Spraying a highly toxic gas (which cannot be smelled after it passes a certain threshold) over large areas of land? What could possibly go wrong? I know I'll sleep better at night knowing gas regulators never fail, nor do meters ever give inaccurate readings.
I don't see DRM as being incompatible with openness. The ability to save off content has nothing to do with how open (or not) a standard is. Why wouldn't Firefox implement it?
I think the summary writer is confusing "non-openness" with "things I don't like".
Hmmm... which is more likely? An utterly inoffensive group providing free education materials on the internet is the victim of a shadowy government conspiracy, or that one of the 1,200 other sites on the same IP did something sufficiently stupid as to attract govt. attention.
I know that the summary and the article both mention that the latter is a possibility, but the headline, summary, and article, are all written as if the most likely possibility was that MFU was targeted directly.
I suspect that the ISP got a request from somebody about one of the hosted sites doing something very naughty, and the person who's job it was to pay attention to such requests didn't get them or ignored them, so an IP block was the next step.
This was kind of funny, but from reading the article it looks like he took it way too seriously. (And it seemed he frequently used "shareholder value" or "shareholder votes" as a good excuse for doing what he wanted to do instead of doing what his girlfriend wanted him to do.)
Reading the article, arguing that he didn't think it would be harmful was indeed tried in court. The court didn't buy it... it would indeed be hard to argue that without a diminished capacity defense
Wait a minute... you are arguing that he intended to "shock the pilots" while they were landing the plane but thought that that action wouldn't have any consequences?
Unless he went with a "diminished mental capacity" defense, indicating he is a certified moron, I don't see how you can argue that "shocking the pilots" landing a plane isn't meant to be harmful.
If he were driving a car, we'd call it reckless endangerment... the sentence seems about right. Not a specific intention to kill, but also an utter disregard for the possibly deadly consequences of his actions.
Why would you assume the plane was several km away? Even the most steely aim of a simple handheld pointer isn't going to hit a target that far away, yet he was successful in hitting the cockpit, and caused significant impairment. Sounds like more than "hardly an annoyance" to me.
Why wouldn't he cover his ass by not pointing at the helicopter? Well, the rules of evidence don't require criminals to not be morons. He probably thought is was just as funny to light up a police helicopter.
While many (most?) commercial aircraft do indeed have Autoland system, they are rarely actually used. Ask any actual airline pilot about this.
And he was shining a laser pointer, not a flashlight. And shining at the cockpit, not some easier target.
And obviously it was bright enough to notice, as the pilot called it in.
And I doubt it was a mile or two away.
And at night, the micro-scratches in the plexiglass plane windshields, make a laser-pointer hit very dangerous indeed. The pilot isn't going to have burns on his retina, but he isn't going to be able to see out the thing either.
"For doing something dumb (not intending to harm anybody)"
What, precisely, do you think he had in mind when aiming a laser pointer in the cockpit of an airplane lining up for a landing? "Harmless", my a$$.
This was a serious violent crime. Period. End of story. The fact that his crime failed to have the intended result doesn't mean he gets a slap on the wrist.
In their native applications, CD/DVD lasers are incredibly weak; usually under 1mW. While the diodes can be brought up to higher power by ripping them out and supplying them with proper cooling, laser pointers (especially poorly-regulated imports) are dangerous right out of the box; no hacking needed. If you ripped the cover off a boombox and held down the interlock switch, it's doubtful you could even see it more than a couple of feet away unless the holder had REALLY good aim.
I realize that Google Reader probably did not make enough money, and/or drive enough traffic, to justify its continued existence. But I spend more time on Google Reader than any other website, by a considerable margin, and I'll miss it.
I'd even pay, if they offered it as a subscription service for a nominal fee.
I don't get it. If some WAH employees are not producing, why not simply fire them? (And, for that matter, reprimand their managers, who let them get away with it.) Why ban WAH for the employees that ARE getting their jobs done?
Okay, WAH requires a better work ethic than working from a desk. But if an employee can't hack it (for whatever reason) the solution is to get rid of the employee, not piss off half the company in an attempt to bring the slackers in line.
I don't understand. Why does it need to be "stable" to be used for exchanges? By some measures, the US dollar has dropped by a factor of 100 in a century; is that stable?
The USD has never changed in value by a factor of two inside of two months. Yes, compared to BitCoins, the USD is solid as a rock. I was referring to short-term fluctuations, not long-term trends. (Long-term trends can be accounted for... wild intra-day fluctuations that would drive any normal economy into economic paralysis cannot.)
If a currency's value relative to other goods is increasing, it does indeed make for a nice store of value. (That is what investments are for.) But as a medium of exchange (what most people refer to when they say "currency"), a rapid increase in value makes it considerably LESS valuable.
My "deflation phobia" doesn't refer to long, gradual, deflation. Whatever. Japan has had it for years, and while their economy isn't thriving, it's not in the depths of depression. Deflation can be countered against via interest rates to a limited amount. My "deflation phobia" refers to the extremely rapid deflation of the BitCoin, which is another matter entirely.
BitCoin is not a form of money, yet.
I know that. That's the point I keep repeating. (That it's an investment, not a viable general-purpose currency.) So what point are you making, exactly?
But if there is true "deflation", i.e. the price of goods keeps getting cheaper and cheaper relative to a currency due to productivity increases, then only the most promising entrepenurial endeavors can hope to improve the situation further. Most ideas would be malinvestments and the discouragement of borrowing makes sense.
Deflation of 100% in two months doesn't "discourage" borrowing; it makes it completely, utterly, impossible. 100% 60-day interest rate makes the most ruthless loan shark look like a screaming bargain.
As I said, apparently economics is invalid when an economist says something you disagree with, but the absolutely trustworthy when an economist makes a point in the other direction?
The deflation/depression study was a single study using a limited set of data points, and acknowledged limitations (which you conveniently overlooked.) I don't think that it demonstrated conclusively that any particular theory was right or wrong (nor did it pretend to.) It certainly made some good points, but that's a long way away from what you are claiming.
Did you read me (or the GP) arguing that BitCoins are useless because an entire BitCoin is worth too many USD? No. (I'm aware many people that don't like BitCoins make this argument, but I'm not one of them.)
The fact that you can keep slicing BitCoins into tinier and tinier pieces doesn't solve the problems deflation introduces. It helps somewhat with it's usefulness for individual transactions, that's all. The basic problem introduced by the fact that a BitCoin now is worth WAY more than one a year ago remains.
Again, it's value going up is great if you want to use it as an investment. There are lots of different things you can use as a hedge against USD inflation. But I'm referring to BitCoin's alleged use as a general purpose currency. And I think I make a pretty convincing argument that as a currency, it's less than ideal, to say the least.
With a 60 basis point spread, plus your transaction costs for sweeping, plus the volatility induced by the lag between your transaction and when you can unload the things, that's a pretty steep surcharge. While that may be worth it as an "anonymity shield", as a general-purpose currency, why would you use this instead of USD?
I've been saying this ever since Slashdot started carrying every last bit of news about BitCoins. I get flamed every time. Without fail. (Apparently, I "enjoy" inflation, am a crude fighter against innovation, and any understanding of economics I have is not relevant because apparently the entire discipline is invalid. (Unless, of course, it agrees with whatever said BitCoin fanboy is saying.))
For a currency to be useful as a medium of exchange, you want it to be STABLE in regards to the value of whatever it is you want to purchase. (And if it can't be stable, it should at least be predictable.) High volatility, with and edge towards deflation (due to irreplaceable currency loss and any increases in the size of the BitCoin "economy"), makes for a rather poor currency. (You'd have to be completely, utterly, nuts to ever even THINK about taking out a loan in the things)
It's deflated by about 100% in the last month, and as I type this, the current bid/ask spread is 66 basis points. It's what you would expect with a thinly-traded stock; not a serious currency.
An increase in the value vs. the USD is only useful if you are using BtC's as an investment.
You are correct. I knew Ellsberg worked on the Pentagon Papers, but I thought that he obtained a copy through other sources after he left RAND.
However, in any case, the Pentagon Papers were not a "data dump" of a gigantic pile of government secrets. This makes for a rather more sympathetic case for Ellsberg.
In addition, if not for the blatant misconduct of the US Government, it is highly probable Ellsberg would have been found guilty.
Now, I won't defend the Army's treatment of Manning after his arrest. But he shouldn't have been surprised he was charged with the crimes he is accused of.
This is different from the Ellsburg case, in that Ellsberg did not have an active clearance at the time he acquired and distributed the Pentagon Papers. Bradley Manning was an active-duty serviceman, and as such was subject to the restrictions imposed on him by his security clearance. Every person with security clearance is required to sign a document stating that if you ever disclose classified material acquired in the course of your duties to anyone not entitled to have it, the government will prosecute you to the hilt. It's not an ambiguous or hard-to-understand document.
If he had selectively disclosed evidence of malfeasance, that would be one thing, and it would make him a whistle-blower. But he did a complete data dump of diplomatic cables, much of which was sensibly-classified material, the disclosure of which was indeed harmful to national interests, both to security and otherwise.
Yes, there are many unique things about American culture. But you could say the same thing about pretty much any culture (that's what makes travel so interesting.) What makes America inherently "less average" than any other arbitrary group of people? I could find an "outlier" in just about any population: culture is young/old, independent/ex-colony, western/eastern, rich/crushingly-poor, city-based/rural-based, agrarian/heavy-industry, landlocked/an island, peaceful/war-torn, democracy/despotism, capitalist/socialist/communist, nationalist/regioned, immagrant-heavy/isolationist, etc. How can we even guess if a particular society's "quirk" (vs. most of the rest of the world), and every society is going to have at least one, effects the results?
For example: I could say: "Results from China are going to be suspect because their culture is far older than norms, and the strange mix of Confucianism, Communism, and Capitalism is replicated nowhere else in the world." "Brazil is no good because their relatively recent colonial past has polluted the results vs. what we would expect from an older society, and there's too much variation between rural tribes and the denizens of Rio." You get the idea...
And what use is the "Global Mean" anyway? Even if such a population existed, how much predictive effect would it have for an individual situation?
I'm not sure you could pick any single population of people (other than the human race as a whole) and call them an "average representation." I'm guessing that in some aspects, every culture will have some attributes in which it differs markedly from the average.
In the particular subset tested, Americans were different, but it seems to be drawing a bit of a broad brush to say that it follows that all sociological studies run on Americans will come out different, while implying that other study subjects would be superior.
Slashdot Mirror
Spraying a highly toxic gas (which cannot be smelled after it passes a certain threshold) over large areas of land? What could possibly go wrong? I know I'll sleep better at night knowing gas regulators never fail, nor do meters ever give inaccurate readings.
I don't see DRM as being incompatible with openness. The ability to save off content has nothing to do with how open (or not) a standard is. Why wouldn't Firefox implement it?
I think the summary writer is confusing "non-openness" with "things I don't like".
Hmmm... which is more likely? An utterly inoffensive group providing free education materials on the internet is the victim of a shadowy government conspiracy, or that one of the 1,200 other sites on the same IP did something sufficiently stupid as to attract govt. attention.
I know that the summary and the article both mention that the latter is a possibility, but the headline, summary, and article, are all written as if the most likely possibility was that MFU was targeted directly.
I suspect that the ISP got a request from somebody about one of the hosted sites doing something very naughty, and the person who's job it was to pay attention to such requests didn't get them or ignored them, so an IP block was the next step.
If they demand payment via Western Union, it cannot be traced, and I'm pretty sure $5k is under their max transaction amount.
This was kind of funny, but from reading the article it looks like he took it way too seriously. (And it seemed he frequently used "shareholder value" or "shareholder votes" as a good excuse for doing what he wanted to do instead of doing what his girlfriend wanted him to do.)
Reading the article, arguing that he didn't think it would be harmful was indeed tried in court. The court didn't buy it... it would indeed be hard to argue that without a diminished capacity defense
Wait a minute... you are arguing that he intended to "shock the pilots" while they were landing the plane but thought that that action wouldn't have any consequences?
Unless he went with a "diminished mental capacity" defense, indicating he is a certified moron, I don't see how you can argue that "shocking the pilots" landing a plane isn't meant to be harmful.
If he were driving a car, we'd call it reckless endangerment... the sentence seems about right. Not a specific intention to kill, but also an utter disregard for the possibly deadly consequences of his actions.
Why would you assume the plane was several km away? Even the most steely aim of a simple handheld pointer isn't going to hit a target that far away, yet he was successful in hitting the cockpit, and caused significant impairment. Sounds like more than "hardly an annoyance" to me.
Why wouldn't he cover his ass by not pointing at the helicopter? Well, the rules of evidence don't require criminals to not be morons. He probably thought is was just as funny to light up a police helicopter.
While many (most?) commercial aircraft do indeed have Autoland system, they are rarely actually used. Ask any actual airline pilot about this.
And he was shining a laser pointer, not a flashlight. And shining at the cockpit, not some easier target.
And obviously it was bright enough to notice, as the pilot called it in.
And I doubt it was a mile or two away.
And at night, the micro-scratches in the plexiglass plane windshields, make a laser-pointer hit very dangerous indeed. The pilot isn't going to have burns on his retina, but he isn't going to be able to see out the thing either.
"For doing something dumb (not intending to harm anybody)"
What, precisely, do you think he had in mind when aiming a laser pointer in the cockpit of an airplane lining up for a landing? "Harmless", my a$$.
This was a serious violent crime. Period. End of story. The fact that his crime failed to have the intended result doesn't mean he gets a slap on the wrist.
In their native applications, CD/DVD lasers are incredibly weak; usually under 1mW. While the diodes can be brought up to higher power by ripping them out and supplying them with proper cooling, laser pointers (especially poorly-regulated imports) are dangerous right out of the box; no hacking needed. If you ripped the cover off a boombox and held down the interlock switch, it's doubtful you could even see it more than a couple of feet away unless the holder had REALLY good aim.
I realize that Google Reader probably did not make enough money, and/or drive enough traffic, to justify its continued existence. But I spend more time on Google Reader than any other website, by a considerable margin, and I'll miss it.
I'd even pay, if they offered it as a subscription service for a nominal fee.
"I think nationally this is a turning point"
Errr... a single ruling by a single county non-appeals judge in Ohio isn't any kind of "turning point", even for Ohio, much less nationally.
I think somebody has delusions of grandeur.
I don't get it. If some WAH employees are not producing, why not simply fire them? (And, for that matter, reprimand their managers, who let them get away with it.) Why ban WAH for the employees that ARE getting their jobs done?
Okay, WAH requires a better work ethic than working from a desk. But if an employee can't hack it (for whatever reason) the solution is to get rid of the employee, not piss off half the company in an attempt to bring the slackers in line.
I don't understand. Why does it need to be "stable" to be used for exchanges? By some measures, the US dollar has dropped by a factor of 100 in a century; is that stable?
The USD has never changed in value by a factor of two inside of two months. Yes, compared to BitCoins, the USD is solid as a rock. I was referring to short-term fluctuations, not long-term trends. (Long-term trends can be accounted for... wild intra-day fluctuations that would drive any normal economy into economic paralysis cannot.)
If a currency's value relative to other goods is increasing, it does indeed make for a nice store of value. (That is what investments are for.) But as a medium of exchange (what most people refer to when they say "currency"), a rapid increase in value makes it considerably LESS valuable.
My "deflation phobia" doesn't refer to long, gradual, deflation. Whatever. Japan has had it for years, and while their economy isn't thriving, it's not in the depths of depression. Deflation can be countered against via interest rates to a limited amount. My "deflation phobia" refers to the extremely rapid deflation of the BitCoin, which is another matter entirely.
BitCoin is not a form of money, yet.
I know that. That's the point I keep repeating. (That it's an investment, not a viable general-purpose currency.) So what point are you making, exactly?
But if there is true "deflation", i.e. the price of goods keeps getting cheaper and cheaper relative to a currency due to productivity increases, then only the most promising entrepenurial endeavors can hope to improve the situation further. Most ideas would be malinvestments and the discouragement of borrowing makes sense.
Deflation of 100% in two months doesn't "discourage" borrowing; it makes it completely, utterly, impossible. 100% 60-day interest rate makes the most ruthless loan shark look like a screaming bargain.
As I said, apparently economics is invalid when an economist says something you disagree with, but the absolutely trustworthy when an economist makes a point in the other direction?
The deflation/depression study was a single study using a limited set of data points, and acknowledged limitations (which you conveniently overlooked.) I don't think that it demonstrated conclusively that any particular theory was right or wrong (nor did it pretend to.) It certainly made some good points, but that's a long way away from what you are claiming.
Did you read me (or the GP) arguing that BitCoins are useless because an entire BitCoin is worth too many USD? No. (I'm aware many people that don't like BitCoins make this argument, but I'm not one of them.)
The fact that you can keep slicing BitCoins into tinier and tinier pieces doesn't solve the problems deflation introduces. It helps somewhat with it's usefulness for individual transactions, that's all. The basic problem introduced by the fact that a BitCoin now is worth WAY more than one a year ago remains.
Again, it's value going up is great if you want to use it as an investment. There are lots of different things you can use as a hedge against USD inflation. But I'm referring to BitCoin's alleged use as a general purpose currency. And I think I make a pretty convincing argument that as a currency, it's less than ideal, to say the least.
With a 60 basis point spread, plus your transaction costs for sweeping, plus the volatility induced by the lag between your transaction and when you can unload the things, that's a pretty steep surcharge. While that may be worth it as an "anonymity shield", as a general-purpose currency, why would you use this instead of USD?
I've been saying this ever since Slashdot started carrying every last bit of news about BitCoins. I get flamed every time. Without fail. (Apparently, I "enjoy" inflation, am a crude fighter against innovation, and any understanding of economics I have is not relevant because apparently the entire discipline is invalid. (Unless, of course, it agrees with whatever said BitCoin fanboy is saying.))
For a currency to be useful as a medium of exchange, you want it to be STABLE in regards to the value of whatever it is you want to purchase. (And if it can't be stable, it should at least be predictable.) High volatility, with and edge towards deflation (due to irreplaceable currency loss and any increases in the size of the BitCoin "economy"), makes for a rather poor currency. (You'd have to be completely, utterly, nuts to ever even THINK about taking out a loan in the things)
It's deflated by about 100% in the last month, and as I type this, the current bid/ask spread is 66 basis points. It's what you would expect with a thinly-traded stock; not a serious currency.
An increase in the value vs. the USD is only useful if you are using BtC's as an investment.
You are correct. I knew Ellsberg worked on the Pentagon Papers, but I thought that he obtained a copy through other sources after he left RAND.
However, in any case, the Pentagon Papers were not a "data dump" of a gigantic pile of government secrets. This makes for a rather more sympathetic case for Ellsberg.
In addition, if not for the blatant misconduct of the US Government, it is highly probable Ellsberg would have been found guilty.
Now, I won't defend the Army's treatment of Manning after his arrest. But he shouldn't have been surprised he was charged with the crimes he is accused of.
This is different from the Ellsburg case, in that Ellsberg did not have an active clearance at the time he acquired and distributed the Pentagon Papers. Bradley Manning was an active-duty serviceman, and as such was subject to the restrictions imposed on him by his security clearance. Every person with security clearance is required to sign a document stating that if you ever disclose classified material acquired in the course of your duties to anyone not entitled to have it, the government will prosecute you to the hilt. It's not an ambiguous or hard-to-understand document.
If he had selectively disclosed evidence of malfeasance, that would be one thing, and it would make him a whistle-blower. But he did a complete data dump of diplomatic cables, much of which was sensibly-classified material, the disclosure of which was indeed harmful to national interests, both to security and otherwise.
Yes, there are many unique things about American culture. But you could say the same thing about pretty much any culture (that's what makes travel so interesting.) What makes America inherently "less average" than any other arbitrary group of people? I could find an "outlier" in just about any population: culture is young/old, independent/ex-colony, western/eastern, rich/crushingly-poor, city-based/rural-based, agrarian/heavy-industry, landlocked/an island, peaceful/war-torn, democracy/despotism, capitalist/socialist/communist, nationalist/regioned, immagrant-heavy/isolationist, etc. How can we even guess if a particular society's "quirk" (vs. most of the rest of the world), and every society is going to have at least one, effects the results?
For example: I could say: "Results from China are going to be suspect because their culture is far older than norms, and the strange mix of Confucianism, Communism, and Capitalism is replicated nowhere else in the world." "Brazil is no good because their relatively recent colonial past has polluted the results vs. what we would expect from an older society, and there's too much variation between rural tribes and the denizens of Rio." You get the idea...
And what use is the "Global Mean" anyway? Even if such a population existed, how much predictive effect would it have for an individual situation?
I'm not sure you could pick any single population of people (other than the human race as a whole) and call them an "average representation." I'm guessing that in some aspects, every culture will have some attributes in which it differs markedly from the average.
In the particular subset tested, Americans were different, but it seems to be drawing a bit of a broad brush to say that it follows that all sociological studies run on Americans will come out different, while implying that other study subjects would be superior.