The scanner issue is silly sensationalism that's gone overboard because nads are involved and the media have the maturity level of an adolescent. Flying on commercial transport is a choice, not a right. Meanwhile, the price of a small error in the air is hundreds of lives lost. If the idea that someone might see a grey outline of your nads while looking for weapons disgusts you, then stay on the ground. The idea of hundreds of people dying because some whackjob gets a box cutter onto a flight disgusts me. Giving up the outline of your nads to keep hundreds of people from dying falls into the category of acceptable prices to pay for security, and will probably allow us to do away with other intrusions (such as the metal detector, random pat-downs by TSA agents, or removing your shoes to put them through x-ray).
It isn't a game of semantics. If you're illogical, then what you say you expect is irrelevant. You have no logical expectation of privacy when you leave your blinds open or drive around in public. Those are the opposite of privacy.
And no, you shouldn't trust the government. It's made of people, and people, as you demonstrate, sometimes don't understand the things that are written down for them to understand, and prefer to impose their own interpretation.
Meanwhile, the government is not a monolith. It's made of individual people, and you can usually find someone in government willing to help you educate the people who are doing the wrong things to you.
The only really interesting thing you bring up is what if you drive onto private property with the tracker activated. And the answer will either be that it's not relevant and they can use the data they gather about your location within that property, or you can have it suppressed since they didn't have a warrant to track you within that property. The answer will very likely not be that they have to throw out all of the tracking data they have on you just because you "tagged up" in someone's garage, or that they can't track anyone this way at all.
The courts will probably rule that you have no expectation of your privacy when you are outside of your own home like they have ruled for just about everything else. Remember, this is the same court that allows warrant-less GPS devices to be placed on your cars. (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-27/justice/oregon.gps.surveillance_1_gps-device-appeals-chief-judge-alex-kozinski?_s=PM:CRIME)
That's because they're right. You don't have a right not to be followed around by the police, even if they do it sneakily. When you're in public, you're in public, not in private. The 4th Amendment protects your property and papers, but doesn't protect you from being observed; never did; and never will. If you want that, you need to keep people from observing you, by going inside and closing the blinds. You aren't surrounded by a coccoon of invisibility just because the police are interested in you.
You might try to parallel it with communications over the phone (or over the radio in the form of a cellphone), but in those cases you have an "expectation of privacy". You have no such expectation when transporting yourself bodily on the public ways.
The U.S. also has proportional representation. If your Congressional district can elect a third-party candidate, he will be seated in Congress.
The U.S. doesn't have a "two-party" system for any reason other than two parties have a lot more political skill than any third party does.
What the U.S. has that other countries don't have is direct election of the President (well, sort-of direct; there's an Electoral College in the way, but its flaws are subtle enough that nobody brings them up until something goes tits-up in the process). That avoids the situation where you hold a general election and still don't have a majority or coalition in the legislature that is capable of selecting a head of state.
And then there are countries with no government except in name (most in Africa, these days)...
Obama the Kenian follows his predecessor when it comes to law&order
I was listening until you went off into the generalistic weeds.
Obama is not following Bush. He's trying to extricate the government from Bush's stupid choices on law without simultaneously removing its power to govern. In some cases Obama's justice department has followed the Bush course, intending the courts to decide against Bush's ideals. That leaves the case decided, since the Obama government won't appeal it the way the Bush government would, to a Supreme Court that will not decide any case with the rights of the people as a primary focus.
College students living in a house with ~5 people, $30/month five ways for 1-mbit service comes to $6 per month per person, which two of the people don't pay until you padlock their rooms with a sign saying "see me".
Unless the house is near an open wi-fi, then nobody even brings up the issue of getting internet for the house.
The courts will see it as an invasion wherever it's an invasion, and as valid wherever it's valid, and will screw up the fringe cases that will become controversial until an apellate court gets it right or the Supreme Court does what the GOP chose them to do.
But while I will use a screwdriver as a hammer when a hammer isn't handy, I won't phone up Sears and say they need to make their screwdrivers with claw peens.
So libel and death threats are protected speech in America?
No.
What happens is, you offend someone, they sue you, or call the police, and then you are in court (the physical manifestation of the government) defending yourself. And if the charge is true, you are punished for it. Not for speech, but for its effects, however intangible.
And the entire time that your case is in the hands of the government, you may be subject to a gag order preventing you from speaking to anyone but your lawyer and the judge about anything the court decides you should not discuss.
"Freedom of speech" is a concept relating to certain features of the law, not an absolute reality.
No. You are still mistaking necessity for desire. A line-up at the least-objectionable workplace with requirements you meet does not imply that anyone finds the workplace at all "great".
Slashdot Mirror
The scanner issue is silly sensationalism that's gone overboard because nads are involved and the media have the maturity level of an adolescent. Flying on commercial transport is a choice, not a right. Meanwhile, the price of a small error in the air is hundreds of lives lost. If the idea that someone might see a grey outline of your nads while looking for weapons disgusts you, then stay on the ground. The idea of hundreds of people dying because some whackjob gets a box cutter onto a flight disgusts me. Giving up the outline of your nads to keep hundreds of people from dying falls into the category of acceptable prices to pay for security, and will probably allow us to do away with other intrusions (such as the metal detector, random pat-downs by TSA agents, or removing your shoes to put them through x-ray).
While they were paying attention to the throwing stars in his backpack, he stole the electronics industry of Japan and sold it to China.
1. Link
2. Submit
3. ???
4. RTFA
That explains it. I already knew he was only half-a-bee...
It isn't a game of semantics. If you're illogical, then what you say you expect is irrelevant. You have no logical expectation of privacy when you leave your blinds open or drive around in public. Those are the opposite of privacy.
And no, you shouldn't trust the government. It's made of people, and people, as you demonstrate, sometimes don't understand the things that are written down for them to understand, and prefer to impose their own interpretation.
Meanwhile, the government is not a monolith. It's made of individual people, and you can usually find someone in government willing to help you educate the people who are doing the wrong things to you.
The only really interesting thing you bring up is what if you drive onto private property with the tracker activated. And the answer will either be that it's not relevant and they can use the data they gather about your location within that property, or you can have it suppressed since they didn't have a warrant to track you within that property. The answer will very likely not be that they have to throw out all of the tracking data they have on you just because you "tagged up" in someone's garage, or that they can't track anyone this way at all.
Don't Linux users already have all sorts of paraphernalia to celebrate their iconoclastic nature?
Who's going to notice another sticker in that mess?
The courts will probably rule that you have no expectation of your privacy when you are outside of your own home like they have ruled for just about everything else. Remember, this is the same court that allows warrant-less GPS devices to be placed on your cars. (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-27/justice/oregon.gps.surveillance_1_gps-device-appeals-chief-judge-alex-kozinski?_s=PM:CRIME)
That's because they're right. You don't have a right not to be followed around by the police, even if they do it sneakily. When you're in public, you're in public, not in private. The 4th Amendment protects your property and papers, but doesn't protect you from being observed; never did; and never will. If you want that, you need to keep people from observing you, by going inside and closing the blinds. You aren't surrounded by a coccoon of invisibility just because the police are interested in you.
You might try to parallel it with communications over the phone (or over the radio in the form of a cellphone), but in those cases you have an "expectation of privacy". You have no such expectation when transporting yourself bodily on the public ways.
proportional representation
The U.S. also has proportional representation. If your Congressional district can elect a third-party candidate, he will be seated in Congress.
The U.S. doesn't have a "two-party" system for any reason other than two parties have a lot more political skill than any third party does.
What the U.S. has that other countries don't have is direct election of the President (well, sort-of direct; there's an Electoral College in the way, but its flaws are subtle enough that nobody brings them up until something goes tits-up in the process). That avoids the situation where you hold a general election and still don't have a majority or coalition in the legislature that is capable of selecting a head of state.
And then there are countries with no government except in name (most in Africa, these days)...
Obama the Kenian follows his predecessor when it comes to law&order
I was listening until you went off into the generalistic weeds.
Obama is not following Bush. He's trying to extricate the government from Bush's stupid choices on law without simultaneously removing its power to govern. In some cases Obama's justice department has followed the Bush course, intending the courts to decide against Bush's ideals. That leaves the case decided, since the Obama government won't appeal it the way the Bush government would, to a Supreme Court that will not decide any case with the rights of the people as a primary focus.
Tell them the part about the "precious bodily fluids".
(stops laughing)
Realistic situation:
College students living in a house with ~5 people, $30/month five ways for 1-mbit service comes to $6 per month per person, which two of the people don't pay until you padlock their rooms with a sign saying "see me".
Unless the house is near an open wi-fi, then nobody even brings up the issue of getting internet for the house.
Get the 400 mbit and then sell wi-fi connections to your neighbors.
They'll try.
They'll get sued.
The courts will see it as an invasion wherever it's an invasion, and as valid wherever it's valid, and will screw up the fringe cases that will become controversial until an apellate court gets it right or the Supreme Court does what the GOP chose them to do.
This ain't America's first rodeo.
Everyone bought the console to get the game. Didn't you know that?
Shirly.
But while I will use a screwdriver as a hammer when a hammer isn't handy, I won't phone up Sears and say they need to make their screwdrivers with claw peens.
It's true, but the government scientists with the data aren't allowed to tell you it's true.
If you only let the scientists who agree with you say what they want to say, it's the same thing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
-Ecclesiastes 1:9
You think there's nothing new since that was written?
The only thing that never really changes is that people think like that.
Everyone playing in the stock market or casino ipso facto has more money than sense.
A whale is someone who has more money than the other suckers, sometimes enough to make the other suckers all but superfluous.
Hello Zynga, Winnie the Zynga, My Little Zynga, Jiminy Zynga, Mary Kate and Ashley Zynga.
That stuff works both ways.
1. Make up a new game for facebook.
2. Wait for Zynga to rip it off.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Your webcam's on. HTH. Ew.
So libel and death threats are protected speech in America?
No.
What happens is, you offend someone, they sue you, or call the police, and then you are in court (the physical manifestation of the government) defending yourself. And if the charge is true, you are punished for it. Not for speech, but for its effects, however intangible.
And the entire time that your case is in the hands of the government, you may be subject to a gag order preventing you from speaking to anyone but your lawyer and the judge about anything the court decides you should not discuss.
"Freedom of speech" is a concept relating to certain features of the law, not an absolute reality.
No. You are still mistaking necessity for desire. A line-up at the least-objectionable workplace with requirements you meet does not imply that anyone finds the workplace at all "great".
Really?
IMO journalists have become entirely oblivious to what they're reporting, and just cut and paste into the format.
Case in point: this submission, which was pretty much drag-and-dropped into the /. submission box.