As long as we have only 2 viable parties, we will have a disfunctional bipolar system where the 2 teams fight for the middle while smearing each other with whatever extremist label they can make stick. When there are only 2 sides, a negative campaign is at least as effective as a positive campaign.
Since these two parties agree on many issues it might be truer to say that the situation is closer to having one party. A voter who thinks differently about one of these issues is effectivly disenfranchied.
When a third tries to join in, they unite in laughing him off the field
Assuming they can even get on the field in the first place, since there things like different nomination rules for "third parties". Even handing out public money to parties according to membership listed on voter roles.
This is eluded to in 'Whats the matter with Kansas', IIRC. Economically, there isn't much difference between the two main parties these days; the main difference seems to be on social issues. Both Dems and Repubs both have groups they dislike, and seek to oppress those groups. As the groups change power, they seem to be using the tools of the previous administration to further their own goals while building on more tools.
Thus you end up with something closer to a one party than a two party state. When it comes to electoral systems the US is very much out of step with the rest of the democratic world in many ways. Having voter registers record party affiliation, which makes "Gerrymandering" very easy. Typically political parties are private entities, with most people not being members at all. It's even possible for people to be members of more than one party at once. Then you also have different nomination rules depending on the party membership; members of political parties fielding candidates (even close relatives of candidates) being closely involved in conduction elections; non transparent vote counting; etc. If any of these happened in most of Europe the election would be judged bogus, probably before it even took place.
Perhaps you should consider how the "unemployment rate" is calculated, and be aware that different countries calculate it differently.
About the only common factor is that governments will try to use whatever method they think will give the lowest figure, without being too obvious that that is the goal...
Look, I can see how the parent might be PARANOID or something, but the fact is ANYTHING public can be retrieved by anybody. If you go on MySpace and say you like to molest little children and give a list of children you've molested, and the police are pressing a molestation charge on you and they see that, that can incriminate you even more.
Or someone could create a blog impersonating someone they have a grudge against. This is a lot easier than planting incriminating documents on someone's person/private property.
And the idea that someone would be outraged because the government reads public things is beyond me. When you post something public ANYBODY can read it. Anybody that wants to read this post I'm making right now can read it if they want. I don't care if the government reads or a really intelligent llama reads it.
There's a difference between their reading it because it is relevent to a investigation and looking with some glorified search engine for "suspicious activity".
The other thing you neglectged to mention, though, is that the government is only supposed to go through your purchase records after obtaining a court-authorized warrant.
The way it should work is that they have to convince an impartial third party. i.e. no judges/magistrates who will just "rubber stamp" anything put in front of them.
They're not supposed to be looking through _everyone's_ purchase records, trying to find suspicious patterns. "Fishing expeditions" have generally been considered by everyone, even the courts, to be violations of reasonable expectations of privacy.
They also have the problem that they are simply not an effective way to catch criminals. Since actual criminals can change their behaviour so they no longer register as "suspicious". Further such snooping is likely take resources away from real detective work.
The issue isn't necessarily to prevent the government from investigating; it's to prevent it from investigating without reasonable suspicion.
It's also about making sure that government stays focused on doing what they claim to be doing. Tracking down and arresting real criminals and terrorists is hard and dangerous. It's only human nature that those involved would prefer to do something easier and safer, such as arresting unarmed people who dislike government policy or think that political figures are idiots.
The purpose is not to stop terrorists. It's abundantly clear that the measures that have been taken are ineffective at doing so. The purpose of airline security is assure middle America that Something Is Being Done.
When it comes to security doing the wrong thing can actually be worst doing nothing. Sometimes this is because "flashy, but useless" stuff prevents measures which would actually be effective. e.g. by taking resources away from things which are effective, but not flashy. Another possibility is that new procedures have not been analysed for loopholes.
You are correct in stating that searching based on prior data is better. However, this assumes that the terrorists don't know that you're looking for them.
Any terrorist stupid enough not to know this is probably too stupid to carry out their mission even if they somehow make it to the target.
If the terrorists know that you're looking, they can deliberately disguise themselves or their equipment so that it doesn't match with your prior data, making your search no better than random.
It's actually worst than random. If the searching is random there is nothing terrorists can do to alter the possibility of their operatives getting extra screening. Whereas if it is non-random there is a lot they can do to make it less likely that this will happen.
If you can only afford to search X people per day out of a possible Y people, which option is most likely to be most successful at finding what you are searching for:
1) Searching completely randomly
2) Using all the data available to determine those most likely to have what you are looking for
In CS, I would call #1 the naive approch, and #2 the heuristic approach. The heuristic approach would be many, many times more efficient and successful than the naive approach when XY. Because we have a finite budget, XY in this "airport/terrorist" scenario.
When it comes to security #2 fails because of a factor you havn't considered. That of intelligent beings deliberatly setting out to thwart your searching. #2 is a good approach for finding natural phenomena and even non sentient life forms. But it is not very useful for finding sentients who are trying to hide from you, since they can reverse engineer and model whatever heuristics you are using. Thus maximising the change of being in the !X group.
Exactly, the only real way to check is to do random checks. This includes checks of 90 year old grandmas. Random is random, its just the luck of the draw.
The biggest difficulty is making sure random actually is random.
Either that or check everyone,
Which is the easiest thing to do.
but profiling doesn't work because it is so easily bypassed using an unknowing accomplice.
Also applicable to smuggling, which happens far more often than terrorism. Not all accomplices are unknowing either:)
The terrorists who attacked on 9/11 were indeed arabs.
We don't actually know who the terrorists actually were. Given that several of the accused have turned up alive; the names given don't appear on any of (various versions) of the passenger lists published and documents related to the accused survive plane crashes (unlike those belonging to random members of the passengers and crew). The evidence that these individuals, as opposed to other passengers/crew members (even people who boarded the planes some other way), just isn't there.
Not only is racial profiling "not PC" and "offensive" to those we hope to gain intel from, but it's stupid. If you profile Muslim Arabs,
It's also rather tricky to distinguish Jewish, Christian, Atheist, etc Arabs from Muslim Arabs too.
how many Ted Kaczynskis are you going to stop? Or Timothy Mcveighs? Or Eric Rudolphs?
The last example is interesting in that he appears to be a terrorist with multiple motivations. Interestingly both in the US and the UK authorities appear very reluctant to use anti-terrorist laws against anti-abortionist and "animal rights" terrorists. (Possibly because they don't tend to be "Islamic", thus don't fit with current fashion.)
Do you think our enemies are retarded? If we annouced to the world "we will only search arabs, never whites" exacty how many seconds would pass before they recruited a white person to blow up a plane?
Maybe all terminally ill people should be barred from flying. Since they are an obvious candidate pool from which to recruit a suicide bomber...
I know you're trying to be funny, but I have to tell you that all the bullshit involved in getting on a plane has made flying a non-option as far as I'm concerned...and it's gotten even _worse_ since 9/11.
Al Queda and its ilk may be all the rage when talking about terrorism, but I assure you there are plenty of non-Islamic terrorists around who would love to do harm to the United States.
What's notable is how certain media appear to go out of their way to not use the term "terrorist" when refering to individuals and groups which pass the "duck test".
Timothy McVeigh wasn't Middle Eastern, and there are plenty of extremist groups in the US that are made up entirely of whites. Looking internationally, we have FARC and other guerilla groups in South America, ETA in the Basque region of Spain, the "Real" IRA in Northern Ireland, and the list goes on.
A terrorist inspired by perverted Christianity or perverted Judeaism probably isn't going to be that different from one inspired by perverted Islam in their attitude and behaviour.
The point is, racial profiling would at least have a strong argument if it were actually effective. Unfortunately, all it really means is that the next terrorist to strike won't fit the profile. It's not like it takes long for a terrorist group to figure out what security agents are looking for and change strategies accordingly.
The theorem is known as "Carnival Booth". Even if the "bad guys" don't know the exact criteria used they can still find out who will not be singled out for extra attention.
After checking some pics on the install guide, my jaw dropped to the floor. This installer replaces tcpip.sys and even advises the user just to click away the warning message Windows pops up because system files are being touched.
Sounds like they are a little behind Sony when it comes to rootkit installation.
Funny but the only actual military attacks in Hawaii were done by the Japanese. Hawaii became a US state because a majority of the people voted to be added as a state.
After over half a century of the US doing to Hawaii the same kind of thing that China is currently doing to Tibet. There's also the problem that the votes for Hawaii (and Alaska) didn't comply with article 73 of the UN charter. As well as the issue of this kind of plebiscite not being applicable to occupied countries in the first place. The intent of such ballots is that they were to enable territories which had never been independent states to either become an independent nation state, remain as a territory or become part of the controlling state.
Come on buddy, this is capitalism: investment failed--game over. It's not the government's job to legally ensure anyone profit in any market.
Or to ensure that a previously profitable business model continues to be profitable. Especially when that activity is also highly subject to the whims of fashion.
Protection of "intellectual property", while not forbidden by the US constitution, is not gauranteed by it either.
It's permitted as an option, supposedly as a means to a specific end.
Copyright is a bargain that the government makes on behalf of the public. It buys art and other intellectual property from artists by spending our freedom. With the help of copyright, publishing was once made sustainable. We've witnessed, however, that thanks to sites like allofmp3.com, that copyright protection is no longer a useful nor necessary foundation for the distribution of music.
The third party publishing business model at least partly relys on the quirk of having an expensive machine which can make cheap copies it you want lots of copies of the same thing.
You're correct. Every last paperclip involved in the production, distribution and promotion of a CD is paid for by the sales of the CD. The artist is paid last. If a CD doesn't break even, the artist sees little or no money from the sale of the CD. It also means that the record company takes the loss, and it's not money out of the artist's pocket.
It's also the record company who does the accounting. Most likely if a CD actually does make a loss it gets covered (creativly) from the profits of one which dosn't.
Whether you believe it or not, that "socialist/communist ideal" is what Thomas Jefferson, at least, wanted. It is fact, documented in letters between him and James Madison where they discussed the issue prior to writing the Constitution. Indeed, Jefferson didn't want to include protections for so-called "IP" at all, but was ultimately persuaded that it would be a net good for society. Unfortunately, nowadays that's turning out to no longer be the case.
What Jefferson was persuaded was the kind of "IP" protection which was about over two hundred years ago. Which is radically different from what we have now. It's also pefectly possible that had modern communications been around in the 18th century people such as Jefferson would have though that copyright terms should be even shorter.
You rent from the store, watch, and return. You are now left with the same money you started with, and no DVD. So what incentive does the store have for doing this?
They get the interest on your money whilst they are looking after it.
Lets assume that their building rental, electricity, advertising, insurance, etc. are paid for by magic pixes; there's still no incentive in it for them, as they can't make any money from it.
You probably need a minimum customer base and don't want to make this the only source of income.
This argument is just absurd. That's like saying if you rent a dvd, you should be able to give them money, but when you return the dvd, they should also return your money...
This appears to be a perfectly valid business model. Whilst they have your money they can be getting interest on it and if you don't return or damage their goods you don't get your deposit back. The only issue is if a DVD is worth enough to justify a deposit.
If you dom't realize that the United States went to war to protect its economic interests several times in the last century and has already done so once in the young current century you are fooling yourself.
Ironically in practice these interests need not be those of the US either the US Government or the majority of the US people.
I wouldn't consider Hawaii and Iraq economic wars.
Hawaii was definitly economic, the owners of the sugar industry wanted to avoid having to pay duties on sugar they sold to the US. Since most of them wern't citizens and were already making a a lot of profit the Hawaiian Government had little interest in approaching the US Government with a view to reducing import duty. With Iraq the economic interest certainly isn't oil, instead it appears to be backhanders from "reconstruction" contracts.
They were both defense wars.
Neither country was remotly capable of militarily threatening the US.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as we have only 2 viable parties, we will have a disfunctional bipolar system where the 2 teams fight for the middle while smearing each other with whatever extremist label they can make stick. When there are only 2 sides, a negative campaign is at least as effective as a positive campaign.
Since these two parties agree on many issues it might be truer to say that the situation is closer to having one party. A voter who thinks differently about one of these issues is effectivly disenfranchied.
When a third tries to join in, they unite in laughing him off the field
Assuming they can even get on the field in the first place, since there things like different nomination rules for "third parties". Even handing out public money to parties according to membership listed on voter roles.
This is eluded to in 'Whats the matter with Kansas', IIRC. Economically, there isn't much difference between the two main parties these days; the main difference seems to be on social issues. Both Dems and Repubs both have groups they dislike, and seek to oppress those groups. As the groups change power, they seem to be using the tools of the previous administration to further their own goals while building on more tools.
Thus you end up with something closer to a one party than a two party state.
When it comes to electoral systems the US is very much out of step with the rest of the democratic world in many ways. Having voter registers record party affiliation, which makes "Gerrymandering" very easy. Typically political parties are private entities, with most people not being members at all. It's even possible for people to be members of more than one party at once.
Then you also have different nomination rules depending on the party membership; members of political parties fielding candidates (even close relatives of candidates) being closely involved in conduction elections; non transparent vote counting; etc. If any of these happened in most of Europe the election would be judged bogus, probably before it even took place.
Perhaps you should consider how the "unemployment rate" is calculated, and be aware that different countries calculate it differently.
About the only common factor is that governments will try to use whatever method they think will give the lowest figure, without being too obvious that that is the goal...
How do they know your weren't lying about it.
When it comes to something like a blog they'd first need to be able to prove that the author is who they claim to be.
Look, I can see how the parent might be PARANOID or something, but the fact is ANYTHING public can be retrieved by anybody. If you go on MySpace and say you like to molest little children and give a list of children you've molested, and the police are pressing a molestation charge on you and they see that, that can incriminate you even more.
Or someone could create a blog impersonating someone they have a grudge against. This is a lot easier than planting incriminating documents on someone's person/private property.
And the idea that someone would be outraged because the government reads public things is beyond me. When you post something public ANYBODY can read it. Anybody that wants to read this post I'm making right now can read it if they want. I don't care if the government reads or a really intelligent llama reads it.
There's a difference between their reading it because it is relevent to a investigation and looking with some glorified search engine for "suspicious activity".
The other thing you neglectged to mention, though, is that the government is only supposed to go through your purchase records after obtaining a court-authorized warrant.
The way it should work is that they have to convince an impartial third party. i.e. no judges/magistrates who will just "rubber stamp" anything put in front of them.
They're not supposed to be looking through _everyone's_ purchase records, trying to find suspicious patterns. "Fishing expeditions" have generally been considered by everyone, even the courts, to be violations of reasonable expectations of privacy.
They also have the problem that they are simply not an effective way to catch criminals. Since actual criminals can change their behaviour so they no longer register as "suspicious". Further such snooping is likely take resources away from real detective work.
The issue isn't necessarily to prevent the government from investigating; it's to prevent it from investigating without reasonable suspicion.
It's also about making sure that government stays focused on doing what they claim to be doing. Tracking down and arresting real criminals and terrorists is hard and dangerous. It's only human nature that those involved would prefer to do something easier and safer, such as arresting unarmed people who dislike government policy or think that political figures are idiots.
The purpose is not to stop terrorists. It's abundantly clear that the measures that have been taken are ineffective at doing so. The purpose of airline security is assure middle America that Something Is Being Done .
When it comes to security doing the wrong thing can actually be worst doing nothing. Sometimes this is because "flashy, but useless" stuff prevents measures which would actually be effective. e.g. by taking resources away from things which are effective, but not flashy. Another possibility is that new procedures have not been analysed for loopholes.
You are correct in stating that searching based on prior data is better. However, this assumes that the terrorists don't know that you're looking for them.
Any terrorist stupid enough not to know this is probably too stupid to carry out their mission even if they somehow make it to the target.
If the terrorists know that you're looking, they can deliberately disguise themselves or their equipment so that it doesn't match with your prior data, making your search no better than random.
It's actually worst than random. If the searching is random there is nothing terrorists can do to alter the possibility of their operatives getting extra screening. Whereas if it is non-random there is a lot they can do to make it less likely that this will happen.
If you can only afford to search X people per day out of a possible Y people, which option is most likely to be most successful at finding what you are searching for:
1) Searching completely randomly
2) Using all the data available to determine those most likely to have what you are looking for
In CS, I would call #1 the naive approch, and #2 the heuristic approach. The heuristic approach would be many, many times more efficient and successful than the naive approach when XY. Because we have a finite budget, XY in this "airport/terrorist" scenario.
When it comes to security #2 fails because of a factor you havn't considered. That of intelligent beings deliberatly setting out to thwart your searching. #2 is a good approach for finding natural phenomena and even non sentient life forms. But it is not very useful for finding sentients who are trying to hide from you, since they can reverse engineer and model whatever heuristics you are using. Thus maximising the change of being in the !X group.
Exactly, the only real way to check is to do random checks. This includes checks of 90 year old grandmas. Random is random, its just the luck of the draw.
:)
The biggest difficulty is making sure random actually is random.
Either that or check everyone,
Which is the easiest thing to do.
but profiling doesn't work because it is so easily bypassed using an unknowing accomplice.
Also applicable to smuggling, which happens far more often than terrorism.
Not all accomplices are unknowing either
The terrorists who attacked on 9/11 were indeed arabs.
We don't actually know who the terrorists actually were. Given that several of the accused have turned up alive; the names given don't appear on any of (various versions) of the passenger lists published and documents related to the accused survive plane crashes (unlike those belonging to random members of the passengers and crew).
The evidence that these individuals, as opposed to other passengers/crew members (even people who boarded the planes some other way), just isn't there.
Not only is racial profiling "not PC" and "offensive" to those we hope to gain intel from, but it's stupid. If you profile Muslim Arabs,
It's also rather tricky to distinguish Jewish, Christian, Atheist, etc Arabs from Muslim Arabs too.
how many Ted Kaczynskis are you going to stop? Or Timothy Mcveighs? Or Eric Rudolphs?
The last example is interesting in that he appears to be a terrorist with multiple motivations. Interestingly both in the US and the UK authorities appear very reluctant to use anti-terrorist laws against anti-abortionist and "animal rights" terrorists. (Possibly because they don't tend to be "Islamic", thus don't fit with current fashion.)
Do you think our enemies are retarded? If we annouced to the world "we will only search arabs, never whites" exacty how many seconds would pass before they recruited a white person to blow up a plane?
Maybe all terminally ill people should be barred from flying. Since they are an obvious candidate pool from which to recruit a suicide bomber...
I know you're trying to be funny, but I have to tell you that all the bullshit involved in getting on a plane has made flying a non-option as far as I'm concerned...and it's gotten even _worse_ since 9/11.
So what form of transport do you use instead?
Al Queda and its ilk may be all the rage when talking about terrorism, but I assure you there are plenty of non-Islamic terrorists around who would love to do harm to the United States.
What's notable is how certain media appear to go out of their way to not use the term "terrorist" when refering to individuals and groups which pass the "duck test".
Timothy McVeigh wasn't Middle Eastern, and there are plenty of extremist groups in the US that are made up entirely of whites. Looking internationally, we have FARC and other guerilla groups in South America, ETA in the Basque region of Spain, the "Real" IRA in Northern Ireland, and the list goes on.
A terrorist inspired by perverted Christianity or perverted Judeaism probably isn't going to be that different from one inspired by perverted Islam in their attitude and behaviour.
The point is, racial profiling would at least have a strong argument if it were actually effective. Unfortunately, all it really means is that the next terrorist to strike won't fit the profile. It's not like it takes long for a terrorist group to figure out what security agents are looking for and change strategies accordingly.
The theorem is known as "Carnival Booth". Even if the "bad guys" don't know the exact criteria used they can still find out who will not be singled out for extra attention.
After checking some pics on the install guide, my jaw dropped to the floor. This installer replaces tcpip.sys and even advises the user just to click away the warning message Windows pops up because system files are being touched.
Sounds like they are a little behind Sony when it comes to rootkit installation.
Getting paid is a nice addition but only in today;s insane world do artists expect to get the rock-star life from their art.
:)
A fair few of even the "sucessful" appear to wind up lacking their own sanity
Funny but the only actual military attacks in Hawaii were done by the Japanese. Hawaii became a US state because a majority of the people voted to be added as a state.
After over half a century of the US doing to Hawaii the same kind of thing that China is currently doing to Tibet. There's also the problem that the votes for Hawaii (and Alaska) didn't comply with article 73 of the UN charter. As well as the issue of this kind of plebiscite not being applicable to occupied countries in the first place.
The intent of such ballots is that they were to enable territories which had never been independent states to either become an independent nation state, remain as a territory or become part of the controlling state.
It is only completely legal if they make the proper payments to the songwriting rights holders.
As determined by Russian law.
One of the major reasons people on this site and across the world think they're illegitimate is because they ACT shady about EVERYTHING.
So do quite a few other entities. Including the RIAA and many governments.
Come on buddy, this is capitalism: investment failed--game over. It's not the government's job to legally ensure anyone profit in any market.
Or to ensure that a previously profitable business model continues to be profitable. Especially when that activity is also highly subject to the whims of fashion.
Protection of "intellectual property", while not forbidden by the US constitution, is not gauranteed by it either.
It's permitted as an option, supposedly as a means to a specific end.
Copyright is a bargain that the government makes on behalf of the public. It buys art and other intellectual property from artists by spending our freedom. With the help of copyright, publishing was once made sustainable. We've witnessed, however, that thanks to sites like allofmp3.com, that copyright protection is no longer a useful nor necessary foundation for the distribution of music.
The third party publishing business model at least partly relys on the quirk of having an expensive machine which can make cheap copies it you want lots of copies of the same thing.
You're correct. Every last paperclip involved in the production, distribution and promotion of a CD is paid for by the sales of the CD. The artist is paid last. If a CD doesn't break even, the artist sees little or no money from the sale of the CD. It also means that the record company takes the loss, and it's not money out of the artist's pocket.
It's also the record company who does the accounting. Most likely if a CD actually does make a loss it gets covered (creativly) from the profits of one which dosn't.
Whether you believe it or not, that "socialist/communist ideal" is what Thomas Jefferson, at least, wanted. It is fact, documented in letters between him and James Madison where they discussed the issue prior to writing the Constitution. Indeed, Jefferson didn't want to include protections for so-called "IP" at all, but was ultimately persuaded that it would be a net good for society. Unfortunately, nowadays that's turning out to no longer be the case.
What Jefferson was persuaded was the kind of "IP" protection which was about over two hundred years ago. Which is radically different from what we have now. It's also pefectly possible that had modern communications been around in the 18th century people such as Jefferson would have though that copyright terms should be even shorter.
You rent from the store, watch, and return. You are now left with the same money you started with, and no DVD. So what incentive does the store have for doing this?
They get the interest on your money whilst they are looking after it.
Lets assume that their building rental, electricity, advertising, insurance, etc. are paid for by magic pixes; there's still no incentive in it for them, as they can't make any money from it.
You probably need a minimum customer base and don't want to make this the only source of income.
This argument is just absurd. That's like saying if you rent a dvd, you should be able to give them money, but when you return the dvd, they should also return your money...
This appears to be a perfectly valid business model. Whilst they have your money they can be getting interest on it and if you don't return or damage their goods you don't get your deposit back. The only issue is if a DVD is worth enough to justify a deposit.
If you dom't realize that the United States went to war to protect its economic interests several times in the last century and has already done so once in the young current century you are fooling yourself.
Ironically in practice these interests need not be those of the US either the US Government or the majority of the US people.
I wouldn't consider Hawaii and Iraq economic wars.
Hawaii was definitly economic, the owners of the sugar industry wanted to avoid having to pay duties on sugar they sold to the US. Since most of them wern't citizens and were already making a a lot of profit the Hawaiian Government had little interest in approaching the US Government with a view to reducing import duty. With Iraq the economic interest certainly isn't oil, instead it appears to be backhanders from "reconstruction" contracts.
They were both defense wars.
Neither country was remotly capable of militarily threatening the US.