You can complain all you want that convicts shouldn't be getting stuff for free on your tax dime (never mind that you're already paying for their room and board anyway), but set aside your righteous indignation and think pragmatically.
If you put a black mark on convicts perpetually, you're basically guaranteeing that they'll spiral into a life of crime. What other option do they have? And what good does that do society? You give them an education and opportunity, at least there's a *chance* for positive outcome.
Yes, it costs more. Boo fucking hoo, it's called an investment and like any other investment, it carries some risk. It can't possibly be worse than the current system of "fuck you for life."
This is a GOOD thing, should be expanded into other occupational sectors and ought to become the national standard.
This was wide scale COMMERCIAL usage. Were all the licensing paid out appropriately, it may well have reached that number (I don't necessarily agree that "licensing" is right, but that's another issue for another day)
Large corporations can afford a huge payout and they should also have to play by different rules because of how said largeness affords them power and control that you and I can only dream of.
Individuals can't be expected to play by the same copyright rules and owe millions for downloading a movie for personal viewing. Kind of like how you aren't expected to file paperwork and require oversight from the SEC when you buy lunch for a friend. Both are be equally incredulous.
Or borrow one. This is what kids are for, specifically toddlers. My two-year-old niece *loves* answering telemarketers, tech support/collection scammers. Them, not so much.
You actually think any policy like this would get past a first draft from an intern? Any such a ideas would be quashed faster than you can say "campaign contributions."
Maintenance, schmaintenance, when was the last time you heard of an American spending more in something and thinking ahead to spend less later? (see: phone contracts)
Anything that only goes only 60 miles at a time and then takes all night to be able to start again is worthless other than for very short, painstakingly planned, local trips.
Even if the infrastructure *was* there, who is able to stop every 60 miles for several hours on end?
Even if you're buying it to be "green" (ugh), how much energy was needed and how much pollution was created in the manufacturing process vs. that of a dead-dinosaur automobile? There are reports that these figures are tremendously high *just* for the batteries. Are you really causing less pollution or just relocating it?
Speaking purely in terms of range capability, I think the Chevy Volt has the right idea. The propulsion is 100% electric. The batteries are charged by plugin or an gas-powered generator, so you use no fuel for short trips but can still make longer ones when you need to.
Why not a smartphone app that hooks into the mapping/GPS/nav services, shows a large flashing arrow and reads out navigationally with vocal commands via a bluetooth earphone?
That the government could do? Let's see, just off the top of my head...
Additional tax deductions, subsidies and funding to improve taxi and other public transportation services.
Coverage of taxi fares, at least during certain holidays where increased alcohol consumption is common. You get into any cab for free, the cab company reports their mileage to the appropriate government department and is paid according to their normal rates.
Loosening public transportation regulations to allow ride-sharing and ad-hoc taxiing services.
Free parking within large areas around bars and licensed restaurants so that people can leave their cars there and pick them up the next day when they're sober.
Monetary honorariums and tax deductions for time and mileage incurred by designated drivers.
Sponsoring or funding the creation of reliable ride-sharing and carpooling coordination software.
Creation, tax deductions and subsidization for drive-you-home-in-your-own-car services. Have alternating drivers and service vehicles for places with cold weather.
See? All things that could improve public safety as much as ill-conceptualized check stops without impeding everyone's rights... and it only took me a few minutes. But, as always, it's more fun, convenient and politically exploitable to play tough-guy cop and lord your power over everyone else.
At this time of year, they arbitrarily pull over any vehicle passing through an unpublished checkpoint, the location of which is kept secret for as long as possible, and interrogate every driver at the side of the road.
Police state manual entry #1: permit the arbitrary and sudden detaining of citizens for committing absolutely no offense (the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that this is somehow not in violation of our charter rights)
If they demand a sobriety test, it is *mandatory*... as in, you *cannot* legally refuse. Legally speaking, refusal is identical to guilt. You refuse out of principle (or maybe not wanting to be humiliated, demoralized and degraded, not to mention ostracized by your community...) you get cuffed, dragged into the cruiser and charged the same as if you over the limit, even if you were 100% sober.
Police state manual entry #2: leave discretion entirely at the whim of cops with no disincentive for corruption and get rid of those pesky requirements for consent.
Yes, currently, as far as I know, they need reasonable suspicion to demand a sobriety test... and when they come up with any bullshit they want, what court is going to believe your word over a cop's?
Police state manual entry #3: always give cops the benefit of the doubt, because an advanced pinky swear apparently bestows one with magic trustworthiness.
And nobody with credence fights this blatant abuse of power because OMGDRUNKDRIVERS... never mind that there are numerous other ways of preventing it that don't stampede over everyone's rights. But none really give that "tough on crime" appearance that works so well in a news spot.
Police state manual entry #4: gain a complacent public's majority support (making dissenters look like conspiracy theorist nutjobs) by convincing them that your "tough on crime for their safety." Don't tell them that they will eventually all be criminals (or already are because of vague laws that can be interpreted with equal vagueness) and will have their lives ruined whenever they become "inconvenient."
Your constitution may be spending it's retirement as toilet paper, but you might be surprised to learn that, in some factions of law, there are graver violations of rights being waged against your neighbors to the north.
And then they'd justify it with some horseshit-with-a-bow about cops having taken a sworn oath that the public hasn't, as if doing an advanced pinky-swear magically makes them trustworthy.
But unless you're a complete fuckup, monster, or just plain stupid, prison life, outside of the boredom, isn't a hellish nightmare for non-violent offenders.
Add to list: scrawny geek or nerd type with no social graces who everyone is conspiring to beat to death because of actions or inactions he isn't capable of understanding.
Is he really and truly PHYSICALLY dangerous? No. But prison isn't about simply physical protection of society. It's also about deterring those who abuse society on a constant basis.
I would agree with you if US prisons weren't for-profit, barbaric shitholes that commit (and/or permit) heinous human rights violations and perpetuate criminal activity.
Once you reform the criminal "justice" system to actually rehabilitate offenders instead of harden them, fully restore their rights rights upon release, halt the permanent ostracizing from society, remove non-crimes from the books, set reasonable and proportionate sentences, abolish for-profit prisons, put earnest effort into preventing horrific prison violence, clean up the living environment something better than third-world standards... then we'll talk about prison as a deterrent.
But, until then, it should only be used to house the most dangerous, violent, abhorrent and unrehabitable offenders. (notice I said and, not or) Even then, the despicable negligence and perpetuation of the horrific treatment towards prisoners should not be allowed to happen.
Prison should be a deterrent not because of the fear of frequent and grave danger to your life and person, but of the loss of selected civil rights (mobility, some association, some privacy, some speech). This is punishment enough; human rights should be transcendent to law and absolutely inalienable.
For this guy, house arrest with extremely restricted communications access (landline phone only, no internet access) and probably years of community service seems appropriate.
But, oh, one of his targets was a government contractor, so, of course, we need to send him to be "rehabilitated" by method of getting a dick up his ass for ten years.
But I really wish the phone technology ecosystem didn't *require* good people, like the guys at CM, to do what they do.
I'm referring mostly to the locked-down, restrictive, anti-user bullshit that defines the smartphone world. Boot loaders that are locked, software that you can't easily remove... change any of that and you'll void your warranty, of course. When's the last time you voided a warranty on a real computer's hardware for modifying some fucking *software*?!
I should be able to pop in a micro SD card into any smartphone (yes, all smartphones should support one) and install any operating system with the right drivers.
Instead, we need to figure out why people give proportionally less, and address the issue
We used to call that "progressive taxation". Policy makers were smart enough to realize that the rich could not be trusted to support society out of the good of their own hearts (HA!), but apparently not smart enough to prevent the infiltration of government and dismantling of sensible tax policy.
TFA states that journalists can still use proper photography gear. This is likely to expand the loop between shooting and publishing so it can go through channels, which is kinda censorship-ish and creepy.
Although, this quote then makes absolutely no sense:
"Organizers won't be able to have any effect on normal spectators, but supporters will be banned from bringing reflex cameras and nonprofessional equipment to the competitions," Konov added.
"Reflex" cameras, as he calls them, are DSLRs (Digital Single Lens REFLEX), which *are* professional equipment, so methinks he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Assuming he got his jargon wrong and DSLRs are allowed, I do like the unintended consequence of increasing the overall artistic and technical quality of the photography. Smartphone cameras are shit.
I'll bet that tactic worked great when prisons weren't privately run for profit and when making arrests was actually an expense to the state instead of a revenue.
Correlation may very well not prove causation, but when you don't have a control and all or a non-trivial number of the empirical data points are saying the same thing, you turn to Occam's razor.
What is more likely...
That earthquakes are just suddenly occurring where they previously never have and are occurring more frequently and violently where they normally have... and that it's just pure coincidence that the times and locations are exactly aligned with the advent of the fracking boom?
Or...
That earthquakes, which we know are caused by instability in the Earth's crust, just might be result of recently punching massive holes and billions of fissures in the Earth's crust?
The Linux Colonel stayed in the 2.x numbers for many years. I even remember a post by Linux Torvalds on the mailing list saying that there would never ever be a version 3.0. At the time I thought that was pretty weird. I mean, things are going to get a little strange when you get to version 2.99.99.99.99.99.
So,obviously he changed his mind and not only went to 3.0 but apparently he is bored with 3.x and wants to jump from 3.19 directly to 4.0.
Maybe he's jealous of Firefox and Chrome and is trying to catch up to them.
Amazing what someone genuinely passionate about their work and free of corporate pressures can accomplish.
When was the last time you heard about a major version of Windows that was purely for much-needed bug fixes instead of trying to force bullshit "features" like Metro?
How and what are you backing up? Continual structural disk images? Virtual RAID? Autonomous files with periodic synchronization?
If it's the first two, how close is your neighbor? Close enough for a good 300mpbs 802.11n signal? Maybe with a WDS/client bridge or two? Would you be able to bury some conduit piping and feed through a CAT6 Ethernet?
If it's the latter, a good software client with speed limit enforcement and pause/resume support should be adequate to run it over your Internet connection.
In any case, create a full backup locally first and walk it over to your neighbor, then continue your incrementals or synchronizations afterwards.
Y'know, we're having this argument based on the complete assumption that he was blasting through traffic. For all we know, he slowed down to near the speed limit and put the pedal to the metal only on wide open, arrow straight sections of highway (of which there are a lot in North America)
And even if he didn't, reaction time matters a lot less when you have brakes that really work. If you've never driven a high performance car with proper brakes, you're just not going to be able to grasp this.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing mixed about it.
You can complain all you want that convicts shouldn't be getting stuff for free on your tax dime (never mind that you're already paying for their room and board anyway), but set aside your righteous indignation and think pragmatically.
If you put a black mark on convicts perpetually, you're basically guaranteeing that they'll spiral into a life of crime. What other option do they have? And what good does that do society? You give them an education and opportunity, at least there's a *chance* for positive outcome.
Yes, it costs more. Boo fucking hoo, it's called an investment and like any other investment, it carries some risk. It can't possibly be worse than the current system of "fuck you for life."
This is a GOOD thing, should be expanded into other occupational sectors and ought to become the national standard.
It's about usage and proportionality.
This was wide scale COMMERCIAL usage. Were all the licensing paid out appropriately, it may well have reached that number (I don't necessarily agree that "licensing" is right, but that's another issue for another day)
Large corporations can afford a huge payout and they should also have to play by different rules because of how said largeness affords them power and control that you and I can only dream of.
Individuals can't be expected to play by the same copyright rules and owe millions for downloading a movie for personal viewing. Kind of like how you aren't expected to file paperwork and require oversight from the SEC when you buy lunch for a friend. Both are be equally incredulous.
Or borrow one. This is what kids are for, specifically toddlers. My two-year-old niece *loves* answering telemarketers, tech support/collection scammers. Them, not so much.
You actually think any policy like this would get past a first draft from an intern? Any such a ideas would be quashed faster than you can say "campaign contributions."
America is fucked.
Price, range and infrastructure.
Maintenance, schmaintenance, when was the last time you heard of an American spending more in something and thinking ahead to spend less later? (see: phone contracts)
Anything that only goes only 60 miles at a time and then takes all night to be able to start again is worthless other than for very short, painstakingly planned, local trips.
Even if the infrastructure *was* there, who is able to stop every 60 miles for several hours on end?
Even if you're buying it to be "green" (ugh), how much energy was needed and how much pollution was created in the manufacturing process vs. that of a dead-dinosaur automobile? There are reports that these figures are tremendously high *just* for the batteries. Are you really causing less pollution or just relocating it?
Speaking purely in terms of range capability, I think the Chevy Volt has the right idea. The propulsion is 100% electric. The batteries are charged by plugin or an gas-powered generator, so you use no fuel for short trips but can still make longer ones when you need to.
Why not a smartphone app that hooks into the mapping/GPS/nav services, shows a large flashing arrow and reads out navigationally with vocal commands via a bluetooth earphone?
...that warrants the what-is-this-doing-on-Slashdot response. As if any of us are qualified to comment on the topic...
That the government could do? Let's see, just off the top of my head...
Additional tax deductions, subsidies and funding to improve taxi and other public transportation services.
Coverage of taxi fares, at least during certain holidays where increased alcohol consumption is common. You get into any cab for free, the cab company reports their mileage to the appropriate government department and is paid according to their normal rates.
Loosening public transportation regulations to allow ride-sharing and ad-hoc taxiing services.
Free parking within large areas around bars and licensed restaurants so that people can leave their cars there and pick them up the next day when they're sober.
Monetary honorariums and tax deductions for time and mileage incurred by designated drivers.
Sponsoring or funding the creation of reliable ride-sharing and carpooling coordination software.
Creation, tax deductions and subsidization for drive-you-home-in-your-own-car services. Have alternating drivers and service vehicles for places with cold weather.
See? All things that could improve public safety as much as ill-conceptualized check stops without impeding everyone's rights ... and it only took me a few minutes. But, as always, it's more fun, convenient and politically exploitable to play tough-guy cop and lord your power over everyone else.
This is the norm in Canada.
At this time of year, they arbitrarily pull over any vehicle passing through an unpublished checkpoint, the location of which is kept secret for as long as possible, and interrogate every driver at the side of the road.
Police state manual entry #1: permit the arbitrary and sudden detaining of citizens for committing absolutely no offense (the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that this is somehow not in violation of our charter rights)
If they demand a sobriety test, it is *mandatory* ... as in, you *cannot* legally refuse. Legally speaking, refusal is identical to guilt. You refuse out of principle (or maybe not wanting to be humiliated, demoralized and degraded, not to mention ostracized by your community...) you get cuffed, dragged into the cruiser and charged the same as if you over the limit, even if you were 100% sober.
Police state manual entry #2: leave discretion entirely at the whim of cops with no disincentive for corruption and get rid of those pesky requirements for consent.
Yes, currently, as far as I know, they need reasonable suspicion to demand a sobriety test ... and when they come up with any bullshit they want, what court is going to believe your word over a cop's?
Police state manual entry #3: always give cops the benefit of the doubt, because an advanced pinky swear apparently bestows one with magic trustworthiness.
And nobody with credence fights this blatant abuse of power because OMGDRUNKDRIVERS ... never mind that there are numerous other ways of preventing it that don't stampede over everyone's rights. But none really give that "tough on crime" appearance that works so well in a news spot.
Police state manual entry #4: gain a complacent public's majority support (making dissenters look like conspiracy theorist nutjobs) by convincing them that your "tough on crime for their safety." Don't tell them that they will eventually all be criminals (or already are because of vague laws that can be interpreted with equal vagueness) and will have their lives ruined whenever they become "inconvenient."
Your constitution may be spending it's retirement as toilet paper, but you might be surprised to learn that, in some factions of law, there are graver violations of rights being waged against your neighbors to the north.
All of them.
And then they'd justify it with some horseshit-with-a-bow about cops having taken a sworn oath that the public hasn't, as if doing an advanced pinky-swear magically makes them trustworthy.
But unless you're a complete fuckup, monster, or just plain stupid, prison life, outside of the boredom, isn't a hellish nightmare for non-violent offenders.
Add to list: scrawny geek or nerd type with no social graces who everyone is conspiring to beat to death because of actions or inactions he isn't capable of understanding.
Is he really and truly PHYSICALLY dangerous? No. But prison isn't about simply physical protection of society. It's also about deterring those who abuse society on a constant basis.
I would agree with you if US prisons weren't for-profit, barbaric shitholes that commit (and/or permit) heinous human rights violations and perpetuate criminal activity.
Once you reform the criminal "justice" system to actually rehabilitate offenders instead of harden them, fully restore their rights rights upon release, halt the permanent ostracizing from society, remove non-crimes from the books, set reasonable and proportionate sentences, abolish for-profit prisons, put earnest effort into preventing horrific prison violence, clean up the living environment something better than third-world standards ... then we'll talk about prison as a deterrent.
But, until then, it should only be used to house the most dangerous, violent, abhorrent and unrehabitable offenders. (notice I said and, not or) Even then, the despicable negligence and perpetuation of the horrific treatment towards prisoners should not be allowed to happen.
Prison should be a deterrent not because of the fear of frequent and grave danger to your life and person, but of the loss of selected civil rights (mobility, some association, some privacy, some speech). This is punishment enough; human rights should be transcendent to law and absolutely inalienable.
For this guy, house arrest with extremely restricted communications access (landline phone only, no internet access) and probably years of community service seems appropriate.
But, oh, one of his targets was a government contractor, so, of course, we need to send him to be "rehabilitated" by method of getting a dick up his ass for ten years.
Or you could remove the SIM card
This is called "firmware", dipshit.
Non-story, move along.
But I really wish the phone technology ecosystem didn't *require* good people, like the guys at CM, to do what they do.
I'm referring mostly to the locked-down, restrictive, anti-user bullshit that defines the smartphone world. Boot loaders that are locked, software that you can't easily remove ... change any of that and you'll void your warranty, of course. When's the last time you voided a warranty on a real computer's hardware for modifying some fucking *software*?!
I should be able to pop in a micro SD card into any smartphone (yes, all smartphones should support one) and install any operating system with the right drivers.
Y'know, like a *computer* (because it is one)
Instead, we need to figure out why people give proportionally less, and address the issue
We used to call that "progressive taxation". Policy makers were smart enough to realize that the rich could not be trusted to support society out of the good of their own hearts (HA!), but apparently not smart enough to prevent the infiltration of government and dismantling of sensible tax policy.
TFA states that journalists can still use proper photography gear. This is likely to expand the loop between shooting and publishing so it can go through channels, which is kinda censorship-ish and creepy.
Although, this quote then makes absolutely no sense:
"Organizers won't be able to have any effect on normal spectators, but supporters will be banned from bringing reflex cameras and nonprofessional equipment to the competitions," Konov added.
"Reflex" cameras, as he calls them, are DSLRs (Digital Single Lens REFLEX), which *are* professional equipment, so methinks he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Assuming he got his jargon wrong and DSLRs are allowed, I do like the unintended consequence of increasing the overall artistic and technical quality of the photography. Smartphone cameras are shit.
Slashdot still shows the IE8 icon.
I'll bet that tactic worked great when prisons weren't privately run for profit and when making arrests was actually an expense to the state instead of a revenue.
Correlation may very well not prove causation, but when you don't have a control and all or a non-trivial number of the empirical data points are saying the same thing, you turn to Occam's razor.
... and that it's just pure coincidence that the times and locations are exactly aligned with the advent of the fracking boom?
What is more likely...
That earthquakes are just suddenly occurring where they previously never have and are occurring more frequently and violently where they normally have
Or...
That earthquakes, which we know are caused by instability in the Earth's crust, just might be result of recently punching massive holes and billions of fissures in the Earth's crust?
The Linux Colonel stayed in the 2.x numbers for many years. I even remember a post by Linux Torvalds on the mailing list saying that there would never ever be a version 3.0. At the time I thought that was pretty weird. I mean, things are going to get a little strange when you get to version 2.99.99.99.99.99.
So,obviously he changed his mind and not only went to 3.0 but apparently he is bored with 3.x and wants to jump from 3.19 directly to 4.0.
Maybe he's jealous of Firefox and Chrome and is trying to catch up to them.
Maybe it indicates a promotion to general.
Amazing what someone genuinely passionate about their work and free of corporate pressures can accomplish.
When was the last time you heard about a major version of Windows that was purely for much-needed bug fixes instead of trying to force bullshit "features" like Metro?
How and what are you backing up? Continual structural disk images? Virtual RAID? Autonomous files with periodic synchronization?
If it's the first two, how close is your neighbor? Close enough for a good 300mpbs 802.11n signal? Maybe with a WDS/client bridge or two? Would you be able to bury some conduit piping and feed through a CAT6 Ethernet?
If it's the latter, a good software client with speed limit enforcement and pause/resume support should be adequate to run it over your Internet connection.
In any case, create a full backup locally first and walk it over to your neighbor, then continue your incrementals or synchronizations afterwards.
Y'know, we're having this argument based on the complete assumption that he was blasting through traffic. For all we know, he slowed down to near the speed limit and put the pedal to the metal only on wide open, arrow straight sections of highway (of which there are a lot in North America)
And even if he didn't, reaction time matters a lot less when you have brakes that really work. If you've never driven a high performance car with proper brakes, you're just not going to be able to grasp this.
Yes, it's called UltraVNC