Let's suppose Fire_Wraith really thinks Jeb Bush sucks a donkey. So he wants to let everyone know that a vote for Jeb is one step toward the end of civilization. Under the constitution and federal election laws, Fire_Wraith can go out to the town square and scream at the top of his lungs on the topic all he wants. He can even publish ads in the newspaper and on TV. Or put up a web page. As much of his time and treasure as he'd like to spend on the issue, he can spend.
In this way it is just like any other issue Fire_Wraith cares about. He could be advocating for parental rights for Transgender divorcees, or anything else his heart desires. The FEC only takes note when he's dealing with a federal election in some way - and he can't coordinate his activities with those campaigns without calling it a contribution and being regulated.
Now, here's the other shoe to drop: What if I think Fire_Wraith is the smartest guy ever and I'm totally on his side. I want to join in his efforts. So I offer to pay for half of his advertizing and help write the ad copy. I'm doing the same thing that he was doing before. So is he. Only now we are doing it together.
Pre Citizen's United we suddenly were running afoul of federal law. Just because we were pooling our resources for common cause.
Even today Fire_Wraith and I would run into difficulties because of campaign laws. It happens all the time, all around the country and it has nothing to do with corporate oligarchies. Let's say instead of Bush, Fire_Wraith and I were worried about something happening in our town and we got together with a bunch of people from the neighborhood to do something about it. We put our heads and wallets together and get a bunch of yard signs printed up. Ooops. We just violated campaign finance laws. We are now a PAC and have to get ourselves all legal and regulated and stuff. So even though we were only able to scrape together $382.78 for the yard signs (and coffee and donuts for the meeting), we are required to file complicated paperwork and collect information for the regulators on all of our contributors and all of our expenditures. Even though this would cost way more than we are spending on our actual political activities, and even though we could barely muster the energy to get the yard signs deployed.
This is what campaign finance laws look like in the real world. Often a group like ours would skate under the radar and not be bothered by regulators. Unless, of course, somebody got their undies in a bunch and decided to do something about it. The example above is based on a real story - I think it was Colorado a few years back. Some neighborhood group was opposed to something the city was doing and tried to oppose it by pooling their resources. The powers on the other side used the levers of government to silence them - audits and subpoenas and prosecutors all drowned the group, costing them many, many times what they were planning to spend on stopping their government.
This can reach extremes when your political opponents happen to work for government as prosecutors or regulators. In this case a prosecutor used his power to silence (and bankrupt) someone who was raising money for the opposing party. Someone who ultimately was found to be operating perfectly legally, but was harassed and silenced for 5 years, using campaign finance laws.
There's a lot to worry about here, not just on the "corporations are evil" front.
Presumably you also dislike all critics because they seek to change the content of your games/movies by pointing out things that suck about them. All criticism is an attack that is trying to ram ideology down your throat.
Face it, you actually hate freedom of speech when people say things you disagree with.
As a true feminist, let me see if I can point out the difference. Posting a takedown of Star Wars Episode 1 that rips it to shreds and belittles everything about it: legitimate exercise of free speech. Even if you love Jar-Jar and midichlorians. Even if they use obscene language and offensive humor.
Petitioning the government to pass new laws outlawing Star Wars or instituting Sci-fi review boards that will monitor and approve the content of such movies: not a legitimate exercise of free speech. Even if you use the language of academics and intellectuals while doing so. (legitimate in this case being a stand-in for "morally acceptable" or "compatible with freedom of speech", not a synonym for "speech that should be banned by the government")
This is precisely what I have seen. Despite a disproportionate amount of money being spent on technology (iPads, electronic whiteboards, computer stations, etc.), almost no effort is being spent on computer science education in most public schools. The "computer classes" are often even more of a redheaded stepchild than music has become. At least music has a centuries old educational tradition and curriculums to go with it. The curriculum for computer science often focuses on opening an application on one of the Macs and editing a document. Maybe at a high school level they'll learn how to put a =sum(a1:a6) formula into an excel spreadsheet.
I have run into a few folks who are valiantly trying to actually educate their students, and the reason I know about the "valiantly" part is because of the rant they'll give after a cocktail or two about the idiot administrator who designed the "curriculum" they have to follow. Even when they accidentally find a competent and motivated teacher, the "I can use power point real good" person at the district office that they put in charge of the curriculum doesn't know enough to even understand what their underling is talking about when he/she tries to improve the curriculum. It really is a big problem.
Both the "rock attack" and the cut seatbelt probably occurred when the police arrived. The reporters probably wouldn't exit the vehicle so the cops broke the window and cut the seat belt to pull the driver out. This is a reasonably common police tactic when someone refuses to exit a vehicle.
The reason I doubt it was the security guards is the reporting from the RGJ. They don't report their employee's version - they ask the Sheriff and say he "can't confirm how that damage occurred". So I'd say the police broke the window, probably not with a rock, and then they cut the seatbelt and pulled the driver from the vehicle. At least that is the most plausible version of events.
Pbbbt. Lynx. That's for pikers. Transfer the direct HTML feed to disk and examine with vi. It is the only way to really appreciate what is going on with a website.
They don't say if it was double-blind or not, but even if it was just single-blind, that's at least passable science.
I disagree - using the words "sensory laboratory" adds nothing. Neither does the naming of the type of wine glass used for tasting whiskey. The 'triangle test" might at least add something of a protocol, but we are still talking about a very soft end point - a subjective taste test. This is at most an adjunct to a more rigorous examination. And a real taste test would include many other samples and would have the requirement of being reproducible - something that has been called into question repeatedly in the world of wine tasting.
If you were really going to do "science" on this topic, you would be examining the differences in the chemical makeup of the samples. The materials and methods would involve words like "gas-liquid chromatography" and "mass spectrograph" rather than ""Ardbeg 'tulip' shaped glasses".
Probably because they don't have to. Not much is going to try to swallow one of those things. They are pretty well defended. Just advertizing their dangerous spines with their colorful garb seems to do the trick.
Your "how long until" hypothetical is already in the past. Not only on the internet, but on national broadcast television. There have been plenty of no-knock raids on TV with half-clothed or naked folks being terrorized in their own homes, cowering on the floor at the point of an assault rifle where the raid turned up no evidence of any criminal activity. Sometimes it is even a wrong-address raid. Usually looking for drugs. Sometimes looking for a fugitive.
It is a pretty revealing situation to note that the reaction to this by the most activist civil-liberties types will be "at least they didn't shoot the dog". Violating people's privacy is so far down the list that it doesn't even get a mention when people are fairly frequently getting wounded or killed in these sorts of circumstances. Even the rabid civil liberties folks are more concerned with holding police accountable so that people aren't getting shot in the middle of the night in their own home than they are with the privacy concerns of having the videos they are using for that accountability becoming public in other situations.
Except I don't think that is the state of the law at this point. Public officials doing their job are by definition "public". So talking to them is talking to the public. At least that seems to be the current state of case law on the topic.
This is one of the reasons that FOP reps give for opposing body cams.
Take a look on the internet - there's lots of footage from helmet cams and body cams of swat raids that were FIOA requested by third parties. Even if there was no criminal case to be made at all. All they have to do is fill out some paperwork and the law in most places says they have to provide whatever public records exist pertinent to that request - including video.
I agree that this is a serious concern. But I am not sure the law is prepared to deal with that. Currently, if you make such a complaint and the police follow their procedures, they'll fill out a report with their version of the content of your conversation. This report will be discoverable by an open records request - by anyone who wishes to make the request.
There is beginning to be a cottage industry of folks making such requests and posting the results to the internet. It might be a matter of time until this reaches critical mass for the public to begin pushing back, but right now it looks like there will be an opportunity for such dirty laundry airing with or without the cameras.
I'm not sure how much privacy law would be involved. As long as they are on duty these are public officials going about their duties. As such they have no expectation of privacy - so anything they say and do can be recorded. There is plenty of case law to consider the matter settled.
And anyone interacting with the police are engaged in a public act - even if they are doing so involuntarily.
The only real privacy issue would be if the camera was left on when the officer entered a truly private space, like a restroom. Or if he forgot to turn it off before having a private conversation while off the clock.
I think the hacker tool of choice in this case would be a FOIA request. Most states have sunshine laws that would make these public records. All you have to do is walk down to the courthouse and make a request.
A properly designed system would make deleting evidence difficult, and even if the evidence were to be deleted, it would likely leave an audit trail showing that the video did indeed exist at one point and reveal when and how it was deleted.
Hardly relevant to the discussion. We are talking about enterprise storage and backup, with archival record-keeping. At a minimum I would expect two physically separated sites for storage and online duplication, plus backup and additional offsite storage. That's all stuff that comes along with the cloud storage contracts.
When you start getting up over 100k per year as Birmingham is, it might start to look attractive to take it in-house. Depending on what sort of data storage and retention infrastructure they already have, it might make sense to build out for this purpose as well. But smaller departments will never have the capacity for doing this in-house. Not only do you need the servers, storage systems, networks and backups at two sites, you also need a 24/7 staff capable of handling it. That's way more than 100k per year just in labor. If you already have that staff and storage network in place, adding additional storage would make plenty of sense. If you don't, not so much.
Plus, in order to do it right you need to maintain a proper chain of custody and security for the video evidence that might be used in court. And given how we've seen videos mysteriously vanish in some police abuse cases, this is no trivial matter.
So no, a couple of 5 terabyte drives from newegg isn't gonna cut it, even for a small town police department.
But, you just don't get it! Microsoft has $92 billion. In cash! Parked overseas! $92 billion that they could bring back to the US!
But we are funding a project about education that involves Microsoft! With Federal Tax Dollars! If they just repatriated that $92 billion, we'd have another $30 Billion to spend on NSF studies and other stuff!
Actually, I don't know if they have the authority to prohibit cameras in public meetings. This has been something of a hot topic - there are activists who go to public meetings for the sole purpose of auditing their freedom to record the proceedings. Kind of a weird hobby, but someone needs to act as the 4th estate.
One could easily argue the opposite. By allowing the advantages of incumbency to become entrenched, we encourage corporatism. If the same guy is Mayor of Atlanta for 26 years, it is pretty easy for major contractors to know who to bribe and to set up systems for ensuring that their man stays in office. If they have to keep corrupting a new guy every 4 years, it would be that much tougher.
Both arguments likely have some truth. If every guy in office is a noob, then the bureaucrats will of necessity become more powerful, since they are the only ones who know what the heck is going on. So instead of the politicians getting the grease, it is the bureaucrats.
In the end the root of the problem lies in the amount of favors there are to dole out. With all of the power and money being tossed about by government it is inevitable that someone will try to game the system to their benefit. The only true answer to this is to limit the amount of money and power being funneled through the government. And of course this is the one thing that all those corporate interests would never allow. And neither would the political class - both bureaucrats and politicians. Since they all have something to lose if the money and power dry up, they'll never move to change it.
That's why term limits are attractive to some - even if it is a futile attempt.
I'll take it that you are an expert on the topic and also somewhat passionate about it, so I'll ask you. How does the single transferrable vote thing work?
Someone below stated that if you only chose one work, your second choice defaults to "No Award". Therefore an evenly divided electorate that had a majority of voters failing to select a second choice would give results exactly as you have listed.
Is that how it works? Did we arrive at "No Award" on purpose, or did we arrive at "No Award" because a large percentage of the electorate failed to list a second choice?
I don't think I understand your point. Are you saying that the "SJW" faction didn't decide to take their ball and go home by voting for "No Award"? Or are you saying that there were no works worthy of awards this year and that's how the voting went?
By voting "No Award" it sure seems like there was some organized group bent on preventing the interlopers from getting their way - even if it meant that nobody got an award this year.
This complaint just doesn't make any sense. We are moving to this pricing model all over the place, even in traffic control situations. Tolls on bridges and tunnels and express lanes are often "surge priced" these days. The express lanes into Miami on I-95 are only a quarter most of the time. But during rush hour and other heavy traffic times the lanes bump up towards $10.
And those are fixed resources - so there is no way to get more cars through the tunnel or over the bridge. With Uber the raised prices will theoretically get extra drivers on the street - limiting the surge in prices and getting service to more people.
And as others have mentioned - if you don't like the policy, you have alternatives.
Another search turned up an old California Law Review article detailing many of the problems of criminal conspiracy laws. Apparently these statutes have been used to punish things like draft protesters, labor organizers, communist party members, etc.... among other things. Apparently there is a long history of using "conspiracy" as an end run around the first amendment to punish politically unpopular speech.
It also points out the absurdity of a law that allows for a felony conviction for conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor. So if we agreed to be a part of a flash mob that streaks through Times Square, we could be convicted of a felony conspiracy under Federal law for planning to commit a misdemeanor disorderly conduct violation in New York, even if we never actually boarded the plane to join the performance. Nice.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me put it an other "another way".
Let's suppose Fire_Wraith really thinks Jeb Bush sucks a donkey. So he wants to let everyone know that a vote for Jeb is one step toward the end of civilization. Under the constitution and federal election laws, Fire_Wraith can go out to the town square and scream at the top of his lungs on the topic all he wants. He can even publish ads in the newspaper and on TV. Or put up a web page. As much of his time and treasure as he'd like to spend on the issue, he can spend.
In this way it is just like any other issue Fire_Wraith cares about. He could be advocating for parental rights for Transgender divorcees, or anything else his heart desires. The FEC only takes note when he's dealing with a federal election in some way - and he can't coordinate his activities with those campaigns without calling it a contribution and being regulated.
Now, here's the other shoe to drop: What if I think Fire_Wraith is the smartest guy ever and I'm totally on his side. I want to join in his efforts. So I offer to pay for half of his advertizing and help write the ad copy. I'm doing the same thing that he was doing before. So is he. Only now we are doing it together.
Pre Citizen's United we suddenly were running afoul of federal law. Just because we were pooling our resources for common cause.
Even today Fire_Wraith and I would run into difficulties because of campaign laws. It happens all the time, all around the country and it has nothing to do with corporate oligarchies. Let's say instead of Bush, Fire_Wraith and I were worried about something happening in our town and we got together with a bunch of people from the neighborhood to do something about it. We put our heads and wallets together and get a bunch of yard signs printed up. Ooops. We just violated campaign finance laws. We are now a PAC and have to get ourselves all legal and regulated and stuff. So even though we were only able to scrape together $382.78 for the yard signs (and coffee and donuts for the meeting), we are required to file complicated paperwork and collect information for the regulators on all of our contributors and all of our expenditures. Even though this would cost way more than we are spending on our actual political activities, and even though we could barely muster the energy to get the yard signs deployed.
This is what campaign finance laws look like in the real world. Often a group like ours would skate under the radar and not be bothered by regulators. Unless, of course, somebody got their undies in a bunch and decided to do something about it. The example above is based on a real story - I think it was Colorado a few years back. Some neighborhood group was opposed to something the city was doing and tried to oppose it by pooling their resources. The powers on the other side used the levers of government to silence them - audits and subpoenas and prosecutors all drowned the group, costing them many, many times what they were planning to spend on stopping their government.
This can reach extremes when your political opponents happen to work for government as prosecutors or regulators. In this case a prosecutor used his power to silence (and bankrupt) someone who was raising money for the opposing party. Someone who ultimately was found to be operating perfectly legally, but was harassed and silenced for 5 years, using campaign finance laws.
There's a lot to worry about here, not just on the "corporations are evil" front.
Presumably you also dislike all critics because they seek to change the content of your games/movies by pointing out things that suck about them. All criticism is an attack that is trying to ram ideology down your throat.
Face it, you actually hate freedom of speech when people say things you disagree with.
As a true feminist, let me see if I can point out the difference. Posting a takedown of Star Wars Episode 1 that rips it to shreds and belittles everything about it: legitimate exercise of free speech. Even if you love Jar-Jar and midichlorians. Even if they use obscene language and offensive humor.
Petitioning the government to pass new laws outlawing Star Wars or instituting Sci-fi review boards that will monitor and approve the content of such movies: not a legitimate exercise of free speech. Even if you use the language of academics and intellectuals while doing so. (legitimate in this case being a stand-in for "morally acceptable" or "compatible with freedom of speech", not a synonym for "speech that should be banned by the government")
This is precisely what I have seen. Despite a disproportionate amount of money being spent on technology (iPads, electronic whiteboards, computer stations, etc.), almost no effort is being spent on computer science education in most public schools. The "computer classes" are often even more of a redheaded stepchild than music has become. At least music has a centuries old educational tradition and curriculums to go with it. The curriculum for computer science often focuses on opening an application on one of the Macs and editing a document. Maybe at a high school level they'll learn how to put a =sum(a1:a6) formula into an excel spreadsheet.
I have run into a few folks who are valiantly trying to actually educate their students, and the reason I know about the "valiantly" part is because of the rant they'll give after a cocktail or two about the idiot administrator who designed the "curriculum" they have to follow. Even when they accidentally find a competent and motivated teacher, the "I can use power point real good" person at the district office that they put in charge of the curriculum doesn't know enough to even understand what their underling is talking about when he/she tries to improve the curriculum. It really is a big problem.
Both the "rock attack" and the cut seatbelt probably occurred when the police arrived. The reporters probably wouldn't exit the vehicle so the cops broke the window and cut the seat belt to pull the driver out. This is a reasonably common police tactic when someone refuses to exit a vehicle.
The reason I doubt it was the security guards is the reporting from the RGJ. They don't report their employee's version - they ask the Sheriff and say he "can't confirm how that damage occurred". So I'd say the police broke the window, probably not with a rock, and then they cut the seatbelt and pulled the driver from the vehicle. At least that is the most plausible version of events.
"Yale Debuts New Interactive Map Application Supporting Up To 20 Simultaneous Users"
That headline appears to have been written by Yoda.
How about "Yale makes 170,000 photographs from WWII period available online."
Nope.... read the stupid press summary. Should have known better.
Pbbbt. Lynx. That's for pikers. Transfer the direct HTML feed to disk and examine with vi. It is the only way to really appreciate what is going on with a website.
They don't say if it was double-blind or not, but even if it was just single-blind, that's at least passable science.
I disagree - using the words "sensory laboratory" adds nothing. Neither does the naming of the type of wine glass used for tasting whiskey. The 'triangle test" might at least add something of a protocol, but we are still talking about a very soft end point - a subjective taste test. This is at most an adjunct to a more rigorous examination. And a real taste test would include many other samples and would have the requirement of being reproducible - something that has been called into question repeatedly in the world of wine tasting.
If you were really going to do "science" on this topic, you would be examining the differences in the chemical makeup of the samples. The materials and methods would involve words like "gas-liquid chromatography" and "mass spectrograph" rather than ""Ardbeg 'tulip' shaped glasses".
Are they tasty? I don't know anyone personally who has eaten lionfish, but it seems that I've heard good things.
Probably because they don't have to. Not much is going to try to swallow one of those things. They are pretty well defended. Just advertizing their dangerous spines with their colorful garb seems to do the trick.
Your "how long until" hypothetical is already in the past. Not only on the internet, but on national broadcast television. There have been plenty of no-knock raids on TV with half-clothed or naked folks being terrorized in their own homes, cowering on the floor at the point of an assault rifle where the raid turned up no evidence of any criminal activity. Sometimes it is even a wrong-address raid. Usually looking for drugs. Sometimes looking for a fugitive.
It is a pretty revealing situation to note that the reaction to this by the most activist civil-liberties types will be "at least they didn't shoot the dog". Violating people's privacy is so far down the list that it doesn't even get a mention when people are fairly frequently getting wounded or killed in these sorts of circumstances. Even the rabid civil liberties folks are more concerned with holding police accountable so that people aren't getting shot in the middle of the night in their own home than they are with the privacy concerns of having the videos they are using for that accountability becoming public in other situations.
Except I don't think that is the state of the law at this point. Public officials doing their job are by definition "public". So talking to them is talking to the public. At least that seems to be the current state of case law on the topic.
This is one of the reasons that FOP reps give for opposing body cams.
Take a look on the internet - there's lots of footage from helmet cams and body cams of swat raids that were FIOA requested by third parties. Even if there was no criminal case to be made at all. All they have to do is fill out some paperwork and the law in most places says they have to provide whatever public records exist pertinent to that request - including video.
I agree that this is a serious concern. But I am not sure the law is prepared to deal with that. Currently, if you make such a complaint and the police follow their procedures, they'll fill out a report with their version of the content of your conversation. This report will be discoverable by an open records request - by anyone who wishes to make the request.
There is beginning to be a cottage industry of folks making such requests and posting the results to the internet. It might be a matter of time until this reaches critical mass for the public to begin pushing back, but right now it looks like there will be an opportunity for such dirty laundry airing with or without the cameras.
I'm not sure how much privacy law would be involved. As long as they are on duty these are public officials going about their duties. As such they have no expectation of privacy - so anything they say and do can be recorded. There is plenty of case law to consider the matter settled.
And anyone interacting with the police are engaged in a public act - even if they are doing so involuntarily.
The only real privacy issue would be if the camera was left on when the officer entered a truly private space, like a restroom. Or if he forgot to turn it off before having a private conversation while off the clock.
I think the hacker tool of choice in this case would be a FOIA request. Most states have sunshine laws that would make these public records. All you have to do is walk down to the courthouse and make a request.
That may be a part of the advantage of going with one of these vendors. We sometimes hear about malfunctioning cameras when police are accused of abuse. Sometimes multiple cameras malfunction at the same time.
A properly designed system would make deleting evidence difficult, and even if the evidence were to be deleted, it would likely leave an audit trail showing that the video did indeed exist at one point and reveal when and how it was deleted.
Hardly relevant to the discussion. We are talking about enterprise storage and backup, with archival record-keeping. At a minimum I would expect two physically separated sites for storage and online duplication, plus backup and additional offsite storage. That's all stuff that comes along with the cloud storage contracts.
When you start getting up over 100k per year as Birmingham is, it might start to look attractive to take it in-house. Depending on what sort of data storage and retention infrastructure they already have, it might make sense to build out for this purpose as well. But smaller departments will never have the capacity for doing this in-house. Not only do you need the servers, storage systems, networks and backups at two sites, you also need a 24/7 staff capable of handling it. That's way more than 100k per year just in labor. If you already have that staff and storage network in place, adding additional storage would make plenty of sense. If you don't, not so much.
Plus, in order to do it right you need to maintain a proper chain of custody and security for the video evidence that might be used in court. And given how we've seen videos mysteriously vanish in some police abuse cases, this is no trivial matter.
So no, a couple of 5 terabyte drives from newegg isn't gonna cut it, even for a small town police department.
But, you just don't get it! Microsoft has $92 billion. In cash! Parked overseas! $92 billion that they could bring back to the US!
But we are funding a project about education that involves Microsoft! With Federal Tax Dollars! If they just repatriated that $92 billion, we'd have another $30 Billion to spend on NSF studies and other stuff!
#ItIsAllReallyOurMoneyAnyway
#PayTheirFairShare
#IDon'tCareIfTheyHelpPoorKidsGetEducated
#AndHelpKidsGetHighPayingEngineeringJobs
#OrHelpKidsUseThatEducationToStartTechCompaniesAndMakeBillions
#CorporationsSuckBecauseTheyOnlyCareAboutProfits
Actually, I don't know if they have the authority to prohibit cameras in public meetings. This has been something of a hot topic - there are activists who go to public meetings for the sole purpose of auditing their freedom to record the proceedings. Kind of a weird hobby, but someone needs to act as the 4th estate.
One could easily argue the opposite. By allowing the advantages of incumbency to become entrenched, we encourage corporatism. If the same guy is Mayor of Atlanta for 26 years, it is pretty easy for major contractors to know who to bribe and to set up systems for ensuring that their man stays in office. If they have to keep corrupting a new guy every 4 years, it would be that much tougher.
Both arguments likely have some truth. If every guy in office is a noob, then the bureaucrats will of necessity become more powerful, since they are the only ones who know what the heck is going on. So instead of the politicians getting the grease, it is the bureaucrats.
In the end the root of the problem lies in the amount of favors there are to dole out. With all of the power and money being tossed about by government it is inevitable that someone will try to game the system to their benefit. The only true answer to this is to limit the amount of money and power being funneled through the government. And of course this is the one thing that all those corporate interests would never allow. And neither would the political class - both bureaucrats and politicians. Since they all have something to lose if the money and power dry up, they'll never move to change it.
That's why term limits are attractive to some - even if it is a futile attempt.
I'll take it that you are an expert on the topic and also somewhat passionate about it, so I'll ask you. How does the single transferrable vote thing work?
Someone below stated that if you only chose one work, your second choice defaults to "No Award". Therefore an evenly divided electorate that had a majority of voters failing to select a second choice would give results exactly as you have listed.
Is that how it works? Did we arrive at "No Award" on purpose, or did we arrive at "No Award" because a large percentage of the electorate failed to list a second choice?
I don't think I understand your point. Are you saying that the "SJW" faction didn't decide to take their ball and go home by voting for "No Award"? Or are you saying that there were no works worthy of awards this year and that's how the voting went?
By voting "No Award" it sure seems like there was some organized group bent on preventing the interlopers from getting their way - even if it meant that nobody got an award this year.
This complaint just doesn't make any sense. We are moving to this pricing model all over the place, even in traffic control situations. Tolls on bridges and tunnels and express lanes are often "surge priced" these days. The express lanes into Miami on I-95 are only a quarter most of the time. But during rush hour and other heavy traffic times the lanes bump up towards $10.
And those are fixed resources - so there is no way to get more cars through the tunnel or over the bridge. With Uber the raised prices will theoretically get extra drivers on the street - limiting the surge in prices and getting service to more people.
And as others have mentioned - if you don't like the policy, you have alternatives.
Another search turned up an old California Law Review article detailing many of the problems of criminal conspiracy laws. Apparently these statutes have been used to punish things like draft protesters, labor organizers, communist party members, etc.... among other things. Apparently there is a long history of using "conspiracy" as an end run around the first amendment to punish politically unpopular speech.
It also points out the absurdity of a law that allows for a felony conviction for conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor. So if we agreed to be a part of a flash mob that streaks through Times Square, we could be convicted of a felony conspiracy under Federal law for planning to commit a misdemeanor disorderly conduct violation in New York, even if we never actually boarded the plane to join the performance. Nice.