Seriously... The ones that love programming for the
sheer "forcing my will on the computer" joy of
hacking (which I do not conflate with cracking)
eventually move on to hacking physical reality.
Geeks (and I don't exclude myself) love
that sort of thing, once they get over the fear
of physical labor.
Of course, you might not want to forget two other
factors that lead to the seeming shortage of geek
greybacks... First, thanks to the huge growth in
IT over the past couple decades (even taking the
crash into consideration, since that had more to
do with slapping VCs and twits who seriously
believed that with enough layers of management,
they didn't actually need either a product or
any engineers), a lot of the previous
generation of programmers actually went on to
start their own small (and a few really big)
businesses. And second, the entire field of
modern electronics has only existed since 1947,
and the IT aspect arguably only since 1965 with
the PDP-8 (you could even go further and say 1981
with the IBM PC)... That means you only have 25 to
40 years of history for the entire modern IT
industry. At the low end of that range, you
wouldn't expect to see programmers past
the early 40s, and at the far end, you only
needed a few thousand "computer operators"
nationwide, not a few million.
If you're not, don't tell this guy how to parent
his children.
I love hearing this argument.
I have the wisdom not to go out and knock some
chick up. I may at some point CHOOSE to reproduce, but
I consider both financial stability and a detailed
understanding of developmental psychology as prerequisites
to that decision.
The fact that someone has managed to satisfy a basic
biological urge that even single-celled organisms can
manage, doesn't really say much about their ability
to raise their "fruit of the womb" into a responsible
adult.
On that topic, one of my revent peeves involves the
direct contravention of that heuristic - The idea that
the government should pay grandparents to take care of
their grandchildren when the real parents can't do so
adequately. Let's think about this for a moment - We
want to pay people who have ALREADY FAILED to produce
socially viable offspring, to fail once again with the
next generation? Yeah, great use of my tax
dollars.
Little ongoing maintenance? Mine cost me almost $200 per
year! Of course, for that price I get the use of two
of them, but still, hardly fair to call them "free"...
1) Download DBpoweramp: 3 minutes on DSL ...
Staying true to your nerd roots: timeless
Uhh, "real" geeks would use either EAC or, for the open-source
purists, CDex.
Not to start a religious vi-vs-emacs-esque war, but personally,
I prefer CDex not so much for its open-source-ness, but because
it has a HELL of a lot cleaner interface than EAC. Good example
of "the best" choice getting passed over because someone can't
bother to make a decent GUI (or just release a command-line
version with well-documented switches, even!).
For one thing, ripping an entire CD collection in a row
is a great way to ruin your CD drive.
Perhaps with a crappy $25 drive (though even if a cheap drive
did die, I'd consider that a fair enough expense to have my entire
collection ripped), but otherwise? I've ripped over 1500 CDs with
my current drive (a Pioneer A06), and it still reads and writes
just fine.
I do, however, limit it to ripping at 8x, because I find
that for anything but a perfect CD, it actually extracts the
audio faster at that speed than at a higher theoretical
speed needing far more reseeks. For some really badly scratched
discs, I've even limited it to rip at 1x, but on those sort of
discs, you have almost no shot of getting a clean rip anyway
(so I rip those to MP3 rather than FLAC, to let me know later
that I need to replace them in my collection when I get a chance).
especially in laptops.
Now that I won't dispute. Laptop drives, while "cute",
absolutely suck for heavy use. And they don't come in
a cheap $25 model, either. Short answer, just don't use laptops
for ripping.
For another thing, the ripping company only has to rip one
copy of each CD and then they store it on a server.
Hmm, now y'know, that makes me wonder... Rather than needing
to find and borrow a "good" copy of the above-mentioned
badly scratched discs, I wonder... If I got together the
dozen or so in my collection and sent them to such a ripping
company, would I actually get good rips back?
Of course, in my case - Probably not. I generally only
tolerate such badly scratched discs in the first place because
they count as extremely rare, basically irreplacable (including
a few given to me privately by the artist - Of all the people
to appreciate proper storage of music, you'd think the
musicians themselves would learn NOT to use paper envelopes
for CDs).
Could anyone knowledgeable care to comment on how
reliable this drive can be?
Unless a Seagate engineer that worked on this exact model
comes forward and reveals a secret serious flaw, then no,
NO ONE, not even other Seagate engineers, can tell
you much about this drive's reliability.
You'll hear plenty of anecdotes about reliability, and
every company has a hard-core "anti-fan" base who
will never buy that company's products again, after losing
their porn collection back in 1996.
Even within a drive family, you can't always extrapolate
reliability data to other members of that family. One
simple example I've seen (to my surprise) a lot here on
Slashdot - A lot of people consider Maxtor as good
for nothing but paperweights, because some of the earlier
members of the DiamondMax line really really sucked. I,
however, have half a dozen of the later DiamondMaxes in use
today, some as old as five years, without a single
failure, ever.
So, buy either the cheapest or the largest (or the inflection
in that curve, which IMO Maxtor usually solidly holds, thus
my using their drives almost exclusively), and just make sure
you have everything backed up. Because eventually, you will
have a catastrophic HDD failure. And as much as it sucks to waste
a few hours reinstalling your OS of choice, it sucks a LOT
more if you don't have all your software, porn, data (but I repeat
myself), music, and what-have-you readily available on a
backup.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a mere 160GB drive anyway, when you can
get nearly twice that for $20 more. But this may have one nice
side-effect, in that if Seagate pushes out a 4-platter 640GB drive
(hey, no one will ever need more than 640GB, right?), the
400s should finally drop down to the golden $100-$150 range.
No, more like "the reason I will chose job Y over job X".
I spend roughly half of my waking hours at work. Why
would I want to spend that much time with a bunch of
self-righteous micromanaging pricks, when I can spend it
with Kumbaya-singing hippies who appreciate a good Foozeball
game during the occasional break?
"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints..."
You dont need bean bags and ping pong tables to
come up with something "revolutionary,"
True, you do not.
But then, the "best" people, hippie or not, generally
prefer having such things available. Does your company
want the best people - Or want to chase them
away by eliminating all the little perks that make a job
fun?
Digital cameras currently have a very competitive market.
Every site has the same models for within a few bucks of each other,
pretty close to at-cost, and make it up on supplies (batteries,
chargers, SD/XD/sticks/whatever storage medium, docks, printers,
straps, cases, and of course the holy grail of ripoffs, the "extended
warranty").
When you see a site advertising a given model for $100 to $250 less
than everyone else, well, do you really think they plan to take a
loss on the camera itself? And even if they did take a
small loss (such as at-cost with free shipping), they sure
as hell won't sell for less than they can ever dream of making
back even if you bought every overpriced accessory they offer.
Just save yourself the trouble and use a reputable dealer like
Amazon or NewEgg for any electronics. They usually have
close to the lowest price, and factoring in the BS as part of the
cost, they almost always win without even a second thought.
I'd be interested in your thoughts regarding the 100-years or
so of legal agonizing over the so-called "yelling fire in a crowded
theater" scenario and where this fits in your thinking.
Good point - And if I ever believed in allowing some curtailing
of freedom of speech, you've hit on it. I do not, however, believe we
should ever curtail freedom of speech.
In your example, an act of speech threatens the greater good, due to
the threat of a "stampede" to get out. Althouh it sounds theoretically
bad, I have to ponder how I would actually react to hearing
someone shout "fire" in a crowded theatre.
First, I would most likely think "Huh? i heard something not part of
the movie... Hmm, sounded like... Fire? Hmm, no smoke or flames visible,
just some idiot justifying my normal aversion of theatres".
Second, if I did notice flames or smoke, I'd look around, find a
nearby exit, and get as close as possible without entering the "stampede".
I'd then wait patiently for either the crowd to successfully thin and get
out, or for the morons to crush one another so I could walk over the
bodies and get out myself.
I don't want to make it sound like I always "blame the victim", but I
can't help but think that in this case, if everyone acted the same
way I would, everyone would get out quickly and efficiently, as no
"stampede" would ever start that I felt a need to distance myself
from.
Actually, of more interest: in your mind, what situations would
require one's name to be attached? Any?
Easier question! A name has an attached reputation. By choosing to
post anonymously, semi-anonymously, or as myself, I choose a level
of credibility to attach to that post.
If I feel that something needs to get out to the public but revealing
it doesn't pose (much of) a threat to myself, I would do so under my
own name.
If I want to say something but it could potentially threaten
me if connected to my actual identity, though not really any
serious threat of bodily harm (for example, my employer might
conceivably not like some of what I have to say - Though for the
most part, I have nothing but praise of my current job, I really
do enjoy it and my coworkers), I can post it semi-anonymously,
using an on-line persona to which I have imparted some degree
of credibility within a given community (ie, "pla" on Slashdot).
And if I somehow obtained that Golden Memo, the One True Document,
signed and notarized, that reveals all the secrets of the Trilateral
comission and the Illuminati in one fell swoop, but revealing it
would mean my instant death - Well, I'd post it to a Wiki or blog
or even SlashDot, from a public PC (library or coffee shop, for
example) under an anonymous account. Though the identity may lack
any inherent credibility, I would hope the content would stand on
its own.
Now, you might notice that I write this from "pla" on Slashdot.
In the real world, we do not have "freedom" of speech. People
and organizations can punish me for writing things with
which they disagree - I live in a "right to work" state, which oddly
enough means the exact opposite (namely, my employer can fire me at
any time for no reason at all); My auto insurer might dislike that I
oppose posted speed limits and tend to ignore them (as an aside, I do
drive "safely", but see no reason to do 25 on a long straight wide
road in clear weather in the early afternoon just because the magical
black-on-white sign tells me to). I could go on,
but you see the trend.
No one cares enough about me to get a warrant for Slashdot's logs
to track me back to a posting IP, from which someone could
probably tell "me" from my housemate (since I've mentioned
my gender on several occasions, that counts as a pretty dead
giveaway). Someone reading one of my comments and thinking "wow,
pla seems like a total jerk, I'd like to give him a good boot to the
head if I could!", they might write a nasty reply and the issue ends
there. If, however, someone says "wow, I work with that guy, what
an ass, I'll do what I can to get him fired tomorrow!", I will at
the very least have a serious annoyance, up to a possible lack of a
job.
Let's see what happens with that claim if applied to other rights:
Ironically, your examples do more to support my point than
refute it. In every example you make, you provide outcomes
that break other laws. And yes, to do so with impunity
would require complete anonymity. But let's consider
them individually:
"Freedom of religion, by necessity, includes freedom after
sacrificing a captured non-believer." - I have the right to
believe anything I want. That right doesn't extend
to breaking (most) other laws, regardless of how much I may
"believe" I need to.
"includes freedom after fatally shooting unamred victims in the
back" - Ditto. I have the right to bear arms. That doesn't
equal the right to commit cold-blooded murder.
"freedom after creating a criminal gang and leading in an ongoing
pattern of criminal activity" - The fact that I can hang out with
whomever I (and they, reciprocally, with me) want does NOT
mean that we can just do whatever we want while exercising our
right "peaceably to assemble".
"freedom after deliberatiely publishing libelous stories
that destroy a victim's livelyhood" - I put this one last
because it comes the closest to freedom of speech, so I'll
elaborate the most on it.
Every week, the National Enquirer
publishes hundreds of stories that range from true-but-odd
to total fiction to bordering-on-libel. But, the secret here
that you've missed - No one believes them! Why not? Because
they publish what basically amounts to fiction, stretched-truths,
and lies. Thus, no one's career will end because the Enquirer
calls them a gay bestial pedophiliac. If the NYT made the
same claim, people would at least listen seriously, because
the NYT, as a non-anonymous entity, has a reputation for
usually reporting the truth. How long would they keep that
reputation if they made such claims frivolously?
By the same idea, even an "anonymous" person has a limited
reputation... Although I don't harbor any delusions that
someone couldn't connect my Slashdot account "pla" to my
IRL identity, I'll use that as an example. I have established,
on Slashdot for this handle, a fairly good reputation. If I
post something, I get a +1 for generally good karma, and 95
people (currently) give a boost to the score of what I post
(while 21 people don't want to hear it). If I suddenly started
posting nothing but trolls and inflamatory posts, my karma
would plummet, my friends would vanish, and my freaks would
increase rapidly. I would no longer have any credibility on
Slashdot.
And if I always posted as "Anonymous", which basically means I
have no established credibility? Well, personally, I almost
totally ignore those posts, and I expect others do the same.
Occasionally one will get modded up (which amounts to a form
of one-shot granting of credibility) and I'll consider the point
presented, but for the most part, "truly" anon posters just
don't exist in my SlashWorldView.
Truth is an absolute defense against claims of libel.
True (AFAIK), but not against "risk to national security".
And on some topics, "truth" doesn't apply, but raising the ire of
certain groups poses a direct threat to the speaker (Falun Gong
in China; "Speaking as an abortion doctor"; "The Don sent him
to sleep with the fishes"; etc).
But that in no way absoves the author or speaker of THEIR
responsibility,
I think you (and others) may have taken my assertion the
wrong way. I agree that a speaker/writer has a responsibility
to speak the truth - But that responsibility impacts their
own credibility. At the same time, nothing will ever
prevent some people from lying to and/or about you. So ultimately,
the responsibility for how you react to "free" speech rests on
you, not the speaker.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean a right to an audience.
Wikipedia is not a forum for opinions, it's an encyclopedia.
Everything written in it should be fact. In this context, I
believe everyone should be held accountable for what they write.
I agree, and consider it a valuable resource myself.
For that reason, the operators of the site can, should, and as a
response to this issue (though strangely not to the thousands of
instances of wiki-pollution we've all complained about in the
past), have (partially) limited editorial access to
those with valid accounts. Thus, the people who post absolute
crap can have their accounts locked and their IP banned from
creating a new account.
Most of the responses to my comment have failed to grasp one
simple fact - The freedom to speak does NOT include
the right to have an audience.
We also have a somewhat problematic distinction between
censure by a private entity vs by the government (I would
add to that "by a compulsory private entity", such as one's
bank, auto insurance company, or even employer; but the law
rarely makes that distinction, placing those usually
in the mostly-uncotrolled "private" category). A whole
world of difference exists between Wikipedia not
allowing someone access, and a government saying you can't
post on a given topic. Falun Gong today, Diebold tomorrow.
If you speak out for the assassination of the President,
you will likely get a visit to discuss your views.
"Free speech means that you can speak against government policies
that you do not agree with and the police won't kick in your door
in the middle of the night and make you disappear. "
"You may want to go back and read the bill of rights because
you do not have much of a clue about them."
The problem is that many people believe that actions - including
speech - shouldn't have consequences.
Freedom of speech, by necessity, includes freedom after speech.
In the real world, that usually requires anonymity.
In this particular situation, the speech involved counts as a stupid
joke, or possibly a subtle political jab. If, instead, the relevant
Wiki article had included concrete evidence that Bush and Blair lied
to the world for the purpose of controlling the world Mango market,
or a leaked internal memo showing the Diebold CEO deliberately
made defective machines that gave extra votes to Libertarians - Would
we still consider it an "abuse" of free speech, or exactly the reason
we need free speech?
Yes, with free speech comes a certain degree of responsibility... On
the part of the AUDIENCE. Charlatans and outright liers will
always exist, and would even if we didn't have a 1st
amendment in the US. Anyone who accepts a single Wiki entry as "proof"
of ANYTHING deserves the ridicule they get when more skeptical
readers point out the real facts.
You mean they actually found a computer user that doesn't
use Google?!? Not just one, but a whole group of them?!?
I found it hard to believe as well, until I started my most
recent job (from pure software to "everything and the kitchen
sink")...
I intially started giving new PCs Firefox with Google as the
homepage, as most people I knew preferred it that way.
People complained loudly, wondering where the "internet" had gone.
So I started changing the FireFox icon to MSIE's icon. Still
didn't help much...
I finally realized that everyone wanted MSN as their home page.
Unbelievable, but it made all the complaints go away... people
even like FireFox, as long as I set the homepage to MSN
for them.
I just don't get it. if you want prepackaged ad-heavy content
thrown at you, why not just watch TV? Well, I suppose people
can't watch TV at work, whereas they can justify a few
trips to a "legitimate" site such as MSN a few times a day.
Hint: none of these involve calculations using relativity.
For the rest, I would tend to agree with you. I don't know about the
"get to the moon" one, I thought they had to correct for relativity
for that one, but perhaps not. Either way, they wasted quite a lot of
precious cargo space to leave behind a relativity experiment, the LRRRA.
But if you extend the question to situations requiring more precision,
for example, "how do satellites stay in orbit" or "how does GPS work",
or even "where should I look to find star-X visually near the sun
during a solar eclipse", then classic physics falls flat on its
falling-apple-fattened butt. And going outside the realm of mere
kinetics - Let's see you make modern RF communication work without
going at least past Maxwell...
Newtonian physics "works" in the same way that Ptolemy's epicycles
"worked". They describe, to a useful level of precision, the
situation under consideration. But that doesn't make either of
them "right".
Note that I don't claim relativity has all the answers,
either - You brought that up, I just elaborated on what
I meant as an example of my original point, not an attempt to
overthrow classical physics.
Of course, I don't consider this particular side-topic a waste,
in that it somewhat illustrates the "real" problem with ID...
You made a decent point, that in the normal world, Newtonian
physics works just fine. I suspect you will grudgingly agree
with my above claim that it works, but only as long as you stay
at a high level or need only a rough answer.
But the people we talk about, who "believe" ID - They simply do
not have the basic science background necessary to appreciate
the distinction you and I discuss here. They accept ID as "science"
because they lack a suitable frame of reference from which to reject
that claim.
That doesn't necessarily make us "better" than them - Though I
certainly know which POV I would trust to potentially get a commoner
like myself off the planet (at least for a vacation) within my
lifetime.
But as head of a religious studies department, attacking
a given faith is just unprofessional.
You can teach Greek Mythology without always speaking the name
of "Zeus" with reverential awe.
You can even poke fun at your subject matter, depending on the
focus of the course - I fondly remember my 1st semester physics
professor ended practically every topic with something along the
lines of "and of course in the days since Newton, we've discovered
that most of this counts as complete rubbish, but I still expect
you to know it for the test".
In the case of the topic under consideration, I (and any
potential studend would) have every expectation this professor
did not plan to merely present it as an objective
overview of the tenets of ID (though students should of
course have come away understanding those); but rather, a
thorough debunking of a laughable-yet-popular ("popular"
in the sheer-number-of-fools sense) topic, possibly broad
enough to include a general overview of the roots of the
dangerously antiintellectual attitude currently brewing in
our culture.
Slight issue? Then that must be why we got to bash Sony
twice/day everyday for the past month or so. That is why if
you type "Sony Rootkit" you get 1,630,000 hits.
Unfortunately, 1.6 million geeks amounts to roughly one half of
one percent of the US population. Assuming this affects Western
Europe as well (and Google's count includes sites from there),
we have a really sad representation overall. Certainly
not enough to hurt Sony's bottom line by a boycott, by ourselves.
On the bright side, geeks tend to run things like, say, IT
departments that people go to when they have computer questions.
And when a trusted geek mentions something about Sony CDs
having DRM that, while not outright malicious, potentially
leaves your computer wide open to attacks by others... Well,
most people won't remember much beyond "Sony breaks my computer",
just in time for their holiday shopping spree.
Sigh. If only it didn't hurt so much to consider
that, as a consequence of people skipping Sony this holiday
season (sorry, "Solstice" - Wouldn't want to take the mythology
out of our annual materialism-fest) because, Microsoft may
come to dominate the console videogame market.
If lyric sites didn't exist, I would continue to go without
knowing what the song says. I wouldn't rush out to the store to
buy the lyrics/sheet music. Hell, I wouldn't even casually walk
to the store.
Well, in fairness, if I just happend to pass a store with
sheet music in the course of my daily travels, I might
have stopped in to look up a lyric...
Of course, I wouldn't ever buy the sheet music just to
satisfy a minor point of curiosity, but I might stop it and
take a quick peek to figure out a confusing phrase...
Yeah, yeah - Call me a thief. And I sometimes read the tabloids
while waiting too long in line at the supermarket.
What about debian that has a seperate non-us mirror for
software that's not allowed to distribute in the usa becaues
of crypto and patent laws?
Exactly my point (if phrased in a somewhat less
extremist manner)!
As long as a single country (*cough* Vanuatu *cough*), a single
state, a single town, a single pair of people, exists that
doesn't feel inclined to play ball with those who would lock
our culture away from us and charge us just for a peek, no one
can tell us "you can't use XOR because Microsoft owns the patent
on it". Or rather, they can tell us until they die from
exhaustion, but it
won't much matter, because this very much counts as a war of
attrition, and while corporations and governments may
theoretically live forever, real humans - Well, as
Doritos says, "Crunch all you want, we'll make more".
but I don't see on which you base it.
Simple civil disobedience. The fact that most of us
look proudly on the Boston tea party, sympathize with
the students at Tiennamen Square, root for Robin Hood,
cheer on "DVD Jon" (All "evil lawbreakers" in the
opinion of our political leaders and corporate masters)...
All those serve as proof enough to
me that we will eventually "win". It may take the blood
of billions, imprisoned and tortured in secret prisons in
the name of profit, but freedom has a way of popping up
even in the most oppressive of situations.
Even the uncertainty about the legal status of oss
Hmm, I don't think you quite followed my original meaning...
The "legal status" doesn't matter one whit in the long
term viability of open source.
For laws to matter, you need (at least) two preconditions...
One, which I already mentioned, you need a monopoly on laws.
The US doesn't have that. The EU doesn't have that. The UN
doesn't have that. I really doubt any single nation
will ever truly rule the entire human race for long.
And two: People need to believe in laws for those laws to have
any power. Laws very much count as consentual fiction - Take
away the "consent" part, and you have nothing but fiction. Case
in point, speed limits. Spooky Canadian GPS schemes aside, very
few people care much about the posted speed limits. And those
who get caught violating once or twice a year pay a pittance of
a "sin" tax for the privelage of going faster. Even with so draconian
a situation as the "War on (some) Drugs", you have somewhere
around a third of the population in open revolt against a set
of laws on which the US government (as an aggregate) spends the
MAJORITY of its policing budget, yet still fails to do more than
waste even more money filling prisons.
And sometimes, you will be able to find a news that is free
on one site, and by subscription on another (eg NYTimes vs CNN).
And sometimes, I can make my own bread instead of paying SunBeam
for the pasty white styrofoam they sell under that name.
I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy
You might think that, wouldn't you? But no. Spend all you want,
the governments will print more. Of course, the money you have
now becomes less valuable as a result, but if you think
we don't have inflation by design, I have a bridge to
sell you for just a dollar (inflation retroadjusted to the
birth of the solar system).
Search engines have been in common use for almost 15
years now. How much of a 'longer term' do you need?
Well, considering that printing presses have lasted around
550 years...
Publishers should enhance their content with proper use f metadata
Like, say, a "robots.txt" file saying Google shouldn't play there,
which Google honors?
In the meantime, it's all just sour grapes.
Speaking ow which, next thing you know, even vintners
will start complaining that their industry needs some sort of
protection from upstarts that can do the same thing better in
a different part of the world...
Fark cliche. He means "moran". And he even used
it in an apropos situation (ie, one where those doing
the bitching stand to hurt themselves the most by
virtue of their glaringly obvious ineptitude).
FOSS does not mean the voluntary contribution of a group
of stupid hippies to the business interests of the world.
Welcome back to the Wild West. He who can code, controls
the world. We write code. We use code. End
of story - Except...
Corporate America has a schizophrenic obsession with the code
we write and use. On the one hand, they see something for
free and want in. On the other, they see an ENORMOUS threat
to everything they stand for, and want us all taken out back
and shot.
Well, this time, it doesn't really matter what Corporate
America wants. They can play along if they want, but every
time they try to play (or buy) the new sheriff in town, they
get tarred and feathered and send home crying to mommy that we
treated them unfairly. "They broke my pathetically weak DRM!
They won't let me root their PCs! Make them play fair, Un'ca
Sam!"
Patents? What do the distros do about it? The "real" distros,
by which I mean those that don't have shareholders to answer to,
do nothing. And if they buckle, someone else will come along to
replace them - Once you know how, it doesn't take much to "roll
your own" distro (I say that as someone who has done it...
granted, maintaining one, with active users, takes a lot
of free time).
So stop Asking Slashdot what horrors will befall us when
the festering patent dungheap hits the cool-breeze-blowing
fan of Open Source. Because the fan gets a little dirty,
and keeps right on spinning, while those flinging the
feces get covered in shit.
Exaggeration? It modifies the behavior of the OS at the
lowest level possible for anyone outside Microsoft, for the
purpose of hiding files and processes performing whatever
Sony wants. It allows activity below the level of
any user environment, thus allowing for what amounts to the
ultimate in "privelage escalation". What do you
call a rootkit, if not that?
beneficial to the entertainment pigopolists
Puh-lease. I loathe the RIAA et al as much as the
next geek, but save the name-calling for the discussion.
FPs should at least pretend to have some objectivity.
If I still believed in Slashdot Editors (you know, like
Santa and the Tooth Fairy), I would say they should never
have let this one through.
How about instead of attacking the law enforcement agencies
for trying to do their job
Nuremburg?
"Just following orders" just doesn't cut it.
But no doubt I'll get modded to hell and back for
the reference to a certain unnamed historical police
state which no one seems to want to admit the US
(and western world in general) increasingly emulates.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously... The ones that love programming for the sheer "forcing my will on the computer" joy of hacking (which I do not conflate with cracking) eventually move on to hacking physical reality. Geeks (and I don't exclude myself) love that sort of thing, once they get over the fear of physical labor.
Of course, you might not want to forget two other factors that lead to the seeming shortage of geek greybacks... First, thanks to the huge growth in IT over the past couple decades (even taking the crash into consideration, since that had more to do with slapping VCs and twits who seriously believed that with enough layers of management, they didn't actually need either a product or any engineers), a lot of the previous generation of programmers actually went on to start their own small (and a few really big) businesses. And second, the entire field of modern electronics has only existed since 1947, and the IT aspect arguably only since 1965 with the PDP-8 (you could even go further and say 1981 with the IBM PC)... That means you only have 25 to 40 years of history for the entire modern IT industry. At the low end of that range, you wouldn't expect to see programmers past the early 40s, and at the far end, you only needed a few thousand "computer operators" nationwide, not a few million.
If you're not, don't tell this guy how to parent his children.
I love hearing this argument.
I have the wisdom not to go out and knock some chick up. I may at some point CHOOSE to reproduce, but I consider both financial stability and a detailed understanding of developmental psychology as prerequisites to that decision.
The fact that someone has managed to satisfy a basic biological urge that even single-celled organisms can manage, doesn't really say much about their ability to raise their "fruit of the womb" into a responsible adult.
On that topic, one of my revent peeves involves the direct contravention of that heuristic - The idea that the government should pay grandparents to take care of their grandchildren when the real parents can't do so adequately. Let's think about this for a moment - We want to pay people who have ALREADY FAILED to produce socially viable offspring, to fail once again with the next generation? Yeah, great use of my tax dollars.
and require very little ongoing maintenance.
Little ongoing maintenance? Mine cost me almost $200 per year! Of course, for that price I get the use of two of them, but still, hardly fair to call them "free"...
1) Download DBpoweramp: 3 minutes on DSL
...
Staying true to your nerd roots: timeless
Uhh, "real" geeks would use either EAC or, for the open-source purists, CDex.
Not to start a religious vi-vs-emacs-esque war, but personally, I prefer CDex not so much for its open-source-ness, but because it has a HELL of a lot cleaner interface than EAC. Good example of "the best" choice getting passed over because someone can't bother to make a decent GUI (or just release a command-line version with well-documented switches, even!).
For one thing, ripping an entire CD collection in a row is a great way to ruin your CD drive.
Perhaps with a crappy $25 drive (though even if a cheap drive did die, I'd consider that a fair enough expense to have my entire collection ripped), but otherwise? I've ripped over 1500 CDs with my current drive (a Pioneer A06), and it still reads and writes just fine.
I do, however, limit it to ripping at 8x, because I find that for anything but a perfect CD, it actually extracts the audio faster at that speed than at a higher theoretical speed needing far more reseeks. For some really badly scratched discs, I've even limited it to rip at 1x, but on those sort of discs, you have almost no shot of getting a clean rip anyway (so I rip those to MP3 rather than FLAC, to let me know later that I need to replace them in my collection when I get a chance).
especially in laptops.
Now that I won't dispute. Laptop drives, while "cute", absolutely suck for heavy use. And they don't come in a cheap $25 model, either. Short answer, just don't use laptops for ripping.
For another thing, the ripping company only has to rip one copy of each CD and then they store it on a server.
Hmm, now y'know, that makes me wonder... Rather than needing to find and borrow a "good" copy of the above-mentioned badly scratched discs, I wonder... If I got together the dozen or so in my collection and sent them to such a ripping company, would I actually get good rips back?
Of course, in my case - Probably not. I generally only tolerate such badly scratched discs in the first place because they count as extremely rare, basically irreplacable (including a few given to me privately by the artist - Of all the people to appreciate proper storage of music, you'd think the musicians themselves would learn NOT to use paper envelopes for CDs).
Could anyone knowledgeable care to comment on how reliable this drive can be?
Unless a Seagate engineer that worked on this exact model comes forward and reveals a secret serious flaw, then no, NO ONE, not even other Seagate engineers, can tell you much about this drive's reliability.
You'll hear plenty of anecdotes about reliability, and every company has a hard-core "anti-fan" base who will never buy that company's products again, after losing their porn collection back in 1996.
Even within a drive family, you can't always extrapolate reliability data to other members of that family. One simple example I've seen (to my surprise) a lot here on Slashdot - A lot of people consider Maxtor as good for nothing but paperweights, because some of the earlier members of the DiamondMax line really really sucked. I, however, have half a dozen of the later DiamondMaxes in use today, some as old as five years, without a single failure, ever.
So, buy either the cheapest or the largest (or the inflection in that curve, which IMO Maxtor usually solidly holds, thus my using their drives almost exclusively), and just make sure you have everything backed up. Because eventually, you will have a catastrophic HDD failure. And as much as it sucks to waste a few hours reinstalling your OS of choice, it sucks a LOT more if you don't have all your software, porn, data (but I repeat myself), music, and what-have-you readily available on a backup.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a mere 160GB drive anyway, when you can get nearly twice that for $20 more. But this may have one nice side-effect, in that if Seagate pushes out a 4-platter 640GB drive (hey, no one will ever need more than 640GB, right?), the 400s should finally drop down to the golden $100-$150 range.
that's a bunch of hippie, kumbaya bullshit.
No, more like "the reason I will chose job Y over job X".
I spend roughly half of my waking hours at work. Why would I want to spend that much time with a bunch of self-righteous micromanaging pricks, when I can spend it with Kumbaya-singing hippies who appreciate a good Foozeball game during the occasional break?
"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints..."
You dont need bean bags and ping pong tables to come up with something "revolutionary,"
True, you do not.
But then, the "best" people, hippie or not, generally prefer having such things available. Does your company want the best people - Or want to chase them away by eliminating all the little perks that make a job fun?
Digital cameras currently have a very competitive market. Every site has the same models for within a few bucks of each other, pretty close to at-cost, and make it up on supplies (batteries, chargers, SD/XD/sticks/whatever storage medium, docks, printers, straps, cases, and of course the holy grail of ripoffs, the "extended warranty").
When you see a site advertising a given model for $100 to $250 less than everyone else, well, do you really think they plan to take a loss on the camera itself? And even if they did take a small loss (such as at-cost with free shipping), they sure as hell won't sell for less than they can ever dream of making back even if you bought every overpriced accessory they offer.
Just save yourself the trouble and use a reputable dealer like Amazon or NewEgg for any electronics. They usually have close to the lowest price, and factoring in the BS as part of the cost, they almost always win without even a second thought.
I'd be interested in your thoughts regarding the 100-years or so of legal agonizing over the so-called "yelling fire in a crowded theater" scenario and where this fits in your thinking.
Good point - And if I ever believed in allowing some curtailing of freedom of speech, you've hit on it. I do not, however, believe we should ever curtail freedom of speech.
In your example, an act of speech threatens the greater good, due to the threat of a "stampede" to get out. Althouh it sounds theoretically bad, I have to ponder how I would actually react to hearing someone shout "fire" in a crowded theatre.
First, I would most likely think "Huh? i heard something not part of the movie... Hmm, sounded like... Fire? Hmm, no smoke or flames visible, just some idiot justifying my normal aversion of theatres".
Second, if I did notice flames or smoke, I'd look around, find a nearby exit, and get as close as possible without entering the "stampede". I'd then wait patiently for either the crowd to successfully thin and get out, or for the morons to crush one another so I could walk over the bodies and get out myself.
I don't want to make it sound like I always "blame the victim", but I can't help but think that in this case, if everyone acted the same way I would, everyone would get out quickly and efficiently, as no "stampede" would ever start that I felt a need to distance myself from.
Actually, of more interest: in your mind, what situations would require one's name to be attached? Any?
Easier question! A name has an attached reputation. By choosing to post anonymously, semi-anonymously, or as myself, I choose a level of credibility to attach to that post.
If I feel that something needs to get out to the public but revealing it doesn't pose (much of) a threat to myself, I would do so under my own name.
If I want to say something but it could potentially threaten me if connected to my actual identity, though not really any serious threat of bodily harm (for example, my employer might conceivably not like some of what I have to say - Though for the most part, I have nothing but praise of my current job, I really do enjoy it and my coworkers), I can post it semi-anonymously, using an on-line persona to which I have imparted some degree of credibility within a given community (ie, "pla" on Slashdot).
And if I somehow obtained that Golden Memo, the One True Document, signed and notarized, that reveals all the secrets of the Trilateral comission and the Illuminati in one fell swoop, but revealing it would mean my instant death - Well, I'd post it to a Wiki or blog or even SlashDot, from a public PC (library or coffee shop, for example) under an anonymous account. Though the identity may lack any inherent credibility, I would hope the content would stand on its own.
Now, you might notice that I write this from "pla" on Slashdot. In the real world, we do not have "freedom" of speech. People and organizations can punish me for writing things with which they disagree - I live in a "right to work" state, which oddly enough means the exact opposite (namely, my employer can fire me at any time for no reason at all); My auto insurer might dislike that I oppose posted speed limits and tend to ignore them (as an aside, I do drive "safely", but see no reason to do 25 on a long straight wide road in clear weather in the early afternoon just because the magical black-on-white sign tells me to). I could go on, but you see the trend.
No one cares enough about me to get a warrant for Slashdot's logs to track me back to a posting IP, from which someone could probably tell "me" from my housemate (since I've mentioned my gender on several occasions, that counts as a pretty dead giveaway). Someone reading one of my comments and thinking "wow, pla seems like a total jerk, I'd like to give him a good boot to the head if I could!", they might write a nasty reply and the issue ends there. If, however, someone says "wow, I work with that guy, what an ass, I'll do what I can to get him fired tomorrow!", I will at the very least have a serious annoyance, up to a possible lack of a job.
Let's see what happens with that claim if applied to other rights:
Ironically, your examples do more to support my point than refute it. In every example you make, you provide outcomes that break other laws. And yes, to do so with impunity would require complete anonymity. But let's consider them individually:
"Freedom of religion, by necessity, includes freedom after sacrificing a captured non-believer." - I have the right to believe anything I want. That right doesn't extend to breaking (most) other laws, regardless of how much I may "believe" I need to.
"includes freedom after fatally shooting unamred victims in the back" - Ditto. I have the right to bear arms. That doesn't equal the right to commit cold-blooded murder.
"freedom after creating a criminal gang and leading in an ongoing pattern of criminal activity" - The fact that I can hang out with whomever I (and they, reciprocally, with me) want does NOT mean that we can just do whatever we want while exercising our right "peaceably to assemble".
"freedom after deliberatiely publishing libelous stories that destroy a victim's livelyhood" - I put this one last because it comes the closest to freedom of speech, so I'll elaborate the most on it.
Every week, the National Enquirer publishes hundreds of stories that range from true-but-odd to total fiction to bordering-on-libel. But, the secret here that you've missed - No one believes them! Why not? Because they publish what basically amounts to fiction, stretched-truths, and lies. Thus, no one's career will end because the Enquirer calls them a gay bestial pedophiliac. If the NYT made the same claim, people would at least listen seriously, because the NYT, as a non-anonymous entity, has a reputation for usually reporting the truth. How long would they keep that reputation if they made such claims frivolously?
By the same idea, even an "anonymous" person has a limited reputation... Although I don't harbor any delusions that someone couldn't connect my Slashdot account "pla" to my IRL identity, I'll use that as an example. I have established, on Slashdot for this handle, a fairly good reputation. If I post something, I get a +1 for generally good karma, and 95 people (currently) give a boost to the score of what I post (while 21 people don't want to hear it). If I suddenly started posting nothing but trolls and inflamatory posts, my karma would plummet, my friends would vanish, and my freaks would increase rapidly. I would no longer have any credibility on Slashdot.
And if I always posted as "Anonymous", which basically means I have no established credibility? Well, personally, I almost totally ignore those posts, and I expect others do the same. Occasionally one will get modded up (which amounts to a form of one-shot granting of credibility) and I'll consider the point presented, but for the most part, "truly" anon posters just don't exist in my SlashWorldView.
Truth is an absolute defense against claims of libel.
True (AFAIK), but not against "risk to national security". And on some topics, "truth" doesn't apply, but raising the ire of certain groups poses a direct threat to the speaker (Falun Gong in China; "Speaking as an abortion doctor"; "The Don sent him to sleep with the fishes"; etc).
But that in no way absoves the author or speaker of THEIR responsibility,
I think you (and others) may have taken my assertion the wrong way. I agree that a speaker/writer has a responsibility to speak the truth - But that responsibility impacts their own credibility. At the same time, nothing will ever prevent some people from lying to and/or about you. So ultimately, the responsibility for how you react to "free" speech rests on you, not the speaker.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean a right to an audience.
Wikipedia is not a forum for opinions, it's an encyclopedia. Everything written in it should be fact. In this context, I believe everyone should be held accountable for what they write.
I agree, and consider it a valuable resource myself.
For that reason, the operators of the site can, should, and as a response to this issue (though strangely not to the thousands of instances of wiki-pollution we've all complained about in the past), have (partially) limited editorial access to those with valid accounts. Thus, the people who post absolute crap can have their accounts locked and their IP banned from creating a new account.
Most of the responses to my comment have failed to grasp one simple fact - The freedom to speak does NOT include the right to have an audience.
We also have a somewhat problematic distinction between censure by a private entity vs by the government (I would add to that "by a compulsory private entity", such as one's bank, auto insurance company, or even employer; but the law rarely makes that distinction, placing those usually in the mostly-uncotrolled "private" category). A whole world of difference exists between Wikipedia not allowing someone access, and a government saying you can't post on a given topic. Falun Gong today, Diebold tomorrow.
If you speak out for the assassination of the President, you will likely get a visit to discuss your views.
"Free speech means that you can speak against government policies that you do not agree with and the police won't kick in your door in the middle of the night and make you disappear. "
"You may want to go back and read the bill of rights because you do not have much of a clue about them."
The problem is that many people believe that actions - including speech - shouldn't have consequences.
Freedom of speech, by necessity, includes freedom after speech. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity.
In this particular situation, the speech involved counts as a stupid joke, or possibly a subtle political jab. If, instead, the relevant Wiki article had included concrete evidence that Bush and Blair lied to the world for the purpose of controlling the world Mango market, or a leaked internal memo showing the Diebold CEO deliberately made defective machines that gave extra votes to Libertarians - Would we still consider it an "abuse" of free speech, or exactly the reason we need free speech?
Yes, with free speech comes a certain degree of responsibility... On the part of the AUDIENCE. Charlatans and outright liers will always exist, and would even if we didn't have a 1st amendment in the US. Anyone who accepts a single Wiki entry as "proof" of ANYTHING deserves the ridicule they get when more skeptical readers point out the real facts.
You mean they actually found a computer user that doesn't use Google?!? Not just one, but a whole group of them?!?
I found it hard to believe as well, until I started my most recent job (from pure software to "everything and the kitchen sink")...
I intially started giving new PCs Firefox with Google as the homepage, as most people I knew preferred it that way.
People complained loudly, wondering where the "internet" had gone.
So I started changing the FireFox icon to MSIE's icon. Still didn't help much...
I finally realized that everyone wanted MSN as their home page.
Unbelievable, but it made all the complaints go away... people even like FireFox, as long as I set the homepage to MSN for them.
I just don't get it. if you want prepackaged ad-heavy content thrown at you, why not just watch TV? Well, I suppose people can't watch TV at work, whereas they can justify a few trips to a "legitimate" site such as MSN a few times a day.
Hint: none of these involve calculations using relativity.
For the rest, I would tend to agree with you. I don't know about the "get to the moon" one, I thought they had to correct for relativity for that one, but perhaps not. Either way, they wasted quite a lot of precious cargo space to leave behind a relativity experiment, the LRRRA.
But if you extend the question to situations requiring more precision, for example, "how do satellites stay in orbit" or "how does GPS work", or even "where should I look to find star-X visually near the sun during a solar eclipse", then classic physics falls flat on its falling-apple-fattened butt. And going outside the realm of mere kinetics - Let's see you make modern RF communication work without going at least past Maxwell...
Newtonian physics "works" in the same way that Ptolemy's epicycles "worked". They describe, to a useful level of precision, the situation under consideration. But that doesn't make either of them "right".
Note that I don't claim relativity has all the answers, either - You brought that up, I just elaborated on what I meant as an example of my original point, not an attempt to overthrow classical physics.
Of course, I don't consider this particular side-topic a waste, in that it somewhat illustrates the "real" problem with ID... You made a decent point, that in the normal world, Newtonian physics works just fine. I suspect you will grudgingly agree with my above claim that it works, but only as long as you stay at a high level or need only a rough answer.
But the people we talk about, who "believe" ID - They simply do not have the basic science background necessary to appreciate the distinction you and I discuss here. They accept ID as "science" because they lack a suitable frame of reference from which to reject that claim.
That doesn't necessarily make us "better" than them - Though I certainly know which POV I would trust to potentially get a commoner like myself off the planet (at least for a vacation) within my lifetime.
But as head of a religious studies department, attacking a given faith is just unprofessional.
You can teach Greek Mythology without always speaking the name of "Zeus" with reverential awe.
You can even poke fun at your subject matter, depending on the focus of the course - I fondly remember my 1st semester physics professor ended practically every topic with something along the lines of "and of course in the days since Newton, we've discovered that most of this counts as complete rubbish, but I still expect you to know it for the test".
In the case of the topic under consideration, I (and any potential studend would) have every expectation this professor did not plan to merely present it as an objective overview of the tenets of ID (though students should of course have come away understanding those); but rather, a thorough debunking of a laughable-yet-popular ("popular" in the sheer-number-of-fools sense) topic, possibly broad enough to include a general overview of the roots of the dangerously antiintellectual attitude currently brewing in our culture.
Slight issue? Then that must be why we got to bash Sony twice/day everyday for the past month or so. That is why if you type "Sony Rootkit" you get 1,630,000 hits.
Unfortunately, 1.6 million geeks amounts to roughly one half of one percent of the US population. Assuming this affects Western Europe as well (and Google's count includes sites from there), we have a really sad representation overall. Certainly not enough to hurt Sony's bottom line by a boycott, by ourselves.
On the bright side, geeks tend to run things like, say, IT departments that people go to when they have computer questions. And when a trusted geek mentions something about Sony CDs having DRM that, while not outright malicious, potentially leaves your computer wide open to attacks by others... Well, most people won't remember much beyond "Sony breaks my computer", just in time for their holiday shopping spree.
Sigh. If only it didn't hurt so much to consider that, as a consequence of people skipping Sony this holiday season (sorry, "Solstice" - Wouldn't want to take the mythology out of our annual materialism-fest) because, Microsoft may come to dominate the console videogame market.
Ah well, you win some, you lose some.
If lyric sites didn't exist, I would continue to go without knowing what the song says. I wouldn't rush out to the store to buy the lyrics/sheet music. Hell, I wouldn't even casually walk to the store.
Well, in fairness, if I just happend to pass a store with sheet music in the course of my daily travels, I might have stopped in to look up a lyric...
Of course, I wouldn't ever buy the sheet music just to satisfy a minor point of curiosity, but I might stop it and take a quick peek to figure out a confusing phrase...
Yeah, yeah - Call me a thief. And I sometimes read the tabloids while waiting too long in line at the supermarket.
What about debian that has a seperate non-us mirror for software that's not allowed to distribute in the usa becaues of crypto and patent laws?
Exactly my point (if phrased in a somewhat less extremist manner)! As long as a single country (*cough* Vanuatu *cough*), a single state, a single town, a single pair of people, exists that doesn't feel inclined to play ball with those who would lock our culture away from us and charge us just for a peek, no one can tell us "you can't use XOR because Microsoft owns the patent on it". Or rather, they can tell us until they die from exhaustion, but it won't much matter, because this very much counts as a war of attrition, and while corporations and governments may theoretically live forever, real humans - Well, as Doritos says, "Crunch all you want, we'll make more".
but I don't see on which you base it.
Simple civil disobedience. The fact that most of us look proudly on the Boston tea party, sympathize with the students at Tiennamen Square, root for Robin Hood, cheer on "DVD Jon" (All "evil lawbreakers" in the opinion of our political leaders and corporate masters)... All those serve as proof enough to me that we will eventually "win". It may take the blood of billions, imprisoned and tortured in secret prisons in the name of profit, but freedom has a way of popping up even in the most oppressive of situations.
Even the uncertainty about the legal status of oss
Hmm, I don't think you quite followed my original meaning... The "legal status" doesn't matter one whit in the long term viability of open source.
For laws to matter, you need (at least) two preconditions...
One, which I already mentioned, you need a monopoly on laws. The US doesn't have that. The EU doesn't have that. The UN doesn't have that. I really doubt any single nation will ever truly rule the entire human race for long.
And two: People need to believe in laws for those laws to have any power. Laws very much count as consentual fiction - Take away the "consent" part, and you have nothing but fiction. Case in point, speed limits. Spooky Canadian GPS schemes aside, very few people care much about the posted speed limits. And those who get caught violating once or twice a year pay a pittance of a "sin" tax for the privelage of going faster. Even with so draconian a situation as the "War on (some) Drugs", you have somewhere around a third of the population in open revolt against a set of laws on which the US government (as an aggregate) spends the MAJORITY of its policing budget, yet still fails to do more than waste even more money filling prisons.
And sometimes, you will be able to find a news that is free on one site, and by subscription on another (eg NYTimes vs CNN).
And sometimes, I can make my own bread instead of paying SunBeam for the pasty white styrofoam they sell under that name.
I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy
You might think that, wouldn't you? But no. Spend all you want, the governments will print more. Of course, the money you have now becomes less valuable as a result, but if you think we don't have inflation by design, I have a bridge to sell you for just a dollar (inflation retroadjusted to the birth of the solar system).
Search engines have been in common use for almost 15 years now. How much of a 'longer term' do you need?
Well, considering that printing presses have lasted around 550 years...
Publishers should enhance their content with proper use f metadata
Like, say, a "robots.txt" file saying Google shouldn't play there, which Google honors?
In the meantime, it's all just sour grapes.
Speaking ow which, next thing you know, even vintners will start complaining that their industry needs some sort of protection from upstarts that can do the same thing better in a different part of the world...
You mean: Get a brain moron or moran?
Fark cliche. He means "moran". And he even used it in an apropos situation (ie, one where those doing the bitching stand to hurt themselves the most by virtue of their glaringly obvious ineptitude).
FOSS does not mean the voluntary contribution of a group of stupid hippies to the business interests of the world.
Welcome back to the Wild West. He who can code, controls the world. We write code. We use code. End of story - Except...
Corporate America has a schizophrenic obsession with the code we write and use. On the one hand, they see something for free and want in. On the other, they see an ENORMOUS threat to everything they stand for, and want us all taken out back and shot.
Well, this time, it doesn't really matter what Corporate America wants. They can play along if they want, but every time they try to play (or buy) the new sheriff in town, they get tarred and feathered and send home crying to mommy that we treated them unfairly. "They broke my pathetically weak DRM! They won't let me root their PCs! Make them play fair, Un'ca Sam!"
Patents? What do the distros do about it? The "real" distros, by which I mean those that don't have shareholders to answer to, do nothing. And if they buckle, someone else will come along to replace them - Once you know how, it doesn't take much to "roll your own" distro (I say that as someone who has done it... granted, maintaining one, with active users, takes a lot of free time).
So stop Asking Slashdot what horrors will befall us when the festering patent dungheap hits the cool-breeze-blowing fan of Open Source. Because the fan gets a little dirty, and keeps right on spinning, while those flinging the feces get covered in shit.
although calling it a rootkit is an exaggeration
Exaggeration? It modifies the behavior of the OS at the lowest level possible for anyone outside Microsoft, for the purpose of hiding files and processes performing whatever Sony wants. It allows activity below the level of any user environment, thus allowing for what amounts to the ultimate in "privelage escalation". What do you call a rootkit, if not that?
beneficial to the entertainment pigopolists
Puh-lease. I loathe the RIAA et al as much as the next geek, but save the name-calling for the discussion. FPs should at least pretend to have some objectivity. If I still believed in Slashdot Editors (you know, like Santa and the Tooth Fairy), I would say they should never have let this one through.
How about instead of attacking the law enforcement agencies for trying to do their job
Nuremburg?
"Just following orders" just doesn't cut it.
But no doubt I'll get modded to hell and back for the reference to a certain unnamed historical police state which no one seems to want to admit the US (and western world in general) increasingly emulates.