There have been stories of boxes of paper ballots disappearing.
How hard is it to design ballot boxes with a tamper resistent tracking device and to have cameras watching when the ballot papers go in and when the boxes are opened to count the votes?
I think you are confusing the/. crowd with the 'normal' mom & pop crowd. For the non-technical people it is much easier to press a box with the person's name (which then changes color) that poke a hole in a card.
It's even simpler to place a cross in a box on a piece of paper/card.
There is no way that 911 happened the way the official story claims.
The official story is one of the more crazy conspiracy theories.
I wish people would stop pretending it did. For one thing, 6 of the named terrorist purportedly responsible are known to be very much alive and not involved at all. For another there is the inconvenient free fall collapse speed of the buildings.
Including WTC7 which wasn't even hit by a plane. There's also the ineptitude of NORAD. The obviously planted "evidence". Even the way that the "hijackers" appear to have taken actions to minimise casualties. Anyone capable of planning such an attack would known to take over the planes close to the target (e.g. on the ground at one of the three airports near New York) picked a time when there were most people in the WTC and arranged to hit The Pentagon anywhere other than the recently reinforced section.
You might want to look up this little thing called "colonialism". In particular, you might want to look up the Philippine-American War (note the concentration camps that were operated by the USA).
Following on from the Spanish-American War, in which the US occupied (and continues to occupy) an entirely neutral country. The idea of an isolationist US appears to be nothing more than a myth. Maybe you'd need to go back to the early 19th century to find an example of this.
Because a passenger airplane can be used as a cruise missile. While I'm sure it can be done, it's a lot harder to take out a building in a densely populated urban area with a train.
You can also use a truck. Trucks are generally a lot easier to get hold of than planes and can be modified to be more effective.
Also, the kind of explosion one can create with carry-on luggge liquids probably won't kill many people on a train. At best, it would probably only take out that particular car.
Derailing a train has the potential to kill a lot of people. It dosn't take much exposive to damage the track.
On a plane, you don't need that large of an explosion to bring the whole thing down.
It depends where the explosive is. Many of the most vulnerable places are inaccessible from the passenger cabin.
The US wasn't attacked because terrorists hate freedom, it was attacked because the US continually, and aggressively, involves itself in Middle Eastern politics. Honestly if the US stopped with Afghanistan then worked to make friends with the Middle East I very much believe that most, if not all of the major attacks against the west (ie train and subway bombings) would not have occurred. Now much of this aggressiveness is due to things like support for Israel which you may believe is a worthy cause,
In order to "make friends" the US would need to adopt an at least neutral stand on Israel (e.g. "no more money and weapons, you're on your own"). This is unlikely to happen when you have a US Congress which is more pro-Zionist than The Kenesset.
But an engine EXPLOSION or detachment tends to rupture hydraulic lines, in ways that cause loss of hydraulic pressure throughout the system. Then you lose control of all the control surfaces, which usually means the plane augers in.
It tends to be a matter of chance, including exactly which engine expodes. Consider that even with an exposion of the number 2 engine a United DC10 was able to crash land with no hydraulic systems operational.
If you've got one and it is operational, then you have to find a trained operator. Even "fire and forget" missiles require some skill to operate, and even if the weapon is American-proof simple to use, the operator still needs to be familiar with the ideal operating envelope - what aspect should the target be engaged with (head-on? tailchaser? deflection?) Does the position of the sun matter? Do you aim at an engine, or centre of mass? Lead or lag?
A "terrorist" is unlikely to have proper training in the use of such weapons. The probably don't have any target drones or missiles to "waste". Thus they'd need to recurit someone already trained by a proper military.
Assuming a hit, the odds on downing the aircraft are not good. Airliners are big, solid aircraft, and shoulder-fired missiles by design cannot have very large warheads - you have to package propulsion, guidance, and warhead into something light enough to be carried by a single person. Being struck by a missile is certainly unpleasant, but I'd expect any modern airliner to be able to suffer catastrophic failure of a single engine and still be able to fly (long enough to get back down at least).
Containment of a catastropic failure is a test which is carried out on the engine housing. For the more likely senario of blade failure due to foreign object ingestion (including bird strikes).
That's not to say that the missile *couldn't* bring down a liner (sever the controls to a control surface and I think you've got a crash) but neither are you looking at a Hollywood style giant fireball.
This is more likely with a warplane, since these tend to contain munitions. Quite a bit of an airliner is filled with nothing but air and at the altitudes where a MPWS is effective pressurisation isn't an issue.
To be fair, the US has been doing that for quite a while now, and to be fair, if the foreign citizens were on US soil, and had broken US law (they weren't just share holders, but ex-executives of netteller), then you will be arrested if they catch you.
Were they executives when the US law came into effect though?
This should be interesting, to see how foreign countries react to the detention of their citizens for something so paltry...
From the legal POV it would also be relevent if these people had passed through US immigration and which airline they had flow in on. In other words if they were actually in the US when they were arrested. Though it's unlikely that there will be even the mildest of diplomatic protests, considering the inaction which has been shown towards the US's other "arrests" of non US citizens in questionable situations.
At a certain level, even Microsoft will pay attention to a fine. Fine them $10-20 billion, and although it won't break their piggy bank, it will make a substantial difference.
Any fine would have to be large enough to cause Microsoft considerable cash flow problems. If it was too small or they had too long a period to pay it then all they will do is pass costs on to their customers. It would probably be far more effective to either force Microsoft to shut down for a period of time or to revoke copyrights and/or patents.
Thats like saying a convicted rapist needs time to change. Do we allow the rapist to continue and scale down his activities over time? Hell, no. We do something that makes it impossible to conduct business as usual. I'd be very surprised if the law made provision for convicted monopolists to continue their trade either.
This is one of the most obvious ways in which the idea of corporations as "people" completely falls apart. A real person who is even accused is likely to be restricted in what they can do. By either being locked up or subject to bail conditions. If they are convicted the only way in which they can appeal might be from a prison cell or subject to some kind of curfew. No "business as usual". Are corporations required to restrict their activities whilst an investigation is ongoing? Let alone stop everything for a trial...
I'd rather we skip the monetary fines that are becoming meaningless
There isn't really much point in fining an abusive monopoly. The actual would need to weaken that monopoly. At best fines do nothing, at worst they can make things worst.
No, that is really not the same at all. First off, the parking ticket would have occurred in a foreign country, and so you shouldn't be punished for it in the US.
US Citizens can be subject to US law, even if they are not actually in the US at the time of the incident. (Even if what they are doing is perfectly legal where they are at the time.)
Second, the right to vote is guaranteed to all citizens by the US Constitution. A patent is temporary property; the right to vote is a basic right of all citizens.
Except that people in the US can be barred from voting for life, even after they have supposedly completed whatever sentence a court might have handed out. (Even if that sentence does not explicitally prevent them from voting.)
Revoking MS' patents would be more like issuing a very large fine, and forcing the company to pay it.
Since patents are granted on the whim of the state valuewise they would be "fiat money".
The GPL extends the rights you have by copyright law.
An EULA restricts the rights you have by copyright law.
You might as well compare apples with lumber. All they have in common is that they come from a kind of plant known as a "tree". A more meaningful comparison for the GPL would be a publishing contract. (As for something to compared with an EULA you'd have a hard time finding something which wasn't practiced by a con artist.)
The original poster was quite correct that the GPL is a minefield. The fact that you often know when you're entering it (unlike software patents) does not remove the minefield. The only way to avoid the minefield is to completely avoid GPL platforms and code, or to GPL absolutely everything you produce.
You can just as easily wind up with problems between different pieces of proprietary code. Even if they use the "same" licence...
I have no problem with people discussing anything they like, anywhere.
I think it's ridiculous to believe that sort of thing advances science. It doesn't. There's exactly one place where scientific discussion advances, and it's in peer reviewed scientific journals. Period.
It isn't that simple, given that it is equally possible for "peer reviewed journals" to promote dogma and "political correctness".
Censorship is a solution, just not one you use in a free society. People define thoughtcrimes to make their jobs easier because it doesn't force them to debate items in question (from Holocaust denial to questioning state history to global warming).
As well as applying lables which at best mislead (at worst completly misrepresent) skeptics' points of view. (In addition these "advocates" may misrepresent their own position. Feminists make a good a "textbook example" as Zionists.)
It is alarming how many people object to diversity in thought.
It's especially ironic when it's so called "diversity experts/advocates" doing this.
However one thing that really makes me skeptical is the religious zeal with which it is pushed. In most science it seems to be that when you have a theory you know is right and plenty of proof, you've no need to shout down your skeptics.
Indeed a need to censor skeptics itself looks highly suspicious. The implication is that your claims are unsupported and you know it. (Possibly even you believe that some of the skeptics have better theories but cannot accept "losing face".)
But that's not how it goes with GW. If you are a skeptic you are shouted down as an idiot, an industry shill, someone not to be listened to, and now even threatened with stripping them of rank.
About the only good point is that there isn't (yet) a call to start jailing skeptics.
The reason religions do that is because there's NOT proof so it is dangerous to them when people start claiming something other than what they believe.
A skeptic dosn't have to actually claim any alternative theories. Simply pointing out holes in the claims of the "faithful" is usually sufficent to invoke a hostile response in these kind of situations.
In fact most countries within America are nothing like each other. you use the U.S.A. and America as interchangeable regions when they are in fact not. The laws of the U.S.A. don't necessarily affect other American countries.
Not for want of trying on the part of the USA. e.g. trying to get Canadians to change their copyright laws.
And yet it doesn't have popular support and is viewed by many as a puppet of the US. If Bush manages to establish a democracy in Iraq, it'll be the first time it was done by an invader - frankly, I don't have much faith in that.
"First time" as in "first time in recorded history"... So far as the US goes the history is more one of overthrowing democratic governments (by either invasion or sponsoring terrorists) and imposing dictatorships. Not only does the US have no history in "exporting democracy" it's own democratic credentials are fairly weak. Especially compared with parts of Europe, let alone ancient Athens.
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There have been stories of boxes of paper ballots disappearing.
How hard is it to design ballot boxes with a tamper resistent tracking device and to have cameras watching when the ballot papers go in and when the boxes are opened to count the votes?
I think you are confusing the /. crowd with the 'normal' mom & pop crowd. For the non-technical people it is much easier to press a box with the person's name (which then changes color) that poke a hole in a card.
It's even simpler to place a cross in a box on a piece of paper/card.
There is no way that 911 happened the way the official story claims.
The official story is one of the more crazy conspiracy theories.
I wish people would stop pretending it did. For one thing, 6 of the named terrorist purportedly responsible are known to be very much alive and not involved at all. For another there is the inconvenient free fall collapse speed of the buildings.
Including WTC7 which wasn't even hit by a plane. There's also the ineptitude of NORAD. The obviously planted "evidence". Even the way that the "hijackers" appear to have taken actions to minimise casualties.
Anyone capable of planning such an attack would known to take over the planes close to the target (e.g. on the ground at one of the three airports near New York) picked a time when there were most people in the WTC and arranged to hit The Pentagon anywhere other than the recently reinforced section.
You might want to look up this little thing called "colonialism". In particular, you might want to look up the Philippine-American War (note the concentration camps that were operated by the USA).
Following on from the Spanish-American War, in which the US occupied (and continues to occupy) an entirely neutral country.
The idea of an isolationist US appears to be nothing more than a myth. Maybe you'd need to go back to the early 19th century to find an example of this.
Trains are slow and don't have that much fuel(in fact, non at all).
What do you think "diesel trains" run on?
Because a passenger airplane can be used as a cruise missile. While I'm sure it can be done, it's a lot harder to take out a building in a densely populated urban area with a train.
You can also use a truck. Trucks are generally a lot easier to get hold of than planes and can be modified to be more effective.
Also, the kind of explosion one can create with carry-on luggge liquids probably won't kill many people on a train. At best, it would probably only take out that particular car.
Derailing a train has the potential to kill a lot of people. It dosn't take much exposive to damage the track.
On a plane, you don't need that large of an explosion to bring the whole thing down.
It depends where the explosive is. Many of the most vulnerable places are inaccessible from the passenger cabin.
The US wasn't attacked because terrorists hate freedom, it was attacked because the US continually, and aggressively, involves itself in Middle Eastern politics. Honestly if the US stopped with Afghanistan then worked to make friends with the Middle East I very much believe that most, if not all of the major attacks against the west (ie train and subway bombings) would not have occurred. Now much of this aggressiveness is due to things like support for Israel which you may believe is a worthy cause,
In order to "make friends" the US would need to adopt an at least neutral stand on Israel (e.g. "no more money and weapons, you're on your own"). This is unlikely to happen when you have a US Congress which is more pro-Zionist than The Kenesset.
Actually, isolationism was Bush's plan for about the 9 months ranging from January-Sept 11, 2001
Really, does anyone recall the US stopping all "foreign aid" in 2001?
But an engine EXPLOSION or detachment tends to rupture hydraulic lines, in ways that cause loss of hydraulic pressure throughout the system. Then you lose control of all the control surfaces, which usually means the plane augers in.
It tends to be a matter of chance, including exactly which engine expodes. Consider that even with an exposion of the number 2 engine a United DC10 was able to crash land with no hydraulic systems operational.
If you've got one and it is operational, then you have to find a trained operator. Even "fire and forget" missiles require some skill to operate, and even if the weapon is American-proof simple to use, the operator still needs to be familiar with the ideal operating envelope - what aspect should the target be engaged with (head-on? tailchaser? deflection?) Does the position of the sun matter? Do you aim at an engine, or centre of mass? Lead or lag?
A "terrorist" is unlikely to have proper training in the use of such weapons. The probably don't have any target drones or missiles to "waste". Thus they'd need to recurit someone already trained by a proper military.
Assuming a hit, the odds on downing the aircraft are not good. Airliners are big, solid aircraft, and shoulder-fired missiles by design cannot have very large warheads - you have to package propulsion, guidance, and warhead into something light enough to be carried by a single person. Being struck by a missile is certainly unpleasant, but I'd expect any modern airliner to be able to suffer catastrophic failure of a single engine and still be able to fly (long enough to get back down at least).
Containment of a catastropic failure is a test which is carried out on the engine housing. For the more likely senario of blade failure due to foreign object ingestion (including bird strikes).
That's not to say that the missile *couldn't* bring down a liner (sever the controls to a control surface and I think you've got a crash) but neither are you looking at a Hollywood style giant fireball.
This is more likely with a warplane, since these tend to contain munitions. Quite a bit of an airliner is filled with nothing but air and at the altitudes where a MPWS is effective pressurisation isn't an issue.
To be fair, the US has been doing that for quite a while now, and to be fair, if the foreign citizens were on US soil, and had broken US law (they weren't just share holders, but ex-executives of netteller), then you will be arrested if they catch you.
Were they executives when the US law came into effect though?
So the US soldiers who raped that Iraqi woman should be subject to Iraqi law and not US military law?
If the Iraqi police arrested them odds on the US army would do exactly what the British one did when some SAS people got caught playing "insergent"...
This should be interesting, to see how foreign countries react to the detention of their citizens for something so paltry...
From the legal POV it would also be relevent if these people had passed through US immigration and which airline they had flow in on. In other words if they were actually in the US when they were arrested.
Though it's unlikely that there will be even the mildest of diplomatic protests, considering the inaction which has been shown towards the US's other "arrests" of non US citizens in questionable situations.
At a certain level, even Microsoft will pay attention to a fine. Fine them $10-20 billion, and although it won't break their piggy bank, it will make a substantial difference.
Any fine would have to be large enough to cause Microsoft considerable cash flow problems. If it was too small or they had too long a period to pay it then all they will do is pass costs on to their customers.
It would probably be far more effective to either force Microsoft to shut down for a period of time or to revoke copyrights and/or patents.
Thats like saying a convicted rapist needs time to change. Do we allow the rapist to continue and scale down his activities over time? Hell, no. We do something that makes it impossible to conduct business as usual. I'd be very surprised if the law made provision for convicted monopolists to continue their trade either.
This is one of the most obvious ways in which the idea of corporations as "people" completely falls apart. A real person who is even accused is likely to be restricted in what they can do. By either being locked up or subject to bail conditions. If they are convicted the only way in which they can appeal might be from a prison cell or subject to some kind of curfew. No "business as usual".
Are corporations required to restrict their activities whilst an investigation is ongoing? Let alone stop everything for a trial...
I'd rather we skip the monetary fines that are becoming meaningless
There isn't really much point in fining an abusive monopoly. The actual would need to weaken that monopoly. At best fines do nothing, at worst they can make things worst.
No, that is really not the same at all. First off, the parking ticket would have occurred in a foreign country, and so you shouldn't be punished for it in the US.
US Citizens can be subject to US law, even if they are not actually in the US at the time of the incident. (Even if what they are doing is perfectly legal where they are at the time.)
Second, the right to vote is guaranteed to all citizens by the US Constitution. A patent is temporary property; the right to vote is a basic right of all citizens.
Except that people in the US can be barred from voting for life, even after they have supposedly completed whatever sentence a court might have handed out. (Even if that sentence does not explicitally prevent them from voting.)
Revoking MS' patents would be more like issuing a very large fine, and forcing the company to pay it.
Since patents are granted on the whim of the state valuewise they would be "fiat money".
The GPL extends the rights you have by copyright law.
An EULA restricts the rights you have by copyright law.
You might as well compare apples with lumber. All they have in common is that they come from a kind of plant known as a "tree". A more meaningful comparison for the GPL would be a publishing contract.
(As for something to compared with an EULA you'd have a hard time finding something which wasn't practiced by a con artist.)
The original poster was quite correct that the GPL is a minefield. The fact that you often know when you're entering it (unlike software patents) does not remove the minefield. The only way to avoid the minefield is to completely avoid GPL platforms and code, or to GPL absolutely everything you produce.
You can just as easily wind up with problems between different pieces of proprietary code. Even if they use the "same" licence...
I have no problem with people discussing anything they like, anywhere.
I think it's ridiculous to believe that sort of thing advances science. It doesn't. There's exactly one place where scientific discussion advances, and it's in peer reviewed scientific journals. Period.
It isn't that simple, given that it is equally possible for "peer reviewed journals" to promote dogma and "political correctness".
Penn & Teller are great when it comes to con men, but on other subjects they fail it. Hard.
Sometimes it can be hard to draw a line between "con men" and "other subjects" especially when politics are involved.
Censorship is a solution, just not one you use in a free society. People define thoughtcrimes to make their jobs easier because it doesn't force them to debate items in question (from Holocaust denial to questioning state history to global warming).
As well as applying lables which at best mislead (at worst completly misrepresent) skeptics' points of view. (In addition these "advocates" may misrepresent their own position. Feminists make a good a "textbook example" as Zionists.)
It is alarming how many people object to diversity in thought.
It's especially ironic when it's so called "diversity experts/advocates" doing this.
However one thing that really makes me skeptical is the religious zeal with which it is pushed. In most science it seems to be that when you have a theory you know is right and plenty of proof, you've no need to shout down your skeptics.
Indeed a need to censor skeptics itself looks highly suspicious. The implication is that your claims are unsupported and you know it. (Possibly even you believe that some of the skeptics have better theories but cannot accept "losing face".)
But that's not how it goes with GW. If you are a skeptic you are shouted down as an idiot, an industry shill, someone not to be listened to, and now even threatened with stripping them of rank.
About the only good point is that there isn't (yet) a call to start jailing skeptics.
The reason religions do that is because there's NOT proof so it is dangerous to them when people start claiming something other than what they believe.
A skeptic dosn't have to actually claim any alternative theories. Simply pointing out holes in the claims of the "faithful" is usually sufficent to invoke a hostile response in these kind of situations.
In fact most countries within America are nothing like each other. you use the U.S.A. and America as interchangeable regions when they are in fact not. The laws of the U.S.A. don't necessarily affect other American countries.
Not for want of trying on the part of the USA. e.g. trying to get Canadians to change their copyright laws.
And yet it doesn't have popular support and is viewed by many as a puppet of the US. If Bush manages to establish a democracy in Iraq, it'll be the first time it was done by an invader - frankly, I don't have much faith in that.
"First time" as in "first time in recorded history"... So far as the US goes the history is more one of overthrowing democratic governments (by either invasion or sponsoring terrorists) and imposing dictatorships. Not only does the US have no history in "exporting democracy" it's own democratic credentials are fairly weak. Especially compared with parts of Europe, let alone ancient Athens.