The second part of his suggestion, that they put it on after a laser strike, was silly, but the first is spot-on. Pilots and their aircraft employ all sorts of safety devices against potential hazards, both natural and manmade; if "laser strikes" are now a potential hazard, why not respond with a practical solution? Why is yet another overbearing law always the "solution" some people propose?
I have a crazy idea... how about airlines give pilots protective eyewear,...
Hah. Why would you expect the government to try to come up with real solutions to problems when they can instead create a panic and use it as a pretext for more laws?
The old Paradigm is over the mechanisms of monopolized force theft and coercion have been broken! The former PTB just don't know it yet and are desperately trying to keep the illusion alive. However it is evaporating like the dew in the morning sun!
Outlaw guns we'll just print them out. Try and steal our money and call it a tax to bad can't track our transactions nor break the encryption on our wallets. Don't need 3rd party financial institutions for transactions anymore so thieves posing as protectors can't steal our money. No more centralized manufacturing or food production with 3D printing and aquaponics, hugelkultur/permaculture, ethanol & bi-diesel, solar and wind, and new emerging energy technology etc. etc. These are the technologies of freedom!...
So what you're saying is that modern communications has to be replaced with saddles and buggy whips because email providers are so untrustworthy. The privacy invasions these companies routinely commit has rendered the medium unusable for anything important.
It's more than just creepy; Google could get in some pretty big trouble if they scan confidential emails and start advertising products based on keywords therein. Imagine someone is communicating with a lawyer or some public official about a confidential matter and suddenly they start getting advertising that could only be relevant based on keywords found in those confidential emails. Google could be in for a lawsuit or even prosecution depending on what they get caught snooping on. What's their defense going to be, only Googlebot knew about your emails to that defense attorney or social worker or abuse counselor, not an actual human being? Good luck with that.
'The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest.'
Is constructing strawmen necessary in order to report this discovery to the general public? "Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish" or "survival of the leanest and meanest." "Survival of the fittest" means "survival of the fittest"---whichever animal is most appropriately adapted to their local environment will survive. Sometimes this means strength or aggressiveness; sometimes it doesn't. ("Leanest" is particularly amusing: I doubt the leanest arctic seal would survive very long alongside the more well-insulated ones, for example.) In this case, "friendly" made these protodogs more fit to survive than aggressiveness in the presence of humans.
"... the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download."
But the government does, right?
"The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility."
Isn't it convenient how politicians use this situation to exert more control over the Internet? (And now watch as thousands of geeks who have otherwise been staunchly against the government regulating the Internet line up behind this guy.)
So you encrypt your devices with strong encryption and a good passphrase, not just password-protect them. Now it's still up to you if you wish to either divulge the passphrase or face something like a "contempt of court" charge. Depending on what information one is trying to secure, one might choose the latter.
Actually, you should be encrypting it, not just password-protecting it. If a thief steals your phone, what with identity theft and so on all the rage nowadays, your private data might be just as valuable to him as the device itself.
The actual article says password. The Slashdot summary, incorrectly, says encrypted.
That said, you shouldn't just rely on a password, but also encrypt your data. If you only have a password set, if the police get a warrant, they probably have forensics software that can simply bypass your phone's login program. (Just like how if a thief has a boot CD, that Windows login password of yours isn't going to protect your data.) However, if you encrypt your data, decrypting it without you giving up your encryption key is beyond the means of most police departments---meaning you have a choice as to whether or not you wish to comply. You get to choose whether or not what you're protecting is worth a "contempt of court"or "obstruction" charge or whatever.
But Tomas Aragon, an epidemiologist at UC Berkeley and health officer for the city of San Francisco, begs to differ, arguing that in order to establish a link between the bag ban and illnesses, the authors would have to show that the same people who are using reusable bags are also the ones getting sick.
No, all the authors would have to show is that people who came into contact with people using reusable bags are getting sick. Different people are susceptible to food-borne illnesses in different ways; if someone is using a dirty shopping bag, they might fare fine, but the clerk who touches it, or their spouse who finally throws it in the laundry, or someone who shakes their hand, might be the one who ends up getting sick.
'The increase in San Francisco,' [Aragon] suggests, 'probably reflects this international increase.'"
Yet what the study showed was that the illnesses in San Francisco are increasing faster than in neighboring counties, so it's not just part of the general trend in increasing C. diff infections. Something specific is happening in San Francisco.
I'd be willing to bet that $120M pales in comparison to the money that is spent by the pro-climate change side in order to promote their views. Anyone have figures?
And even more outrageously, most of that money is your tax dollars, not voluntary spending by private entities.
They can make it illegal, but they can enforce it as well as they currently enforce all their "intellectual property" laws against information sharing. Governments are quickly becoming irrelevant, and by fighting back like this---or getting their corporate lackeys like Google to do it for them---is only hastening that.
Yup. Trying to censor content like this is the best thing gun-grabbers could possibly do to ensure its publicity. So, keep it up, guys! All you're doing is helping us.
"Emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011..."
So, no it's not. Emissions from a number of sources, added up, are this "#2 cause," and fracking is including in that list of emissions, but with no indication whether it makes up 99.999% of these 225M tons... or 0.00001%. But hey, fracking is the latest energy technology that the global warming ideologues and other assorted neo-luddites hate, so why not spread blatantly false information like this about it?
I've been using CCleaner on the few Windows boxes I maintain for a while now. I'd never heard of BleachBit. It looks like it does a lot more than CCleaner, and especially in light of Piriform's obnoxious legal theats, I think I'll switch to BleachBit.
For many years, Installous offered complete access to thousands of paid iOS apps for free for anyone with a jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Think of it as being able to walk into a fancy department store, steal anything you want, and never get caught.
Except, unlike shoplifting, "stealing" a piece of software didn't deprive anyone of anything. Unless of course you've bought into the propaganda that "intellectual property" is real property.
So Canada basically has no freedom of speech with respect to this topic.
Reading the Wikipedia entry on the case, I see that Canada is now one of the countries moving toward twisting the concept of rights into a tool to actually prohibit people from exercising their rights, specifically in this case, a "right to dignity" that prevents women from freely choosing to participate in "degrading" pornography.
This subsequent case is also disturbing in its implications: In Canada, if a law violates one section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it's still upheld if it is justified under another section? That's ass-backwards to the way the U.S. Constitution works; that is, if a law violates any part of the Constitution, it's invalid no matter how justified it may have been under other sections.
I absolutely support his right to do this. But since it's something I don't agree with, I think he should be boycotted for his decision.
This is the proper, libertarian way of dealing with things one doesn't like. Un-libertarian would be to attempt to use the power of the State to stop him from doing this, to commit some other form of property damage or injury to him, or to threaten to do so. Libertarianism doesn't mean one simply tolerates things one doesn't agree with without response. It means one doesn't initiate force or fraud to get one's way. This is called the Non-Aggression Principle.
Libertarianism recognizes, obviously, the freedom of association. Naturally part of this is the freedom of dis-association: Choosing to not deal with people one dislikes. And I'm simply trying to persuade people to apply that here.
He dis-invited gun designers from his website, and in return he should be dis-invited from private venues supported by people who believe in the right to self-defense. PorcFest is held at a privately-owned camp ground in Lancaster, NH, organized by a private company (the FSP, Inc.), and supported entirely by private monies. Dis-inviting this person is no different than kicking an offensive patron out of a restaurant. It's exercising the right to private property. Until and unless someone initiates force to get his way here (or threatens to do so), there's nothing un-libertarian being done by either side.
Whereas it's not a good thing for the artist himself to be victimized by the State like this, from a pragmatic perspective, prosecutions like this are a good thing for freedom of speech. All they do is popularize the "obscene" art. I had never heard of this guy. I'm sure the vast, vast majority of people have never heard of him, either. Now we have. Now he's a cause célèbre among free speech advocates. And now I'm going to check out the guy's website and see what kind of "art" this guy has produced, and I'm sure hundreds of others will, too. And some people will probably be inspired to create similar art. And so on and so on.
It's the Streisand effect with the entire Canadian government in the role of Streisand.
The best thing the State could do when people make art they don't like is to ignore it. But instead they try to suppress it, drawing an enormous spotlight to it, and they fail, leaving the art behind untouched---but now with a huge spotlight pointed at. Good job, guys.
Does Canada have something like the "SLAPS" test that U.S. law has? For background, in the U.S., we have a litmus test from Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), that says that a work has to lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" in order to be considered obscene. This standard is so broad that it's even been used to strike down some of our child pornography laws, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002). Rarely does our government even bother trying to prosecute such speech any more because they know that virtually anything can pass this test.
Slashdot Mirror
The second part of his suggestion, that they put it on after a laser strike, was silly, but the first is spot-on. Pilots and their aircraft employ all sorts of safety devices against potential hazards, both natural and manmade; if "laser strikes" are now a potential hazard, why not respond with a practical solution? Why is yet another overbearing law always the "solution" some people propose?
Hah. Why would you expect the government to try to come up with real solutions to problems when they can instead create a panic and use it as a pretext for more laws?
Let's Implement the Future Shall We?
So what you're saying is that modern communications has to be replaced with saddles and buggy whips because email providers are so untrustworthy. The privacy invasions these companies routinely commit has rendered the medium unusable for anything important.
It's more than just creepy; Google could get in some pretty big trouble if they scan confidential emails and start advertising products based on keywords therein. Imagine someone is communicating with a lawyer or some public official about a confidential matter and suddenly they start getting advertising that could only be relevant based on keywords found in those confidential emails. Google could be in for a lawsuit or even prosecution depending on what they get caught snooping on. What's their defense going to be, only Googlebot knew about your emails to that defense attorney or social worker or abuse counselor, not an actual human being? Good luck with that.
Is constructing strawmen necessary in order to report this discovery to the general public? "Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish" or "survival of the leanest and meanest." "Survival of the fittest" means "survival of the fittest"---whichever animal is most appropriately adapted to their local environment will survive. Sometimes this means strength or aggressiveness; sometimes it doesn't. ("Leanest" is particularly amusing: I doubt the leanest arctic seal would survive very long alongside the more well-insulated ones, for example.) In this case, "friendly" made these protodogs more fit to survive than aggressiveness in the presence of humans.
"... the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download."
But the government does, right?
"The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility."
Isn't it convenient how politicians use this situation to exert more control over the Internet? (And now watch as thousands of geeks who have otherwise been staunchly against the government regulating the Internet line up behind this guy.)
Or you can just ignore them and keep on doing what you're doing.
So you encrypt your devices with strong encryption and a good passphrase, not just password-protect them. Now it's still up to you if you wish to either divulge the passphrase or face something like a "contempt of court" charge. Depending on what information one is trying to secure, one might choose the latter.
Not exactly.
Canada: http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100310200119AASqYaB
U.S.: http://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/privacy/when-can-police-search (with legal citations)
Maybe not that specifically, but if you're carrying a locked case in one of those pockets, yes.
Actually, you should be encrypting it, not just password-protecting it. If a thief steals your phone, what with identity theft and so on all the rage nowadays, your private data might be just as valuable to him as the device itself.
The actual article says password. The Slashdot summary, incorrectly, says encrypted.
That said, you shouldn't just rely on a password, but also encrypt your data. If you only have a password set, if the police get a warrant, they probably have forensics software that can simply bypass your phone's login program. (Just like how if a thief has a boot CD, that Windows login password of yours isn't going to protect your data.) However, if you encrypt your data, decrypting it without you giving up your encryption key is beyond the means of most police departments---meaning you have a choice as to whether or not you wish to comply. You get to choose whether or not what you're protecting is worth a "contempt of court"or "obstruction" charge or whatever.
No, all the authors would have to show is that people who came into contact with people using reusable bags are getting sick. Different people are susceptible to food-borne illnesses in different ways; if someone is using a dirty shopping bag, they might fare fine, but the clerk who touches it, or their spouse who finally throws it in the laundry, or someone who shakes their hand, might be the one who ends up getting sick.
Yet what the study showed was that the illnesses in San Francisco are increasing faster than in neighboring counties, so it's not just part of the general trend in increasing C. diff infections. Something specific is happening in San Francisco.
I'd be willing to bet that $120M pales in comparison to the money that is spent by the pro-climate change side in order to promote their views. Anyone have figures?
And even more outrageously, most of that money is your tax dollars, not voluntary spending by private entities.
Really.
They can make it illegal, but they can enforce it as well as they currently enforce all their "intellectual property" laws against information sharing. Governments are quickly becoming irrelevant, and by fighting back like this---or getting their corporate lackeys like Google to do it for them---is only hastening that.
Yup. Trying to censor content like this is the best thing gun-grabbers could possibly do to ensure its publicity. So, keep it up, guys! All you're doing is helping us.
"Emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011 ..."
So, no it's not. Emissions from a number of sources, added up, are this "#2 cause," and fracking is including in that list of emissions, but with no indication whether it makes up 99.999% of these 225M tons... or 0.00001%. But hey, fracking is the latest energy technology that the global warming ideologues and other assorted neo-luddites hate, so why not spread blatantly false information like this about it?
I've been using CCleaner on the few Windows boxes I maintain for a while now. I'd never heard of BleachBit. It looks like it does a lot more than CCleaner, and especially in light of Piriform's obnoxious legal theats, I think I'll switch to BleachBit.
Thanks, Piriform!
Except, unlike shoplifting, "stealing" a piece of software didn't deprive anyone of anything. Unless of course you've bought into the propaganda that "intellectual property" is real property.
So Canada basically has no freedom of speech with respect to this topic.
Reading the Wikipedia entry on the case, I see that Canada is now one of the countries moving toward twisting the concept of rights into a tool to actually prohibit people from exercising their rights, specifically in this case, a "right to dignity" that prevents women from freely choosing to participate in "degrading" pornography.
This subsequent case is also disturbing in its implications: In Canada, if a law violates one section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it's still upheld if it is justified under another section? That's ass-backwards to the way the U.S. Constitution works; that is, if a law violates any part of the Constitution, it's invalid no matter how justified it may have been under other sections.
I absolutely support his right to do this. But since it's something I don't agree with, I think he should be boycotted for his decision.
This is the proper, libertarian way of dealing with things one doesn't like. Un-libertarian would be to attempt to use the power of the State to stop him from doing this, to commit some other form of property damage or injury to him, or to threaten to do so. Libertarianism doesn't mean one simply tolerates things one doesn't agree with without response. It means one doesn't initiate force or fraud to get one's way. This is called the Non-Aggression Principle.
Libertarianism recognizes, obviously, the freedom of association. Naturally part of this is the freedom of dis-association: Choosing to not deal with people one dislikes. And I'm simply trying to persuade people to apply that here.
He dis-invited gun designers from his website, and in return he should be dis-invited from private venues supported by people who believe in the right to self-defense. PorcFest is held at a privately-owned camp ground in Lancaster, NH, organized by a private company (the FSP, Inc.), and supported entirely by private monies. Dis-inviting this person is no different than kicking an offensive patron out of a restaurant. It's exercising the right to private property. Until and unless someone initiates force to get his way here (or threatens to do so), there's nothing un-libertarian being done by either side.
Whereas it's not a good thing for the artist himself to be victimized by the State like this, from a pragmatic perspective, prosecutions like this are a good thing for freedom of speech. All they do is popularize the "obscene" art. I had never heard of this guy. I'm sure the vast, vast majority of people have never heard of him, either. Now we have. Now he's a cause célèbre among free speech advocates. And now I'm going to check out the guy's website and see what kind of "art" this guy has produced, and I'm sure hundreds of others will, too. And some people will probably be inspired to create similar art. And so on and so on.
It's the Streisand effect with the entire Canadian government in the role of Streisand.
The best thing the State could do when people make art they don't like is to ignore it. But instead they try to suppress it, drawing an enormous spotlight to it, and they fail, leaving the art behind untouched---but now with a huge spotlight pointed at. Good job, guys.
Does Canada have something like the "SLAPS" test that U.S. law has? For background, in the U.S., we have a litmus test from Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), that says that a work has to lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" in order to be considered obscene. This standard is so broad that it's even been used to strike down some of our child pornography laws, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002). Rarely does our government even bother trying to prosecute such speech any more because they know that virtually anything can pass this test.