Sounds to me like a good idea to forbid it. Glad you brough up the point that all discrimination is bad. Affirmative action is discrimination just as much as firing someone because you don't like people with blue eyes.
An [IC]BM targets a stationary point on the ground within a certain large circumference. ABM targets a very high speed object with uncertain location in an incredibly small circumference, and must either hit it directly, or very close and ahead of it.
Building a weapon is cheap, countering it is always going to be more expensive. Think of trying to build something that could destroy a bullet on it's way to your chest. This is the kind of thing that an ABM would have to do.
If we want ABMs or similar purposed anti-weapon weapons, we will spend more than the original weapon. There is no way around that.
As long as by "fair percentage" you mean under 10%. And the vast majority of *that* is hydroelectric, so not exactly feasible in all places.
Solar is a joke right now, due to the horrid process to manufacture the cells. You'd likely be doing better by the environment to run a generator to charge your car in the field. If we're fortunate, this will change in the near future rather than the distant one.
Also, remember that Europe is much more clustered than the US, so public transit is much easier to provide. 320M isn't even that much when you consider the amount of work that needs to happen. Putting in a new large building might run you 35M, so getting an entire city-wide tram system isn't bad for under ten times the price.
Those keyboards are so bad that I can't even type on a machine using one. I type so badly on them that I go from 120+ wpm to somewhere around 30 wpm.
You can't even upgrade to a real keyboard with Dell. If you buy their fancy 20$ keyboard, they do that annoying tall delete key thing and move around SysReq/Scroll Lock/Pause to over the numpad. But hey, then you get a USB port on the keyboard for the mouse. They even messed around with the relative sizes of Alt, Ctrl, the space bar, and the silly Windows keys.
The last workstation I bought at work was a Dell, and the day I got it I had to go out and get another keyboard. I couldn't use any existing keyboards that I had, since they ship without PS/2 jacks. So off to the store to make the brand new machine useable to me. But try to buy a keyboard with a non-junk key layout now. They all have 150 buttons randomly placed on a vaguely rectangular base. No two models have the same layout, let alone between manufacturers.
I think it's more that they're getting ahold of the fact that if they call someone a terrorist, they don't have to bother with explaining why they did whatever the hell they wanted to, or with asking permission to do it.
Unreasonable search and seizure has been worked out over many years. What it boils down to is that if it's not specified, you can't have it. If you don't need it, you can't have it. If you search without a warrant, it will probably be inadmissable in court. For some infractions there are criminal penalties for the police involved.
I think you meant to describe *reasonable* search and seizure. That would be to gather evidence directly related to, and required by, a pending court case and investigation. This means that if you think someone may be stealing electronics from somewhere, you don't get to seize his car, house, bed, etc. You can search those things, but they are not useful as evidence unless you find something.
Part of the problem is that society in the US has decided that it's best to piss with everyone and make sure all the "bad guys" get caught. As a result, everybody is suspected of doing something and we lose liberty. The "bad guys" still get away, but now we have "good guys" that get arrested, or have everything seized, or go to jail.
As for the blanket warrant, that would be the second half the 4th amendment that the parent pasted.
"... no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That says a specific place and specific things and people. You cannot have a warrant for "the people at this address", but instead, you must name the people. You can't have "the contents of this address", but you can have "the computer equipment at this address".
Interesting how by the 4th amendment, all warrants that are not specific or do not require legal proceeding to issue, are actually unconstitutional. This is unsurprising considering the tremendous number of Federal laws which are not only completely against the intent of the Constitution, but quite opposed to the letter of the Constutition, as well.
MS certainly does push APIs that they don't really use internally. Win32/s and MFC were good examples of that one.
They're not really using.NET, despite them pushing it extremely hard. It still might end up being the first broad API toolkit that they actually do use, besides the straight Windows API. They pushed and used DirectX, too, of course. We'll have to wait for the next release of Office, and a closer look at Longhorn and IE7 to be sure of their.NET committment.
I've also had the opposite experience with Notes. I worked for IBM, and they used Notes exactly like you described. It was very fast for all of it because Notes/Domino treats everything like a database. That means you have indexes and everything to speed up things. We accessed things on the other end of every link from single channel ISDN to frame relay to LAN, and Notes was always snappy. Searches were extremely fast even across a huge data store.
BTW, this was on a NT4 machine with a P2-400 and 128MB RAM.
It did crash more that I'd like, but it was still much more stable than Exchange/Outlook was, and mostly more than it still is. This was back in Notes 4.x... 5 was still in beta.
I remember being there when one of the first email worms spread. The Domino servers kept going processing all the mail, and the Exchange admin had to power cycle his servers and pull their network jacks just to get into the machines at all.
That's just so that you don't have to boot off a CD or disk and reinstall Grub/LILO in the MBR. The Windows bootloader can load a Linux partition same as a Linux bootloader can load Windows'. You just have to install Grub/LILO onto your partition instead of the MBR and then add a line to your C:\boot.ini. I believe you could even just write the kernel onto the beginning of the partition and do the same thing.
Windows just always overwrites the MBR when you install it. If you install NT on a 9x box, it will overwrite the 9x bootloader, too. This is the norm for most Linux distributions too, they just automatically add an entry to chain-load the secondary bootloader for Windows by default. You still have to do that manually on Windows.
Linux's bootloaders do not do this. Grub and LILO will boot the secondary boot loader for Windows via chain-loader, but for them to function normally, they overwrite the primary bootloader in the MBR. The Windows NTLDR does the same, and has the same capability to chain-load another secondary boot.
Much like configuring LILO or Grub to load another boot from a partition, NTLDR can be easily set up to do that. Last I messed with it, it was unable to boot an extended partition. NTLDR is also just plain not as flexible as Grub & LILO, but it was never meant to be. If that bothers you, there are a number of boot managers that you can use, including Grub.
As I've said so many times, physical trespass or theft is not the same thing. AP manufacturers configure their equipment to allow any station to associate by default. If my laptop associates when it's within range, then it is working as intended. If you don't like that, then change the settings. Don't complain when your device does what it's supposed to!
The closest real world analogy I can think of is that of a public business. If I set up an area like a restaurant, put up a sign, and leave the door unlocked, is it OK for me to sue everyone that walks in the door? They're trespassing after all, I never told them that I intended them to come it. But established pratice is that in that situation it *is* OK for them to come in. The open AP situation is exactly the same. That configuration is inviting the public to connect. It's saying "Come in an have a seat. What will your order be?".
Honestly, if the court doesn't let you "get away" with this, then the court is wrong. This happens; it's why the appeals process exists.
Oh damn, using public radio is different from stealing a physical object. That's a news flash for everyone.
I bet their VCR flashes 12:00 and they can't get their TV to play through their stereo, too. Perhaps they should learn to read their manuals. Instead they plug it in and then call tech support when it doesn't read their mind and do what they want. No manual ever opened.
Good manners does not make it a good law, or a law at all. The problem is that the wireless kit is working as it is supposed to if you leave it open and I connect to it. If you don't want that behaviour, then set it up to not allow public associations.
If you put your TV facing the street in the front yard, it might be rude for me to stand on the sidewalk and watch it. It would not be illegal, however, for me to do so. (It might be illegal for you to publicly display the program, but that's the not topic at hand.)
It would be rude if I called you ignorant, but not illegal. Laws shouldn't, and mostly aren't, set by what is and is not rude.
No, just no. The only fault for them not knowing is their own. They were being irresponsible, and now established practice and normal operation of the technology is causes an unintended side-effect that they might not be happy with.
Your stance is the mentality that makes us put labels like "hot" on coffee and "suffocation hazard" on plastic bags.
Those outdated/large tomes of law defeat the purpose of law anyway. They take the law away from the common man and make it something that only specialized people know. This is bad for *all* citizens of the country in question.
These physical object analogies are just the wrong way to do it; they are made by people who don't get it. There is no trespess here; there is no illegal entry; there is no theft. The device is working in the manner it was designed to work. The people leaving it that way are either doing so on purpose, or have the net effect of doing so on purpose. There is no way to tell the difference between the two. Ignorance of the law is no excuse... why should ignorance of your property.
If you leave money somewhere public, it will get taken. If you leave your wallet, then perhaps someone will return it to you, since they can tell whose it is. Either way, it is theft to take someone's physical property without permission.
If I walk around naked and someone watched me, the problem is me doing it where someone else can see it. Likewise, if I transmit a signal omnidirectionally, and someone picks up the signal, that's my fault for not doing it differently.
As for your assertation that most people don't have time to understand this. First, it's clearly described in the manufacturer doco. Second, it's on a public band. Third, it's working as intended if it lets anyone connect and use.
Your statements are ridiculous in that regard. You don't need to be a network engineer to install an AP any more than a plumber to replace a water filter or a mechanical engineer to put gas in your car. The incredibly simple and well documented process of configuring your AP is a little different than prescribing your own medication from a list of thousands of things with thousands of side-effects and interactions.
Setting up an AP is more like connecting a VCR. It's incredibly easy unless you're too lazy to read the two pages of documentation. Then it doesn't work how you want it to, and it's your own fault.
I wasn't actually arguing *for* PDF on the web. I rather dislike the way it gets used. But if your intent for making something available is for people to print it, then you should use an appropriate format for that purpose.
Using images doesn't work that well. They tend to be overly large and printers have a hard time handling them. I'd rather straight PostScript, since that's what my printers and all my print management software understands natively.
As far as computer processed paper forms... having been involved in a project that did just this, you don't want to do HTML for it. You need to have a rigid format so that you can maximize the reliablity of the machine scan being correct. It takes a looong time to get your accuracy to near perfect levels. Even then, you will have scanned areas that you have uncertainty about, and you need to have a human look at it and verify.
I don't like the IRS one bit. I think the agency is unconstitutional and should be abolished. As for their forms, they have fields that cover all possibilities. They have to make their forms capable of handling all aspects of tax law, so you get fields that are only used by 0.1% of the population. I'd love to see more electronic tax submission, but they have executed that terribly. I end up submitted paper forms a lot of the time just because I don't have to pay for more than a stamp to do it. I use fill-in PDF forms to do this. The instructions for filling out those forms is what I would say is the excellent example for something that shouldn't be in PDF.
While many of us hate PDF, just remember: the right tool for the right job. Sometimes a typeset format is the right tool and sometimes a markup format is the right tool.
So, to summarize, HTML is the right way if your data is only being presented to the user through a browser. PDF is acceptable if you need the format exactly the same in all cases. Images can do this as well, but they aren't as flexible as PDF, PS, or similar. You can use a word processor for this for the reason that the output isn't consistent.
Anything that needs to be typeset has reason to be in PDF. You see manuals, brochures, and various reports in the format because that's what gets sent to their volume printer. They aren't making the PDF available to be annoying so much as because they already have it and it will look the same as what they printed.
Also, any form which needs to be printed exactly the same is a good cantidate for PDF. IRS tax forms are a good example of this.
In general, though, I agree that if you're putting it on a web server, it *probably* should be in HTML. I'm personally really sick of the jerks that fill their site with PDF. My browser is made to navigate a HTML based site, not a PDF based one.
I would not call HTML a document preparation system in the same vein as Word. Word is for doing letters, HTML is for doing markup. Ideally, you don't specify formatting in HTML, you specify intent. HTML will likely look a bit different on everything you view it on. Sort of like Word, but on purpose.
The operation headquarters for dealing with the rescue effort and the aftermath was run out of the lower Manhattan UPS facility that was very near to the WTC. UPS shut it down and allowed emergency personnel to use it as necessary. They also provided a few million dollars and a lot of transportation support.
I'd have to agree with you; unfortunately I did not think my wording through all that well. I guess I shouldn't write laws!;-)
I hope I still got the point across that something like PATRIOT has obvious and terrible potential for abuse. This is similar to any kind of open-ended law that calls for some government agent's discretion. Take, for example, the obscenity wording in the FCC charter. It isn't clearly defined, so there is potential for abuse.
So, while you're right that most laws can be abused... and getting past my unfortunate wording, I would not mind seeing most current laws going away. That's not to say I don't want any laws, which would be silly. I just want to see most laws happening on a local level instead of our current "That law really should be local, so we're going to be making it a Federal law.".
Telephone lost backup because grid power was down, and was out long enough to exhaust backup power.
Many people coordinating this kind of setup do think just like that. Redundant power is pretty much protecting you against a construction incident, or similar. Remember, here isn't exactly a competitor in power delivery that you can buy from. If the grid goes down, you still lose power.
Getting diesel in is *usually* easy enough. Unless all travel to an area is cut off.;-)
The only difference between 1995 and 2005 is that access is more pervasive. In '95 you could get internet from the same places as today. It's just faster today, nothing more. Those redundant backbone networks are nice, but they don't exist in the last mile. That's where damage is most likely to occur.
Were you anywhere near there? The telephone networks were completely unusable. Cellular was gone. As far out as 75 miles, telephone communications weren't working properly. This covered the entire tri-state area. Now they've improved things since then, but the point is that this sort of thing happens, and that telephone and cellular were found to be unreliable in an emergency. For what it's worth, 911 *did* go down in some areas. This was a result of a total collapse of the telephone system in parts of lower Manhattan, and the eventual draining of backup power. 911 has reserve capacity in the telephone system, and dedicated circuits. It does not have infinity circuits.
Internet service was just out in many areas, as in completely non-functional. When you have no telephone line and no power, you have no internet. Those on dial-up were SOL, since you couldn't make any calls across the whole region. DSL had issues because of the huge amount of interference. In areas that still had power, cable internet was generally working.
Large chunks of rescue and relief coordination was done by hams. That information is available with hardly five seconds of research. The rest was done by government workers with radios, and quite a bit of assistance by UPS (as in the shipping company).
IOW, ham radio was found to be absolutely essential during 9/11. Radio was a total and absolute necessity, as there was *no* other way to communicate.
Even if those lines are run underground, that won't help people in areas like southern California. The ground moving really can't be good for underground service. If they have a massive earthquake there power and telephone are out. Most cellular communication will die, unless they work like Sprint PCS (tower to tower calls). Once the backup power runs out, cellular is down too, if the towers had been working anyway.
Actually, they do have to be specific with a search warrant. To quote the 4th amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That quote effectively says that roving wiretaps and broad search warrants *are* unconstitutional. It says that warrants are *not* to be aimed at people, they're to be aimed at places and things. Roving wiretaps will affect more than just one person. That has to be weighed when a wire tap is granted by a court. That's why we shouldn't have roving wire taps for any reason. There is far too much room for abuse, and that is never acceptable.
Also, library records were fully intended to be anonymous. It was thought to be vital to freedom to be able to read what you want without the government knowing. Current Federal action just reinforces this as necessary. Medical records are what you are, and what has happened to you. It makes sense for those to be able to be accessible via court order.
You also contradicted yourself about freedoms. By taking steps away from individual freedoms, you are in fact reducing freedom. You need to scream and holler about it because otherwise you lose all your freedom with baby steps.
The NRA people oppose gun control because they either don't want the government telling them what they're allowed to own, and they want to own the guns they like, or because it's a reduction in freedom. They can support this because the 2nd amendment clearly states "shall not be infringed". Gun control will, in fact, infringe on my ability to keep and bear Arms. The reason you hear all the "gun nuts" is because the media chooses to only report stories on those types of people. If it comes down to it, we can't effectively fight the government if they have guns and we don't; we lose the ability to maintain our freedoms by force, if necessary. That reason is specifically put into the amendment:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Like so many other things, politics is like a game that is won by the majority of a minority. Most people don't vote. You don't need to convince the mainstream, you just need to be loud enough that that minority that actually votes hears you.
It a law was written with potential for abuse, then the law shouldn't be law. Most traffic laws are quite sane and hard to abuse. Failure to signal, speeding, failure to stop, etc. If the law says something of the likes of "officer's discretion", then we have a problem. There shouldn't be any form of "discretion" involved.
You either broke a law, or you did not break the law. If they think you broke the law, they arrest you, charge you, and try you. If they cannot prove you broke the law, or you can prove that you did not, then they have to let you go and they can't try you again.
Your example is an officer choosing to not charge you for a law they witnessed you breaking. This is different from a law that calls for "an officer's discretion".
Likewise, a law that attempts to circumvent Constitutional guarantees is just outright not a valid law. There *is* no discussion on it, since by it's very nature, that law is illegal and unconstitutional. The Federal government decided to blatently ignore the Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. That law clearly and intentionally attempts to bypass protections in the Bill of Rights.
We don't need laws "monitoring potential threats" at all! You don't need laws to do that, we've been doing that for centuries. People in black suits or blue uniforms, going around, listening and talking and watching. If they notice something suspicious, they investigate further. If a law is being broken, they intervene, arrest you, and charge you. Then you stand trial.
The problem is when the listening and watching invade your privacy. We already have laws that allow law enforcement to probe deeper than normally allowed, but they need to have justification and court approval, lest the evidence be inadmissable.
We shouldn't have the courts sorting things out; they're for taking the guy that you're rather sure broke the law, and letting a jury decide if you really did. You have to play the game of extremes here, because eventually someone will try them out. Under your system, every single person can be arrested and charged with a crime. Then the courts can decide if they should've been charged. This is completely and totally unacceptable!
Personally, I wish people would get off their asses and toss out every single politician that voted in favor of these laws. This is not something that we should be playing games with.
Since you mention things functioning as they always did, you should really pay more attention. It does *not* function the way it always did. Read the Constitution and amendments. All those amendments mean "We changed the way it worked. Now it doesn't work how it always did." I suggest that you pay specific attention to amendment 17.
Yes, it would be lovely if the 17th amendment would be repealed. Then we might actually get something fixed. Then it wouldn't matter nearly as much what foolish thing the Representatives were pushed into doing since you'd have the Senate to hold them back (and vice versa). Another check and balance gone, another pile of obvious reasons as to why we should never have removed it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds to me like a good idea to forbid it. Glad you brough up the point that all discrimination is bad. Affirmative action is discrimination just as much as firing someone because you don't like people with blue eyes.
An [IC]BM targets a stationary point on the ground within a certain large circumference. ABM targets a very high speed object with uncertain location in an incredibly small circumference, and must either hit it directly, or very close and ahead of it.
Building a weapon is cheap, countering it is always going to be more expensive. Think of trying to build something that could destroy a bullet on it's way to your chest. This is the kind of thing that an ABM would have to do.
If we want ABMs or similar purposed anti-weapon weapons, we will spend more than the original weapon. There is no way around that.
As long as by "fair percentage" you mean under 10%. And the vast majority of *that* is hydroelectric, so not exactly feasible in all places.
Solar is a joke right now, due to the horrid process to manufacture the cells. You'd likely be doing better by the environment to run a generator to charge your car in the field. If we're fortunate, this will change in the near future rather than the distant one.
Also, remember that Europe is much more clustered than the US, so public transit is much easier to provide. 320M isn't even that much when you consider the amount of work that needs to happen. Putting in a new large building might run you 35M, so getting an entire city-wide tram system isn't bad for under ten times the price.
Those keyboards are so bad that I can't even type on a machine using one. I type so badly on them that I go from 120+ wpm to somewhere around 30 wpm.
You can't even upgrade to a real keyboard with Dell. If you buy their fancy 20$ keyboard, they do that annoying tall delete key thing and move around SysReq/Scroll Lock/Pause to over the numpad. But hey, then you get a USB port on the keyboard for the mouse. They even messed around with the relative sizes of Alt, Ctrl, the space bar, and the silly Windows keys.
The last workstation I bought at work was a Dell, and the day I got it I had to go out and get another keyboard. I couldn't use any existing keyboards that I had, since they ship without PS/2 jacks. So off to the store to make the brand new machine useable to me. But try to buy a keyboard with a non-junk key layout now. They all have 150 buttons randomly placed on a vaguely rectangular base. No two models have the same layout, let alone between manufacturers.
I think it's more that they're getting ahold of the fact that if they call someone a terrorist, they don't have to bother with explaining why they did whatever the hell they wanted to, or with asking permission to do it.
Unreasonable search and seizure has been worked out over many years. What it boils down to is that if it's not specified, you can't have it. If you don't need it, you can't have it. If you search without a warrant, it will probably be inadmissable in court. For some infractions there are criminal penalties for the police involved.
I think you meant to describe *reasonable* search and seizure. That would be to gather evidence directly related to, and required by, a pending court case and investigation. This means that if you think someone may be stealing electronics from somewhere, you don't get to seize his car, house, bed, etc. You can search those things, but they are not useful as evidence unless you find something.
Part of the problem is that society in the US has decided that it's best to piss with everyone and make sure all the "bad guys" get caught. As a result, everybody is suspected of doing something and we lose liberty. The "bad guys" still get away, but now we have "good guys" that get arrested, or have everything seized, or go to jail.
As for the blanket warrant, that would be the second half the 4th amendment that the parent pasted.
"... no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That says a specific place and specific things and people. You cannot have a warrant for "the people at this address", but instead, you must name the people. You can't have "the contents of this address", but you can have "the computer equipment at this address".
Interesting how by the 4th amendment, all warrants that are not specific or do not require legal proceeding to issue, are actually unconstitutional. This is unsurprising considering the tremendous number of Federal laws which are not only completely against the intent of the Constitution, but quite opposed to the letter of the Constutition, as well.
MS certainly does push APIs that they don't really use internally. Win32/s and MFC were good examples of that one.
.NET, despite them pushing it extremely hard. It still might end up being the first broad API toolkit that they actually do use, besides the straight Windows API. They pushed and used DirectX, too, of course. We'll have to wait for the next release of Office, and a closer look at Longhorn and IE7 to be sure of their .NET committment.
They're not really using
I've also had the opposite experience with Notes. I worked for IBM, and they used Notes exactly like you described. It was very fast for all of it because Notes/Domino treats everything like a database. That means you have indexes and everything to speed up things. We accessed things on the other end of every link from single channel ISDN to frame relay to LAN, and Notes was always snappy. Searches were extremely fast even across a huge data store.
BTW, this was on a NT4 machine with a P2-400 and 128MB RAM.
It did crash more that I'd like, but it was still much more stable than Exchange/Outlook was, and mostly more than it still is. This was back in Notes 4.x... 5 was still in beta.
I remember being there when one of the first email worms spread. The Domino servers kept going processing all the mail, and the Exchange admin had to power cycle his servers and pull their network jacks just to get into the machines at all.
That's just so that you don't have to boot off a CD or disk and reinstall Grub/LILO in the MBR. The Windows bootloader can load a Linux partition same as a Linux bootloader can load Windows'. You just have to install Grub/LILO onto your partition instead of the MBR and then add a line to your C:\boot.ini. I believe you could even just write the kernel onto the beginning of the partition and do the same thing.
Windows just always overwrites the MBR when you install it. If you install NT on a 9x box, it will overwrite the 9x bootloader, too. This is the norm for most Linux distributions too, they just automatically add an entry to chain-load the secondary bootloader for Windows by default. You still have to do that manually on Windows.
Linux's bootloaders do not do this. Grub and LILO will boot the secondary boot loader for Windows via chain-loader, but for them to function normally, they overwrite the primary bootloader in the MBR. The Windows NTLDR does the same, and has the same capability to chain-load another secondary boot.
Much like configuring LILO or Grub to load another boot from a partition, NTLDR can be easily set up to do that. Last I messed with it, it was unable to boot an extended partition. NTLDR is also just plain not as flexible as Grub & LILO, but it was never meant to be. If that bothers you, there are a number of boot managers that you can use, including Grub.
As I've said so many times, physical trespass or theft is not the same thing. AP manufacturers configure their equipment to allow any station to associate by default. If my laptop associates when it's within range, then it is working as intended. If you don't like that, then change the settings. Don't complain when your device does what it's supposed to!
The closest real world analogy I can think of is that of a public business. If I set up an area like a restaurant, put up a sign, and leave the door unlocked, is it OK for me to sue everyone that walks in the door? They're trespassing after all, I never told them that I intended them to come it. But established pratice is that in that situation it *is* OK for them to come in. The open AP situation is exactly the same. That configuration is inviting the public to connect. It's saying "Come in an have a seat. What will your order be?".
Honestly, if the court doesn't let you "get away" with this, then the court is wrong. This happens; it's why the appeals process exists.
Oh damn, using public radio is different from stealing a physical object. That's a news flash for everyone.
I bet their VCR flashes 12:00 and they can't get their TV to play through their stereo, too. Perhaps they should learn to read their manuals. Instead they plug it in and then call tech support when it doesn't read their mind and do what they want. No manual ever opened.
Good manners does not make it a good law, or a law at all. The problem is that the wireless kit is working as it is supposed to if you leave it open and I connect to it. If you don't want that behaviour, then set it up to not allow public associations.
If you put your TV facing the street in the front yard, it might be rude for me to stand on the sidewalk and watch it. It would not be illegal, however, for me to do so. (It might be illegal for you to publicly display the program, but that's the not topic at hand.)
It would be rude if I called you ignorant, but not illegal. Laws shouldn't, and mostly aren't, set by what is and is not rude.
No, just no. The only fault for them not knowing is their own. They were being irresponsible, and now established practice and normal operation of the technology is causes an unintended side-effect that they might not be happy with.
Your stance is the mentality that makes us put labels like "hot" on coffee and "suffocation hazard" on plastic bags.
Those outdated/large tomes of law defeat the purpose of law anyway. They take the law away from the common man and make it something that only specialized people know. This is bad for *all* citizens of the country in question.
These physical object analogies are just the wrong way to do it; they are made by people who don't get it. There is no trespess here; there is no illegal entry; there is no theft. The device is working in the manner it was designed to work. The people leaving it that way are either doing so on purpose, or have the net effect of doing so on purpose. There is no way to tell the difference between the two. Ignorance of the law is no excuse... why should ignorance of your property.
If you leave money somewhere public, it will get taken. If you leave your wallet, then perhaps someone will return it to you, since they can tell whose it is. Either way, it is theft to take someone's physical property without permission.
If I walk around naked and someone watched me, the problem is me doing it where someone else can see it. Likewise, if I transmit a signal omnidirectionally, and someone picks up the signal, that's my fault for not doing it differently.
As for your assertation that most people don't have time to understand this. First, it's clearly described in the manufacturer doco. Second, it's on a public band. Third, it's working as intended if it lets anyone connect and use.
Your statements are ridiculous in that regard. You don't need to be a network engineer to install an AP any more than a plumber to replace a water filter or a mechanical engineer to put gas in your car. The incredibly simple and well documented process of configuring your AP is a little different than prescribing your own medication from a list of thousands of things with thousands of side-effects and interactions.
Setting up an AP is more like connecting a VCR. It's incredibly easy unless you're too lazy to read the two pages of documentation. Then it doesn't work how you want it to, and it's your own fault.
I wasn't actually arguing *for* PDF on the web. I rather dislike the way it gets used. But if your intent for making something available is for people to print it, then you should use an appropriate format for that purpose.
Using images doesn't work that well. They tend to be overly large and printers have a hard time handling them. I'd rather straight PostScript, since that's what my printers and all my print management software understands natively.
As far as computer processed paper forms... having been involved in a project that did just this, you don't want to do HTML for it. You need to have a rigid format so that you can maximize the reliablity of the machine scan being correct. It takes a looong time to get your accuracy to near perfect levels. Even then, you will have scanned areas that you have uncertainty about, and you need to have a human look at it and verify.
I don't like the IRS one bit. I think the agency is unconstitutional and should be abolished. As for their forms, they have fields that cover all possibilities. They have to make their forms capable of handling all aspects of tax law, so you get fields that are only used by 0.1% of the population. I'd love to see more electronic tax submission, but they have executed that terribly. I end up submitted paper forms a lot of the time just because I don't have to pay for more than a stamp to do it. I use fill-in PDF forms to do this. The instructions for filling out those forms is what I would say is the excellent example for something that shouldn't be in PDF.
While many of us hate PDF, just remember: the right tool for the right job. Sometimes a typeset format is the right tool and sometimes a markup format is the right tool.
So, to summarize, HTML is the right way if your data is only being presented to the user through a browser. PDF is acceptable if you need the format exactly the same in all cases. Images can do this as well, but they aren't as flexible as PDF, PS, or similar. You can use a word processor for this for the reason that the output isn't consistent.
Anything that needs to be typeset has reason to be in PDF. You see manuals, brochures, and various reports in the format because that's what gets sent to their volume printer. They aren't making the PDF available to be annoying so much as because they already have it and it will look the same as what they printed.
Also, any form which needs to be printed exactly the same is a good cantidate for PDF. IRS tax forms are a good example of this.
In general, though, I agree that if you're putting it on a web server, it *probably* should be in HTML. I'm personally really sick of the jerks that fill their site with PDF. My browser is made to navigate a HTML based site, not a PDF based one.
I would not call HTML a document preparation system in the same vein as Word. Word is for doing letters, HTML is for doing markup. Ideally, you don't specify formatting in HTML, you specify intent. HTML will likely look a bit different on everything you view it on. Sort of like Word, but on purpose.
The operation headquarters for dealing with the rescue effort and the aftermath was run out of the lower Manhattan UPS facility that was very near to the WTC. UPS shut it down and allowed emergency personnel to use it as necessary. They also provided a few million dollars and a lot of transportation support.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
Extremely fluffy. It's also a guarantee that if a law is long there is trouble. This law seems to be well over 250 pages long.
I'd have to agree with you; unfortunately I did not think my wording through all that well. I guess I shouldn't write laws! ;-)
I hope I still got the point across that something like PATRIOT has obvious and terrible potential for abuse. This is similar to any kind of open-ended law that calls for some government agent's discretion. Take, for example, the obscenity wording in the FCC charter. It isn't clearly defined, so there is potential for abuse.
So, while you're right that most laws can be abused... and getting past my unfortunate wording, I would not mind seeing most current laws going away. That's not to say I don't want any laws, which would be silly. I just want to see most laws happening on a local level instead of our current "That law really should be local, so we're going to be making it a Federal law.".
Telephone lost backup because grid power was down, and was out long enough to exhaust backup power.
;-)
Many people coordinating this kind of setup do think just like that. Redundant power is pretty much protecting you against a construction incident, or similar. Remember, here isn't exactly a competitor in power delivery that you can buy from. If the grid goes down, you still lose power.
Getting diesel in is *usually* easy enough. Unless all travel to an area is cut off.
The only difference between 1995 and 2005 is that access is more pervasive. In '95 you could get internet from the same places as today. It's just faster today, nothing more. Those redundant backbone networks are nice, but they don't exist in the last mile. That's where damage is most likely to occur.
Were you anywhere near there? The telephone networks were completely unusable. Cellular was gone. As far out as 75 miles, telephone communications weren't working properly. This covered the entire tri-state area. Now they've improved things since then, but the point is that this sort of thing happens, and that telephone and cellular were found to be unreliable in an emergency. For what it's worth, 911 *did* go down in some areas. This was a result of a total collapse of the telephone system in parts of lower Manhattan, and the eventual draining of backup power. 911 has reserve capacity in the telephone system, and dedicated circuits. It does not have infinity circuits.
Internet service was just out in many areas, as in completely non-functional. When you have no telephone line and no power, you have no internet. Those on dial-up were SOL, since you couldn't make any calls across the whole region. DSL had issues because of the huge amount of interference. In areas that still had power, cable internet was generally working.
Large chunks of rescue and relief coordination was done by hams. That information is available with hardly five seconds of research. The rest was done by government workers with radios, and quite a bit of assistance by UPS (as in the shipping company).
IOW, ham radio was found to be absolutely essential during 9/11. Radio was a total and absolute necessity, as there was *no* other way to communicate.
Even if those lines are run underground, that won't help people in areas like southern California. The ground moving really can't be good for underground service. If they have a massive earthquake there power and telephone are out. Most cellular communication will die, unless they work like Sprint PCS (tower to tower calls). Once the backup power runs out, cellular is down too, if the towers had been working anyway.
Actually, they do have to be specific with a search warrant. To quote the 4th amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That quote effectively says that roving wiretaps and broad search warrants *are* unconstitutional. It says that warrants are *not* to be aimed at people, they're to be aimed at places and things. Roving wiretaps will affect more than just one person. That has to be weighed when a wire tap is granted by a court. That's why we shouldn't have roving wire taps for any reason. There is far too much room for abuse, and that is never acceptable.
Also, library records were fully intended to be anonymous. It was thought to be vital to freedom to be able to read what you want without the government knowing. Current Federal action just reinforces this as necessary. Medical records are what you are, and what has happened to you. It makes sense for those to be able to be accessible via court order.
You also contradicted yourself about freedoms. By taking steps away from individual freedoms, you are in fact reducing freedom. You need to scream and holler about it because otherwise you lose all your freedom with baby steps.
The NRA people oppose gun control because they either don't want the government telling them what they're allowed to own, and they want to own the guns they like, or because it's a reduction in freedom. They can support this because the 2nd amendment clearly states "shall not be infringed". Gun control will, in fact, infringe on my ability to keep and bear Arms. The reason you hear all the "gun nuts" is because the media chooses to only report stories on those types of people. If it comes down to it, we can't effectively fight the government if they have guns and we don't; we lose the ability to maintain our freedoms by force, if necessary. That reason is specifically put into the amendment:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Like so many other things, politics is like a game that is won by the majority of a minority. Most people don't vote. You don't need to convince the mainstream, you just need to be loud enough that that minority that actually votes hears you.
It a law was written with potential for abuse, then the law shouldn't be law. Most traffic laws are quite sane and hard to abuse. Failure to signal, speeding, failure to stop, etc. If the law says something of the likes of "officer's discretion", then we have a problem. There shouldn't be any form of "discretion" involved.
You either broke a law, or you did not break the law. If they think you broke the law, they arrest you, charge you, and try you. If they cannot prove you broke the law, or you can prove that you did not, then they have to let you go and they can't try you again.
Your example is an officer choosing to not charge you for a law they witnessed you breaking. This is different from a law that calls for "an officer's discretion".
Likewise, a law that attempts to circumvent Constitutional guarantees is just outright not a valid law. There *is* no discussion on it, since by it's very nature, that law is illegal and unconstitutional. The Federal government decided to blatently ignore the Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. That law clearly and intentionally attempts to bypass protections in the Bill of Rights.
We don't need laws "monitoring potential threats" at all! You don't need laws to do that, we've been doing that for centuries. People in black suits or blue uniforms, going around, listening and talking and watching. If they notice something suspicious, they investigate further. If a law is being broken, they intervene, arrest you, and charge you. Then you stand trial.
The problem is when the listening and watching invade your privacy. We already have laws that allow law enforcement to probe deeper than normally allowed, but they need to have justification and court approval, lest the evidence be inadmissable.
We shouldn't have the courts sorting things out; they're for taking the guy that you're rather sure broke the law, and letting a jury decide if you really did. You have to play the game of extremes here, because eventually someone will try them out. Under your system, every single person can be arrested and charged with a crime. Then the courts can decide if they should've been charged. This is completely and totally unacceptable!
Personally, I wish people would get off their asses and toss out every single politician that voted in favor of these laws. This is not something that we should be playing games with.
Since you mention things functioning as they always did, you should really pay more attention. It does *not* function the way it always did. Read the Constitution and amendments. All those amendments mean "We changed the way it worked. Now it doesn't work how it always did." I suggest that you pay specific attention to amendment 17.
Yes, it would be lovely if the 17th amendment would be repealed. Then we might actually get something fixed. Then it wouldn't matter nearly as much what foolish thing the Representatives were pushed into doing since you'd have the Senate to hold them back (and vice versa). Another check and balance gone, another pile of obvious reasons as to why we should never have removed it.