If you obscure your scan in an airport (say, wrap your stuff in metal foil or put some of those fancy sheets of steel with the 4th amendment cut into it) you get denied access to the plane. OK, that's easy, and it makes cop-sense that you're opting out of your flight if you don't consent to the search. And I guess the same logic could apply to major events and the like, though I can see people having even less patience for the security theater on their way into something fun.
Wonder how they'd take to that just walking down the damn street, though, especially since the chances of blocking the scan on accident are greater in Real Life than in an airport. Knowing the way these assholes think, they might just try to slap you for obstruction of justice or some shit.
I'm starting to think we'd all be better off if there was a virus that specifically targeted cops and security types.
And is this situation even desirable? I've never been clear on what the benefit to society is of people not being legally accountable for the actions they take on behalf of a corporation.
Wouldn't those people's rights be protected by, ya know, being people?
No. Even in the US that isn't true. If your rights have been violated by law or action, you still have to act to redress your grievance, either in the courts or through communication. What you don't get is that procedures frequently have to be implemented in order for the right to be properly honored. For example, the Miranda warning is a judicially mandated action that was deemed necessary so that people who were arrested would aware of their rights. It doesn't follow naturally from the Constitution and didn't come about until about 45 years ago. Similarly, corporate personhood is a legal invention. It came about precisely because the courts of the time deemed it necessary in order to honor the rights of the people making up the corporation.
If you'll hang in there with me, I'm genuinely curious and trying to step outside my normal "corporations = fuck 'em" assumption set. Your angle on this issue is quite different from what I'm used to seeing. What rights of the people in the corporation are we talking about, and how might they be violated? I'm trying to give your position the benefit of the doubt, but being all vague like this I'm not inclined to assume it's the rights of lowly cubicle drones but rather the rights of executives and, well, that comes back to my normal assumption set. Please, illuminate me.
If not exaggerated, that is mind-numbingly fucked up. I understand it to be about the same way in the UK, but I didn't realize Canada had drank the kool-aid on this one.
Anybody know where this thing came down? The article says nothing about the course of the missile, just its start point.
Also, seems to me like the "show of force" for Asia's benefit explanation is pretty lame; wouldn't you rather do that over there where, ya know, they could see it?
Canned tuna looks and smells like shitty cat food. I'll pass, regardless of preparation.
Raw tuna, as in sushi, looks delicious. Alas, looks can be deceiving. Oh, how I've longed to enjoy tuna, salmon, and various other pretty tasty things and be cool like all the other hipsters and edgerunners, but alas, I really can't stand the stuff. I've tried everything from simple salmon-on-some-rice to squid tentacles, so this isn't a case of an American who won't try new things. I've just had to accept that regardless of how tasty it looks, I don't like sushi. Tragic, I know.
Actually, I could go a step further: grilled shrimp, in small quantities, and grilled shark, are the only sea foods I actually like.
I don't think that's really the point on this one. It isn't an instance of saving the adorable but useless spotted whatever, which we've messed up by destroying its habitat or something. This is an instance of hungry people have eaten up almost all that tasty tasty tune (actually, I hate tune, but that's not the point) and what little is left is about to be rendered unappetizing or dead.
This is actually environmentalism in its most selfish (and thus, from a certain point of view, best) form: if you want to keep eating a species, you've got to take care of them.
If there has ever been a better case for a corporate death penalty, I can't think of it. They badgered the courts into defining corporations as legal people, fine -- their bed, they can sleep in it.
This is either the worst joke, or the best troll, I've read all day. Can't tell which.
Stereotypes do not arise in a vacuum; I think our culture takes managers and their skills just about as seriously as those managers have given the culture reason too.
"Are government bodies not entitled to charge a nominal fee for services rendered?"
No. Especially in this instance, as the service wasn't rendered. If you pay for Document X, the money doesn't go to the people who did whatever work went into that document, it goes to the reproduction office. All he's really done is take out the middle man. There's also that whole taxation thing...
The fact that you even wonder if it would be the same if it was "common" strikes a blow to your assessment that it actually sounded different. I'm sure good ones sound better than cheep ones, but all you convinced me of was that elitism has a note all its own.
And this is different than any other administration how, exactly? (Not that everyone else doing it makes it OK now, just that the US government has sucked exactly like this for at least several decades, and probably longer.)
To my eye, this would be akin to the distinction between "assault," and "aggravated assault with a deadly weapon." Granted, both of my examples are violent, but I was trying to show a place where the law does in fact draw such fine distinctions. As opposed to rape, which is sort of the only word the law recognizes in terms of nonconsentual sex acts, with no grades of offense, at least as far as I know. Shoot, even flat-out killing someone has grades of offense, from accidental manslaughter through premeditated murder. Not that a rape is ever really accidental, but it would be interesting if it wasn't a binary legal switch.
Never mind all the crap that will get you on the sex offender list all by yourself without ever touching another soul, like getting caught pissing in an alley way.
No, it wasn't intended to predict anything in a scientifically rigorous manner, like predicting planetary orbits or something, so maybe a bad choice of words. Definitely more of a talking point.
That said, the equation was presented by Carl Sagan to some senator in a reverse manner, saying that if they knew N, they could predict L, which played nicely into the senator's anit-nuclear weapons view and thus secured funding for SETI. So its got that going for it, which is nice.
Without giving a lengthy description, at the beginning of the project that would grow into SETI, they asked more or less the same questions and decided that it really came down to, "What are the odds that after a given species invents radio, they invent nukes and destroy themselves?" The equation is intended to predict the number of advanced civilizations in the galaxy at any given time, based on a bunch of "educated guess," variables, like the number of planets that can support life, the number that actually do, the number of those that become intelligent, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
If you obscure your scan in an airport (say, wrap your stuff in metal foil or put some of those fancy sheets of steel with the 4th amendment cut into it) you get denied access to the plane. OK, that's easy, and it makes cop-sense that you're opting out of your flight if you don't consent to the search. And I guess the same logic could apply to major events and the like, though I can see people having even less patience for the security theater on their way into something fun.
Wonder how they'd take to that just walking down the damn street, though, especially since the chances of blocking the scan on accident are greater in Real Life than in an airport. Knowing the way these assholes think, they might just try to slap you for obstruction of justice or some shit.
I'm starting to think we'd all be better off if there was a virus that specifically targeted cops and security types.
Oh, don't bother, we can read them while they are still in your pocket.
This will all end in tears. One way or the other.
And is this situation even desirable? I've never been clear on what the benefit to society is of people not being legally accountable for the actions they take on behalf of a corporation.
Wouldn't those people's rights be protected by, ya know, being people?
No. Even in the US that isn't true. If your rights have been violated by law or action, you still have to act to redress your grievance, either in the courts or through communication. What you don't get is that procedures frequently have to be implemented in order for the right to be properly honored. For example, the Miranda warning is a judicially mandated action that was deemed necessary so that people who were arrested would aware of their rights. It doesn't follow naturally from the Constitution and didn't come about until about 45 years ago. Similarly, corporate personhood is a legal invention. It came about precisely because the courts of the time deemed it necessary in order to honor the rights of the people making up the corporation.
If you'll hang in there with me, I'm genuinely curious and trying to step outside my normal "corporations = fuck 'em" assumption set. Your angle on this issue is quite different from what I'm used to seeing. What rights of the people in the corporation are we talking about, and how might they be violated? I'm trying to give your position the benefit of the doubt, but being all vague like this I'm not inclined to assume it's the rights of lowly cubicle drones but rather the rights of executives and, well, that comes back to my normal assumption set. Please, illuminate me.
Wouldn't those people's rights be protected by, ya know, being people?
I believe I speak for everyone when I say,
tough shit.
If not exaggerated, that is mind-numbingly fucked up. I understand it to be about the same way in the UK, but I didn't realize Canada had drank the kool-aid on this one.
Anybody know where this thing came down? The article says nothing about the course of the missile, just its start point.
Also, seems to me like the "show of force" for Asia's benefit explanation is pretty lame; wouldn't you rather do that over there where, ya know, they could see it?
the Queen's not getting on Facebook then, hugh?
Interesting comment, improfane. If we're going to start setting bars, who gets to place them?
I take it by "time," you don't mean pre-release, do you?
Robots are fuckin' boring.
Canned tuna looks and smells like shitty cat food. I'll pass, regardless of preparation.
Raw tuna, as in sushi, looks delicious. Alas, looks can be deceiving. Oh, how I've longed to enjoy tuna, salmon, and various other pretty tasty things and be cool like all the other hipsters and edgerunners, but alas, I really can't stand the stuff. I've tried everything from simple salmon-on-some-rice to squid tentacles, so this isn't a case of an American who won't try new things. I've just had to accept that regardless of how tasty it looks, I don't like sushi. Tragic, I know.
Actually, I could go a step further: grilled shrimp, in small quantities, and grilled shark, are the only sea foods I actually like.
I don't think that's really the point on this one. It isn't an instance of saving the adorable but useless spotted whatever, which we've messed up by destroying its habitat or something. This is an instance of hungry people have eaten up almost all that tasty tasty tune (actually, I hate tune, but that's not the point) and what little is left is about to be rendered unappetizing or dead.
This is actually environmentalism in its most selfish (and thus, from a certain point of view, best) form: if you want to keep eating a species, you've got to take care of them.
If there has ever been a better case for a corporate death penalty, I can't think of it. They badgered the courts into defining corporations as legal people, fine -- their bed, they can sleep in it.
BP should be sliced up and sold as scrap.
This is either the worst joke, or the best troll, I've read all day. Can't tell which.
Stereotypes do not arise in a vacuum; I think our culture takes managers and their skills just about as seriously as those managers have given the culture reason too.
"Are government bodies not entitled to charge a nominal fee for services rendered?"
No.
Especially in this instance, as the service wasn't rendered. If you pay for Document X, the money doesn't go to the people who did whatever work went into that document, it goes to the reproduction office. All he's really done is take out the middle man. There's also that whole taxation thing...
The fact that you even wonder if it would be the same if it was "common" strikes a blow to your assessment that it actually sounded different. I'm sure good ones sound better than cheep ones, but all you convinced me of was that elitism has a note all its own.
And this is different than any other administration how, exactly?
(Not that everyone else doing it makes it OK now, just that the US government has sucked exactly like this for at least several decades, and probably longer.)
To my eye, this would be akin to the distinction between "assault," and "aggravated assault with a deadly weapon." Granted, both of my examples are violent, but I was trying to show a place where the law does in fact draw such fine distinctions. As opposed to rape, which is sort of the only word the law recognizes in terms of nonconsentual sex acts, with no grades of offense, at least as far as I know. Shoot, even flat-out killing someone has grades of offense, from accidental manslaughter through premeditated murder. Not that a rape is ever really accidental, but it would be interesting if it wasn't a binary legal switch.
Never mind all the crap that will get you on the sex offender list all by yourself without ever touching another soul, like getting caught pissing in an alley way.
No, it wasn't intended to predict anything in a scientifically rigorous manner, like predicting planetary orbits or something, so maybe a bad choice of words. Definitely more of a talking point.
That said, the equation was presented by Carl Sagan to some senator in a reverse manner, saying that if they knew N, they could predict L, which played nicely into the senator's anit-nuclear weapons view and thus secured funding for SETI. So its got that going for it, which is nice.
You're thinking of the Drake equation:
N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fl x Fe x Fi x Fc x L
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
Without giving a lengthy description, at the beginning of the project that would grow into SETI, they asked more or less the same questions and decided that it really came down to, "What are the odds that after a given species invents radio, they invent nukes and destroy themselves?" The equation is intended to predict the number of advanced civilizations in the galaxy at any given time, based on a bunch of "educated guess," variables, like the number of planets that can support life, the number that actually do, the number of those that become intelligent, etc.
Which protoculture? The one that gets you high and drives your space fortress, or the one that brings sex back to your civilization?
Ugly? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? That thing looked AWESOME!
(yes, I'm yelling. We're talking about the closest thing to a space fighter ever built)