to create new suspect lists, etc. This is one of the surveillance powers the President granted the FBI, NSA, etc. in his illegal wiretapping program. This is a power that the FBI, NSA, etc. has specifically requested more than once and that Congress has denied them.
I honestly don't know whether they are doing this or not. The capabilities are there, but it's both illegal and would require cooperation from the carriers.
Separate from that, the installation of equipment capable of providing the floating wiretap service has been taken to mean that the administration is monitoring all domestic phone calls. Wrong. The equipment they were installing was NOT part of floating wiretaps, which requires cooperation with the phone providers as described above. In fact, the NSA/FBI does not normally install or monitor such equipment, which has been in place for many years. The recently installed boxes at AT&T etc. are clearly not for floating wiretaps. Just knowing how they are wired (and Stein knew that) will tell you they're wired "inline" to intercept all traffic.
So some people put these together and claim that the Bush administration is monitoring all domestic phone calls without a warrant. Because they are. The equipment they are installing has that sole purpose. They can't just redesign it on a whim. Of course, you'll have to take my word for that. However, it's the evidence (based on the fact that it's inline mirroring the traffic) that makes it certain this is what they're doing.
I should also point out that this doesn't work. There are many easy ways to evade this kind of surveillance that I'm sure "the terrorists" are using. The drug dealers (who are the targets of 95% of this surveillance) figured them out a long time ago.
Bullshit! No matter where you draw the line of where we consider life to begin, it's an arbitrary line.... It's not science. No, it is science. The scientific definition of "alive" is pretty clear. We define "alive" and we see if it meets that definition. Adult humans are "alive". Insects are "alive". Bacteria are "alive". Viruses are NOT "alive". A zygote is clearly "alive".
What you're talking about is not really "life", but "soul". You're asking the classic Christian medieval question of: "At what point during gestation does the soul enter the body?" The classic answer to this is at "quickening", when the fetus begins to kick. Recent theologians have picked conception, or shortly thereafter. This is not based on any theology whatsoever, but was picked to deny the possibility of family planning.
Obviously science does not address the issue of the soul, but the Christian argument of the soul entering the body after conception makes no sense at all to me. Based on what we know of conception, it seems more reasonable to assume that both the egg and the sperm contain "half-souls" that are combined to create a "full soul". I don't think Christians like the implications of this reasoning.
It happens quite often where someone bellyaches about "I can't do x in Windows without the GUI" or some such thing and quickly gets a reply from a seasoned Windows admin to just open up a command prompt and type some-such arcane command which is undocumented, or buried deep within the bowels of the MSDN knowledgebase beast. Are you going to seriously argue that Linux is generally better documented than Windows? Are you high? Linux is full of obscure commands with even more obscure switches and options. Many systems have missing man pages, etc.
GUIs make a very poor interface for large-scale admin of, say large server farms and clusters. That's an opinion, not a fact. The large number of companies that make graphical cluster management tools tends to argue against this.
Microsoft could've put a more concerted effort into WinFS and Monad and componentised Windows and interoperability tools but it didn't. Um, they did. Windows 2008 Server *IS* highly componentized, the review mentioned this numerous times, and a LOT of effort was put into PowerShell to allow you do do everything from the command line. There is even a "command-line only" mode called "server Core" now. Did you even read the article?
In PowerShell many commands are aliased to their unix equivalents specifically to make it easier for those coming from the unix command line. It's conceptually similar to the old 4DOS, which basically did the same thing. Of course, Powershell has all kinds of crazy scripting features (it supports something like 5 languages natively, and you can plugin lots more).
No, the answer is to get people to not do those wrong things as best we can. A responsible parent who was at risk of bringing forth a child with a disability would abstain from having children, perhaps, but once the deed is done, I am of the opinion that killing them is absolutely not an option, no matter when it's done. Not as an abortion, not as infanticide, never. I think you're entitled to your opinion. I think it's irresponsible, but I think you should be allowed to carry a fetus with serious birth defects to term if you desire. That's why my side of the debate is called "pro-choice".
I admit it, I have precious little faith in the human race. Although I know many nice, upstanding individuals, I think that as a whole, we're pretty damn worthless. I think you've spent too much time in Catholic school. I hold the exact opposite opinion in that I think people are basically good, it's just the bad apples that create issues.
But the whole point of the abortion debate is that abortion critics are of the opinion that abortion is murder. I might be of the opinion that wearing green hats causes your head to explode, but that would be nonsense. Just like the opinion that abortion is murder. People who hold this opinion are simply WRONG and do not understand how human reproduction works.
do we consider, morally at least, an unborn child to be a living person? If so, then there is no extra law required, murder laws already in place will do. That's a contradiction. If "murder laws in place will do" then we must consider an embryo to LEGALLY be a "living person". This has implications I don't think anti-abortion activists fully consider. For example, this opinion bans in-vitro fertilization because it necessarily involves the destruction of embryos. People could be charged with pre-natal assault for smoking in front of a pregnant woman. Pregnant women cannot be deported or imprisoned under any circumstances as that violates the due process rights of unborn. I could continue.
The issue is very specific, and it's legal:
Do we want to put doctors in prison for providing abortion services?
Nobody is seriously talking about imprisoning women for getting abortions, because if the difficulty in prosecution. In practice, we also know that there will be no enforcement against amateurs (non-doctors) providing abortions. So basically we're talking about the selective banning of SAFE abortions for poor women. If that's what you want fine, but don't pretend that the argument is about something it's not.
The only practical way to allow for that is to install equipment capable of tapping any domestic phone conversation. Totally, absolutely, and completely, wrong. They can do what they did before. Get a warrant, and then call the phone company and have them install an electronic tap. Takes about 24 hours to get the warrant and about 2 minutes for the phone company employee to install the tap (it's basically just a bit of typing at the keyboard).
However, I do not have the right to develop a plot to kill people. I disagree. The First Amendment guarantees the right to think about doing whatever the hell you want. I can plan to nuke the Pentagon all day. It's actually DOING things that are crimes. I strongly disagree with the concept of "conspiracy" and thought crime.
The closest amendment to that is the fourth amendment. But that seems to cover only unreasonable search and seizure of items in my home or on my person. Telecommunications is an entirely different story.... I hardly consider the telephone system to be a private means of communication. To do so flies totally in the face of physical reality. Incorrect. Surveillance is clearly a "search". Postal mail is considered private, the police cannot open your postal mail without a warrant. This clearly flies in the face of "physical reality". They could certainly just go your your postal box and take it. However we have a LEGAL restraint upon their behavior. Telecommunications, internet, etc. are no different conceptually. More means of communication makes is easier from criminals to evade surveillance, but that's just the cost of life in the modern world. I'd like to see you make a serious case that police are becoming LESS effective in the modern world at catching criminals.
One would hope since we're not doing anything illegal and since tapping the phone of every person in the U.S. would be impossible then we have nothing to fear. That's a naive hope. I am far more concerned about the threat of widespread government surveillance than I am of Jihadis. I also remember back when the far better funded and equipped Commies were going to "get us all" and somehow that never materialized. I fail to see why it is necessary to sacrifice far more civil liberties, and YES being tapped without a warrant violates your civil liberties, to defend against the far smaller and weaker threat of the Jihadis. We also don't have to speculate about this power being abused. It *IS* being abused. And similar powers have been abused by presidents in the past (Nixon).
When Mohammed Al Foobari comes into the U.S. from Saudi Arabia you can bet that any phone call he makes or receives is recorded. You really want to stop that? If Mohammed Al Foobari actually did something, it should be easy for the government to get a warrant from the FISA court. If he didn't do anything, he shouldn't be tapped. This strikes me as common sense.
Most of the headend gear handles this all for them, and they go with whatever the defaults are - which are (generally) encrypt everything. Their tiering systems wouldn't work very well if they didn't - they'd have to just let anyone with a QAM tuner get a bunch of stuff. They don't want to do that. This is what I was talking about in my earlier post. Initially, most cable providers used the "default" which was to encrypt anything because, basically, that's how the boxes shipped. They then began to pare this down because of performance problems. In some markets they've eliminated the encryption on everything but premium because they've eliminated the tiering altogether. Your choices are:
1. Analog basic cable. 2. All digital commercial, non-premium channels. 3. All digital commercial, non-premium channels + digital premium channels.
To be on the ACLU's side on this one you have to first believe that the government listening in on phone calls to or from overseas endpoints or foreign suspected terrorists in the U.S. is a civil liberties issue. I don't happen to believe it is. If I start talking up my plans for crashing planes into the world trade center over the phone with my buddy from Uzbekistan, I really hope I get caught.... The EFF is in on this one too and has really trumpeted the testimony of a former AT&T engineer about installing equipment to do wiretaps at the exchanges. Their claim is that it could be used to spy on domestic calls between two American citizens, not that it has been. The exact details of the wiretapping program aren't publicly disclosed. This doesn't mean they aren't well known. People in the security industry know what is going on and how it works, and they're pretty pissed.
You might remember a system a while back called "Carnivore". Carnivore was an email surveillance system integrated into a box that sits "inline" between the mail servers and the routes out to the internet. It does deep inspection on the SMTP transfers (ALL the SMTP transfers) going through the box and searches them for keywords, specific to/from addresses, specific languages, etc. and the n forwards the headers and/or bodies of the "interesting" messages to the NSA. In case it isn't clear, Carnivore would have scanned every single email passing through the major American internet hubs regardless of who sent it or it's nation of origin. Carnivore was specifically banned by Congress, making it a felony to implement it in any way.
Currently, Carnivore is in service at all of the major American internet hubs, including Quest. It is only PART of the Bush's new surveillance programs, the part I am most familiar with. It is my understanding that a similar system is in place for international calls. ALL international calls are scanned. Work is ongoing on a domestic system than does the same thing, and a system for cellphone traffic. The carriers have quietly been fighting this (due to the expense, mainly).
This guy (and I wish I could think of his name) ought to be tried for treason for revealing this, not trumpeted as a hero. Mark Klein, and he *IS* a national hero. The President is in direct violation of federal law. There is no one iota of doubt about this.
My civil liberties are not affected if every phone call I make is listened to personally by an FBI agent. And man, I gotta tell you, I would hate to have that guy's job. You don't seem to know what civil liberties are. If the government who can send people to your house to kill you is listening to everything you say over the phone, you don't honestly believe that has a chilling affect on any dissent against that government? This is how it worked in Soviet Russia. This is the very essence of totalitarianism, the inability to speak freely.
I don't discuss anything illegal on the phone nor do I discuss information of a sensitive nature. So you don't do any phone or internet banking, or book medical appointments on the phone or internet? You're a lot more paranoid than most people. I'd also argue that you have no idea what is actually illegal.
I assume anyone could be listening in, and the government would be the least of my worries. Who else do you think is going to send a death squad to your house for saying something they didn't like?
If we just consider the immediate situation, then the answer is obviously to abort the pregnancy. Since the child is guaranteed to die no matter what, it would be best for him to die in the least painful way possible. The procedure that would allow this was banned nationally, in any case, using the exact same argument you are making.
How long would it be before some parent wanted to kill their child with Down's Syndrome, because his/her life would be full of suffering and hardship as a result of the disease? Unfortunately, this happens all the time, that's why we need abortion. A mother bears a child with Down's Syndrome and the kills them or tosses them in the trash. Fathers abandon the family because they don't want to raise a "retard". Other children beat, torture, and rape them. I've spent a good chunk of my life working with handicapped kids and I wouldn't wish Down's Syndrome on anyone. Most people can't even imagine the hell that many of these kids go through.
Responsible parents get themselves tested to avoid genetic illnesses to begin with, get prenatal testing to determine if their child is developing with significant birth defects, and then abort them if they are. People have to understand that making a child is like making a cake, if it gets screwed up too bad you might have to toss it and restart. You can whine about this being cruel or immoral, but this is how our bodies work. No amount of denial will change it.
I'm extremely leery of starting down that path, because I have very little faith that it won't be carried to extremes, given enough time. "Slippery slope" is a classic fallacy in argumentation. Allowing a D&C on a terminal fetus will not lead to death camps for kids with disabilities.
No it isn't. Saying you want to leave it to the states to decide is a decent way of recognizing that there's such a divided view on an issue, that it should be decided by the state governments, for better granularity. Segregation was a deeply divisive issue, as was interracial marriage and birth control. These were/are moral issues, just like abortion. Some states refused to integrate, allow interracial marriages, or allow birth control until forced to do so by the federal government. Many Americans suffered hardships because of these laws, just as many Americans suffer hardships due to anti-abortion laws. I believe it would have been morally wrong for the federal government to stand by just because some people in some states hated black people and thought birth control would "destroy society".
Let's take another, similar, issue: gay marriage. There is no doubt that gays suffer hardships due to lack of marriage rights. They cannot adopt, speak for their spouses in the event of injury, and it impairs their finances. Why should gays is some states have to live with reduced rights just because some people don't like them?
This is (another) case of a minority trying to inflict their prejudices on the majority. The vast majority of Americans want women to have free access to abortions. The vast majority of Americans believe the current laws to be significantly less restrictive than they really are. The vast majority of Americans want to see abortion harassment groups banned. It is only a vocal minority that continues to push their views on the majority.
And why does it make sense to force women (and especially girls) to cross state lines to get abortions? Whose interest does that serve? "Granularity" would mean allowing individuals to make their own decisions.
a) Explain these arguments that are apparently being used. You made one above. Paraphrased: "The issue is so divisive it should be left to the states." This exact same argument was/is used by those opposed to desegregation, affirmative action, women's rights, birth control, gay rights, obscenity, etc. The point is that the issue isn't really that divisive at all. The pro-life crowd is clearly in the minority.
b) It's not true that the individuals are the same. I abhor segregation, but I equally abhor abortion. I don't know if you were alive during the segregation battles of the 1960s. I was not. But many of the people who lead the anti-abortion movement now were segregationists in the past, Pat Robertson for example. Virtually all anti-abortion activists are religious and social conservatives who, if they were alive during that period, supported segregation, opposed women's rights, interracial marriage, birth control, and strongly oppose gay rights and gay marriage.
Are you seriously suggesting that we get involved in the amazingly slippery slope of aborting pregnancies because of deformities? You're mad if so.... I believe that all pregnancies should be carried to term unless the mother is going to die as a result of the pregnancy. Non-hypothetical scenario, because it HAS happened: We have a fetus that is developing perfectly normally, with one exception: the lungs are developing outside the chest cavity. Surgery cannot correct this. The child cannot survive outside the womb. The fetus WILL survive until birth, whereupon the lungs will be ripped off and the child will die in incredible agony suffocating outside the womb.
What do you do?
In earlier times, this dilemma simply did not exist. There was no ultrasound or x-ray, so the deformity would not be detected until birth, whereupon the child would die painfully. But due to modern medical science, we can detect the deformity, we just can't do correct it.
The child is doomed. But you would insist that the woman be forced to carry the fetus to term (risking HER life and fertility) and then watch as the child dies in agony. Somehow you think this is preferable to a "dilation and extraction", what opponents term "partial birth abortion", in which the fetus is painlessly killed in the womb and then extracted. This is unpleasant, but is it more horrible than having the child die painfully OUTSIDE the womb? And what about the absolute FACT that the D&C is better for the woman's health and fertility?
This is talking about the rights of illegal immigrants. They are not citizens of the United States, so they do not automatically get the rights specifically reserved for citizens of our country. While you may disagree with the proposal, it is not an attack on the liberties set forth by the Constitution. No, it's the rights of the CHILD we're talking about here. The Constitution states that if you are born on United States soil, regardless of your parentage, you are a citizen. What Ron Paul wants to do is make a Constitutional Amendment that denies the CHILD citizenship because their parents committed the crime of illegal immigration. This is functionally equivalent to denying a newborn citizenship because their parents robbed a liquor store.
Your application of rights is also pretty selective. Apparently you think that children have the right to be BORN, they just don't have the right to LIVE anywhere. How is the position that a female refugee (illegal alien) must be forced to give birth in the United States, but then she and her child will be forcibly deported, consistent with "pro-life"?
Ron Paul has stated that he wants to abolish the income tax altogether which would end the redistribution of wealth permanently. Eliminating the federal income tax will not eliminate redistribution of wealth. There will still be federal subsidies and lots of other federal taxes and fees, which disproportionately affect the poor. The Congress and the States will NEVER give up their ability to levy taxes. ALL "flat tax" proposals in he United States require an armed revolution and an entirely new Constitution. Period. If Ron Paul is not advocating armed revolution, he's not advocating flat taxes. He's merely blowing smoke.
Is it really such a terrible position to want to protect the rights of the unborn including the inalienable right of life? This is not what the abortion debate in the United States is about. The abortion debate in the United States is about this simple question:
Should we limit the availability of abortions to poor Americans?
The REAL affect of anti-abortion laws is to make it difficult for poor Americans who either can't afford an abortion (rarely) or can't afford to to travel a great distance to get an abortion (MUCH more common). Anti-abortion laws also lead to more infanticide, deadly illegal abortions, deaths due to complications form pregnancy, and birth defects. It is unclear whether or not anti-abortion laws actually reduce abortions.
Anti-abortion activists are also the single biggest source of domestic terrorism in the United Stares, constantly threating, harassing, bombing, and occasionally murdering abortion providers.
It could be said that he would like to protect the individual liberties of the unborn, but that is beside the point. His position on abortion is that it should not be addressed at the federal level at all, but left to the states to decide. This position is functionally equivalent to "anti-choice".
You might remember something called "segregation". The segregationists argued that they didn't oppose blacks, but that they were simply "pro-white". Or wanted to "maintain the white culture". As time progress, many denied they were segregationists AT ALL, but they were really advocates for "state's rights", because they wanted the states to resolve civil rights issues. This was a smokescreen to dodge civil rights legislation. I should also point out THE EXACT SAME INDIVIDUALS THAT SUPPORTED SEGREGATION ALSO OPPOSE ABORTION RIGHTS, using the exact same arguments.
The exact same process played out for interracial marriage, birth control, adult entertainment, gay rights, etc. Social conservatives opposed them based on religious rhetoric and ethic hatred initially, and then switch to "state's rights" legal claims when the public gets disgusted with their earlier rationales.
It's important to understand why this is a big deal.
Before 2001, only about 25,000 people were on the watch list. And most of those people were convicted of crimes at least vaguely related to terrorism. Many were dead.
The vast majority of the 755,000 people now on the watch list have NOT been convicted of a crime. MOST of them are on the list effectively because of anonymous tips (or tips from "secret" sources). There is no process at all to get on the list, a Homeland Security official simply submits the name with no supporting paperwork. I strongly suspect that NOBODY knows why the vast majority of those on the list were placed on the list. There is no mechanism for getting OFF the list, the assumption when it was created is that it would be limited to convicted terrorists could would stay on the list permanently. Before 2001, many of the people on the list were dead because there was/is no mechanism to remove them.
The HiDef TV market is currently locked into Encrypted QAM in North America and the only way to bypass the "rent/buy box from provider" is to use a cablecard decoder which is very broken and restricted to 'certified' hardware. I can tell you for an absolute fact that the cable providers are willing to certify the Microsoft hardware. CableCARD 2.0 certified tuners are out there, but the cable companies want to certify whole PCs, not individual tuner cards, so they are unlikely to be widely available for sale. Of course, a "360 PVR" would be an entire PC, so it would qualify. This project may never materialize, but I know that MS is already testing the tuners, so that's definitely not the sticking point. The big problem is cost. MS apparently wants to charge between $600-700 for this thing, and I don't think the market will bear that.
There may be some channels broadcasted over the air unencrypted but you can be damn sure that all cable companies will switch to encrypted sooner or later, and at their whim. Most of the cable companies that started out encrypting everything soon stopped because it was stupid. The issue was between "basic" digital cable (CNN and a handful of other channels) and "extended basic" which included basically all the non-premium cable channels. The lion's share of the non-premium channels had to be encrypted so the "basic" people couldn't "steal" them. The solution was to convince cable regulators to let the cable companies eliminate "basic" digital cable altogether (since they weren't making much money off those people anyway). And this is exactly what most of them have done. You can only get analog "basic" cable, and they're going to eliminate that as well.
The cable companies certainly don't WANT to encrypt channels they don't have to because that eats up CPU time on both ends, meaning they have to buy more expensive boxes. Most cable providers now transmit everything but premium channels "in the clear".
Call me back when there are open(non-private-key-encumbered) pervasive standards This will never, ever happen. And personally, I would be against it. I want cable and satellite providers to be able to provide commercial-free channels like HBO, and encryption is necessary for that. The problem here is that there isn't an ENCRYPTION STANDARD. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to MAKE the cable and satellites come up with a reasonable standard, even though it would benefit both of them. They still seem to think they'll make more money licensing and selling proprietary hardware.:-(
Sure, you can find who is DDoS'ing you. You can then call the ISP/hosting company and complain. If they are in the US they will likely as not just tell you to get a court order. Outside the US they will laugh and suggest you bribe them. Either way, it is their customer's right to operate in whatever manner they choose. If they are presented with a valid court order from a court in their jurisdiction, they will quickly and efficiently comply. Otherwise, your complaint will go in the bit bucket. My experience, and the experience of other ISP operators I know, is dramatically different. The DDoS people are "bad" on just about any ISP's network. They generate tons of traffic and complaints, they are doing illegal shit (like stealing CC numbers), and they are extremely likely to defraud YOU with a fake CC number. At the ISP I worked for we booted users the INSTANT we received even ONE significant complaint about them from anyone. The only exception I can think of to this was complaints about hosting porn (which we allowed, the porn people just had to pay more). Just USING IRC could get you booted.
The same is generally true overseas, but overseas language barriers can prevent foreign ISPs from understanding what's going on. The foreign ISP might also be naive and not think it's a serious problem. There ARE a small number of small ISPs in nations like Russia that specifically cater to rogues (like the botnet crowd). These are usually fly-by-night operations, understandable due to the fact their customers are unreliable criminals and that their upstream provider cuts them off as soon as they figure out what they're doing.
Ah hah! Mystery solved. I suspected it was a cheap wanna-be QoS since I'd seen the technique in several cheap wanna-be filters. I should note that I'm just guessing here. But I know the Sandvine boxes are basically Linux servers running filtering tools. The packet spoofing they're doing is considerably cheaper in terms of CPU and IO time than deep packet inspection, so I presume that the Sandvine boxes are cheaper that other QoS solutions that use deep packet inspection.
Basically what the Sandvine does is look to see if a given IP is making too many TCP connections within a given timeframe and if so, starts sending TCP RSTs to both ends of the connections till it gets down to it's threshold. So ANYTHING that uses TCP and makes lots of connections will trigger it. This form of traffic shaping is quite crude.
I disagree with the vast majority of cases they (the ACLU) pursue. Why? Because unlike civilized rational people who attempt to resolve their differences, they immediately bring out the heavy artillery (i.e. the lawyers). This is patently false. Do you REALLY think the ACLU immediately leaps to expensive litigation to resolve civil rights issues, especially give their limited budget? Of course they don't. One thing that makes it seem that way is that most often the ACLU is suing the government, and since the government has UNLIMITED budgets for litigation, they are often very reluctant to negotiate seriously with the ACLU (especially in recent years). Examples would include the warrantless wiretapping program and the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the ACLU had to sue to get ANY information AT ALL. Initially, the government refused to admit the wiretapping program existed or that any prisoners were being kept at Guantanamo Bay.
That is the nature of the court system. One side or the other is declared the winner. Everybody loses. So we shouldn't have a court system? I don't understand what you're saying here. If one or bother sides are completely intransigent to negotiation, how is dispute resolution supposed to work? How does this apply to criminal law?
The rumor is that there will be a new bundle priced higher than the Elite (probably around $600) that will include a larger hard drive (I'm told 200 GB), a Cablecard-ready TV tuner, bundled Media Remote, and possibly a DVD recorder (don't hold your breath for that last one). No HD-DVD, though it's supposed to be an HD-capable PVR that records up to 720p.
He's done a great job of clarifying how Sandvine works. I thought it was doing packet inspection. This is way more sloppy and horrible since it basically tries to kill anything that makes lots of connections. Presumably you could get around this by having a proxy that sits outside Comcast's network and tunneling all traffic through that.
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This is dead long before it even starts. It's retarded. Why in the world would would a cellphone manufacture stick a third-party OS on their phones, tossing whatever work they've already done, with no support whatsoever? I guess Google assumes that manufacturers will build around it, but what's the incentive? This is a Linux hack, and there are already Linux hacks with a longer track record.
I guess I'm one of the few people willing to spend more money on games, IF those games are large, fun, and expansive. Take, for example, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. A huge game with lots of content, easily worth it's $60 price tag. I personally would have split the game up into 2 parts, with a cliffhanger in the middle, making the total $120. I think this would have been more than fair.
Or MMORPGs, which cost $20 a month. Lots of people paying for those. Likewise, I could easily see an FPS like Battlefield 2 charging a monthly fee IF there was new content on regular basis.
What this guy is talking about amounts to abandoning the "hardcore" in favor of more casual gaming, and I think that's a serious mistake in the long run. Consoles can't compete on "free", and that's where the casual market is going.
There are lots of things Linux does better than Windows. User management isn't one of them. Granted, that issue could exist in Linux with text-based config files as opposed to a Registry - except that most of those will refer to
You could also just use UNC.
None of this is really relavent to the question at hand. This is a LEGAL issue, not a moral or scientific one. It's the legal definition of human that matters, and that definition is arbitrary. I don't think it's a wise idea to legally define a fetus a human, even for a special case, as it opens to door to lots of other legal issues. Ex. Is someone a U.S. citizen of they were conceived in the United States? Is imprisoning a pregnant woman a violation of the fetus' due process rights? Should harm to a fetus be handled independently by criminal courts?
Abortion laws don't address any of these questions because they do not address whether or not the fetus is human. They put doctors in jail for performing specific procedures. It is the PROCEDURE that is illegal, the "humanness" of the fetus is not discussed. These are the laws that are being pursued. Arguments about whether or not a fetus is human or whether or not the murder statute should be used are red herrings because that is not the policy being pursued. For the purposes of determining whether or not aborting a pregnancy is killing a human being, science doesn't really apply, just as it wouldn't apply in the scenario I just mentioned. Aborting a pregnancy is clearly ending the life of the fetus, which is clearly human, so abortion is clearly "killing a human".
As I said before, this is a legal issue. The reason why American society pays so much attention to science when making laws is because most Americans realize that scientific knowledge is basically objective, and therefore forms a good foundation of facts which informs lawmakers how their laws will affect the real world. The alternative is law based on arbitrary morality, for example , Rabbinical law. In that case, it's a set of ancient documents that provide the common basis.
It would be much easier for the agents if they blanket authority and just "add" associates of Al Foobari to the wiretapping pool. Foobari might go to Bob's house, so you wiretap Bob. Even better, you can wiretap everyone Al Foobari calls, and then everyone THEY call, etc. to create new suspect lists, etc. This is one of the surveillance powers the President granted the FBI, NSA, etc. in his illegal wiretapping program. This is a power that the FBI, NSA, etc. has specifically requested more than once and that Congress has denied them.
I honestly don't know whether they are doing this or not. The capabilities are there, but it's both illegal and would require cooperation from the carriers. Separate from that, the installation of equipment capable of providing the floating wiretap service has been taken to mean that the administration is monitoring all domestic phone calls. Wrong. The equipment they were installing was NOT part of floating wiretaps, which requires cooperation with the phone providers as described above. In fact, the NSA/FBI does not normally install or monitor such equipment, which has been in place for many years. The recently installed boxes at AT&T etc. are clearly not for floating wiretaps. Just knowing how they are wired (and Stein knew that) will tell you they're wired "inline" to intercept all traffic. So some people put these together and claim that the Bush administration is monitoring all domestic phone calls without a warrant. Because they are. The equipment they are installing has that sole purpose. They can't just redesign it on a whim. Of course, you'll have to take my word for that. However, it's the evidence (based on the fact that it's inline mirroring the traffic) that makes it certain this is what they're doing.
I should also point out that this doesn't work. There are many easy ways to evade this kind of surveillance that I'm sure "the terrorists" are using. The drug dealers (who are the targets of 95% of this surveillance) figured them out a long time ago.
What you're talking about is not really "life", but "soul". You're asking the classic Christian medieval question of: "At what point during gestation does the soul enter the body?" The classic answer to this is at "quickening", when the fetus begins to kick. Recent theologians have picked conception, or shortly thereafter. This is not based on any theology whatsoever, but was picked to deny the possibility of family planning.
Obviously science does not address the issue of the soul, but the Christian argument of the soul entering the body after conception makes no sense at all to me. Based on what we know of conception, it seems more reasonable to assume that both the egg and the sperm contain "half-souls" that are combined to create a "full soul". I don't think Christians like the implications of this reasoning.
In PowerShell many commands are aliased to their unix equivalents specifically to make it easier for those coming from the unix command line. It's conceptually similar to the old 4DOS, which basically did the same thing. Of course, Powershell has all kinds of crazy scripting features (it supports something like 5 languages natively, and you can plugin lots more).
The issue is very specific, and it's legal:
Do we want to put doctors in prison for providing abortion services?
Nobody is seriously talking about imprisoning women for getting abortions, because if the difficulty in prosecution. In practice, we also know that there will be no enforcement against amateurs (non-doctors) providing abortions. So basically we're talking about the selective banning of SAFE abortions for poor women. If that's what you want fine, but don't pretend that the argument is about something it's not.
1. Analog basic cable.
2. All digital commercial, non-premium channels.
3. All digital commercial, non-premium channels + digital premium channels.
That's it.
You might remember a system a while back called "Carnivore". Carnivore was an email surveillance system integrated into a box that sits "inline" between the mail servers and the routes out to the internet. It does deep inspection on the SMTP transfers (ALL the SMTP transfers) going through the box and searches them for keywords, specific to/from addresses, specific languages, etc. and the n forwards the headers and/or bodies of the "interesting" messages to the NSA. In case it isn't clear, Carnivore would have scanned every single email passing through the major American internet hubs regardless of who sent it or it's nation of origin. Carnivore was specifically banned by Congress, making it a felony to implement it in any way.
Currently, Carnivore is in service at all of the major American internet hubs, including Quest. It is only PART of the Bush's new surveillance programs, the part I am most familiar with. It is my understanding that a similar system is in place for international calls. ALL international calls are scanned. Work is ongoing on a domestic system than does the same thing, and a system for cellphone traffic. The carriers have quietly been fighting this (due to the expense, mainly). This guy (and I wish I could think of his name) ought to be tried for treason for revealing this, not trumpeted as a hero. Mark Klein, and he *IS* a national hero. The President is in direct violation of federal law. There is no one iota of doubt about this. My civil liberties are not affected if every phone call I make is listened to personally by an FBI agent. And man, I gotta tell you, I would hate to have that guy's job. You don't seem to know what civil liberties are. If the government who can send people to your house to kill you is listening to everything you say over the phone, you don't honestly believe that has a chilling affect on any dissent against that government? This is how it worked in Soviet Russia. This is the very essence of totalitarianism, the inability to speak freely. I don't discuss anything illegal on the phone nor do I discuss information of a sensitive nature. So you don't do any phone or internet banking, or book medical appointments on the phone or internet? You're a lot more paranoid than most people. I'd also argue that you have no idea what is actually illegal. I assume anyone could be listening in, and the government would be the least of my worries. Who else do you think is going to send a death squad to your house for saying something they didn't like?
Responsible parents get themselves tested to avoid genetic illnesses to begin with, get prenatal testing to determine if their child is developing with significant birth defects, and then abort them if they are. People have to understand that making a child is like making a cake, if it gets screwed up too bad you might have to toss it and restart. You can whine about this being cruel or immoral, but this is how our bodies work. No amount of denial will change it. I'm extremely leery of starting down that path, because I have very little faith that it won't be carried to extremes, given enough time. "Slippery slope" is a classic fallacy in argumentation. Allowing a D&C on a terminal fetus will not lead to death camps for kids with disabilities.
Let's take another, similar, issue: gay marriage. There is no doubt that gays suffer hardships due to lack of marriage rights. They cannot adopt, speak for their spouses in the event of injury, and it impairs their finances. Why should gays is some states have to live with reduced rights just because some people don't like them?
This is (another) case of a minority trying to inflict their prejudices on the majority. The vast majority of Americans want women to have free access to abortions. The vast majority of Americans believe the current laws to be significantly less restrictive than they really are. The vast majority of Americans want to see abortion harassment groups banned. It is only a vocal minority that continues to push their views on the majority.
And why does it make sense to force women (and especially girls) to cross state lines to get abortions? Whose interest does that serve? "Granularity" would mean allowing individuals to make their own decisions. a) Explain these arguments that are apparently being used. You made one above. Paraphrased: "The issue is so divisive it should be left to the states." This exact same argument was/is used by those opposed to desegregation, affirmative action, women's rights, birth control, gay rights, obscenity, etc. The point is that the issue isn't really that divisive at all. The pro-life crowd is clearly in the minority. b) It's not true that the individuals are the same. I abhor segregation, but I equally abhor abortion. I don't know if you were alive during the segregation battles of the 1960s. I was not. But many of the people who lead the anti-abortion movement now were segregationists in the past, Pat Robertson for example. Virtually all anti-abortion activists are religious and social conservatives who, if they were alive during that period, supported segregation, opposed women's rights, interracial marriage, birth control, and strongly oppose gay rights and gay marriage.
What do you do?
In earlier times, this dilemma simply did not exist. There was no ultrasound or x-ray, so the deformity would not be detected until birth, whereupon the child would die painfully. But due to modern medical science, we can detect the deformity, we just can't do correct it.
The child is doomed. But you would insist that the woman be forced to carry the fetus to term (risking HER life and fertility) and then watch as the child dies in agony. Somehow you think this is preferable to a "dilation and extraction", what opponents term "partial birth abortion", in which the fetus is painlessly killed in the womb and then extracted. This is unpleasant, but is it more horrible than having the child die painfully OUTSIDE the womb? And what about the absolute FACT that the D&C is better for the woman's health and fertility?
Your application of rights is also pretty selective. Apparently you think that children have the right to be BORN, they just don't have the right to LIVE anywhere. How is the position that a female refugee (illegal alien) must be forced to give birth in the United States, but then she and her child will be forcibly deported, consistent with "pro-life"? Ron Paul has stated that he wants to abolish the income tax altogether which would end the redistribution of wealth permanently. Eliminating the federal income tax will not eliminate redistribution of wealth. There will still be federal subsidies and lots of other federal taxes and fees, which disproportionately affect the poor. The Congress and the States will NEVER give up their ability to levy taxes. ALL "flat tax" proposals in he United States require an armed revolution and an entirely new Constitution. Period. If Ron Paul is not advocating armed revolution, he's not advocating flat taxes. He's merely blowing smoke. Is it really such a terrible position to want to protect the rights of the unborn including the inalienable right of life? This is not what the abortion debate in the United States is about. The abortion debate in the United States is about this simple question:
Should we limit the availability of abortions to poor Americans?
The REAL affect of anti-abortion laws is to make it difficult for poor Americans who either can't afford an abortion (rarely) or can't afford to to travel a great distance to get an abortion (MUCH more common). Anti-abortion laws also lead to more infanticide, deadly illegal abortions, deaths due to complications form pregnancy, and birth defects. It is unclear whether or not anti-abortion laws actually reduce abortions.
Anti-abortion activists are also the single biggest source of domestic terrorism in the United Stares, constantly threating, harassing, bombing, and occasionally murdering abortion providers.
You might remember something called "segregation". The segregationists argued that they didn't oppose blacks, but that they were simply "pro-white". Or wanted to "maintain the white culture". As time progress, many denied they were segregationists AT ALL, but they were really advocates for "state's rights", because they wanted the states to resolve civil rights issues. This was a smokescreen to dodge civil rights legislation. I should also point out THE EXACT SAME INDIVIDUALS THAT SUPPORTED SEGREGATION ALSO OPPOSE ABORTION RIGHTS, using the exact same arguments.
The exact same process played out for interracial marriage, birth control, adult entertainment, gay rights, etc. Social conservatives opposed them based on religious rhetoric and ethic hatred initially, and then switch to "state's rights" legal claims when the public gets disgusted with their earlier rationales.
It's important to understand why this is a big deal.
Before 2001, only about 25,000 people were on the watch list. And most of those people were convicted of crimes at least vaguely related to terrorism. Many were dead.
The vast majority of the 755,000 people now on the watch list have NOT been convicted of a crime. MOST of them are on the list effectively because of anonymous tips (or tips from "secret" sources). There is no process at all to get on the list, a Homeland Security official simply submits the name with no supporting paperwork. I strongly suspect that NOBODY knows why the vast majority of those on the list were placed on the list. There is no mechanism for getting OFF the list, the assumption when it was created is that it would be limited to convicted terrorists could would stay on the list permanently. Before 2001, many of the people on the list were dead because there was/is no mechanism to remove them.
The cable companies certainly don't WANT to encrypt channels they don't have to because that eats up CPU time on both ends, meaning they have to buy more expensive boxes. Most cable providers now transmit everything but premium channels "in the clear". Call me back when there are open(non-private-key-encumbered) pervasive standards This will never, ever happen. And personally, I would be against it. I want cable and satellite providers to be able to provide commercial-free channels like HBO, and encryption is necessary for that. The problem here is that there isn't an ENCRYPTION STANDARD. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to MAKE the cable and satellites come up with a reasonable standard, even though it would benefit both of them. They still seem to think they'll make more money licensing and selling proprietary hardware.
The same is generally true overseas, but overseas language barriers can prevent foreign ISPs from understanding what's going on. The foreign ISP might also be naive and not think it's a serious problem. There ARE a small number of small ISPs in nations like Russia that specifically cater to rogues (like the botnet crowd). These are usually fly-by-night operations, understandable due to the fact their customers are unreliable criminals and that their upstream provider cuts them off as soon as they figure out what they're doing.
Basically what the Sandvine does is look to see if a given IP is making too many TCP connections within a given timeframe and if so, starts sending TCP RSTs to both ends of the connections till it gets down to it's threshold. So ANYTHING that uses TCP and makes lots of connections will trigger it. This form of traffic shaping is quite crude. I disagree with the vast majority of cases they (the ACLU) pursue. Why? Because unlike civilized rational people who attempt to resolve their differences, they immediately bring out the heavy artillery (i.e. the lawyers). This is patently false. Do you REALLY think the ACLU immediately leaps to expensive litigation to resolve civil rights issues, especially give their limited budget? Of course they don't. One thing that makes it seem that way is that most often the ACLU is suing the government, and since the government has UNLIMITED budgets for litigation, they are often very reluctant to negotiate seriously with the ACLU (especially in recent years). Examples would include the warrantless wiretapping program and the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the ACLU had to sue to get ANY information AT ALL. Initially, the government refused to admit the wiretapping program existed or that any prisoners were being kept at Guantanamo Bay. That is the nature of the court system. One side or the other is declared the winner. Everybody loses. So we shouldn't have a court system? I don't understand what you're saying here. If one or bother sides are completely intransigent to negotiation, how is dispute resolution supposed to work? How does this apply to criminal law?
The rumor is that there will be a new bundle priced higher than the Elite (probably around $600) that will include a larger hard drive (I'm told 200 GB), a Cablecard-ready TV tuner, bundled Media Remote, and possibly a DVD recorder (don't hold your breath for that last one). No HD-DVD, though it's supposed to be an HD-capable PVR that records up to 720p.
PLEASE mod the parent up.
He's done a great job of clarifying how Sandvine works. I thought it was doing packet inspection. This is way more sloppy and horrible since it basically tries to kill anything that makes lots of connections. Presumably you could get around this by having a proxy that sits outside Comcast's network and tunneling all traffic through that.