I'm not familiar with lifetime parole. But, I'll take you at your word on it.
Perhaps it is a knee jerk reaction, but any time the government talks about giving itself the power to track any class of individuals, I start worrying. My problem is, where does it stop, and who's to ensure it stops? To be fully honest, I don't care much for the parole system as it stands, and the idea of lifetime parole bothers the hell out of me. I think there needs to be a very clear demarcation between convicted criminals serving their sentace and free citizens. Then again, I have a lot of disagreements with our current justice system.
I think if your daughter or son was brutally raped and killed because a sex offender was allowed to leave early, you would want to throw away any tests that gives the opinion they might fix themselves.
While true that if (had I one), my daugher was brutally raped and murdered, I would probably see to it that the offender met a grisly fate; I don't see how having a tracking device on the guy that did it would make any difference. That's the problem with this idea, it does nothing to stop recidivism. A GPS unit stuffed up someone's arse is not going to prevent them from raping and killing again.
Yes, sexual predators are vile scum which should be expunged from society, but tagging them isn't going to help the victims any.
Good point, I've played with a few untis as well, and the signal just dies inside the building I work in. (old 1907 construction). Also, who's to prove that it is always attached? For example
Go home
Remove GPS unit
Go find victim
Go home
Re-attach GPS unit
Instant Alibi
???
Profit!!
Ok, so the unit will probably have a tamper proof connector, and/or biometric interface to make sure it's attached. But, as I would assume all/. realizes, any security can be defeated if the attacker is persistent enough. Not to mention that once someone figures out how to do it, and puts that information online, the system becomes worthless.
Besides that, how exactly does this prevent recidivism? Yes, it'll be faster to find the repeat offender, but they would still have the opportunity to repeat the offense. This is just like cameras for security, they do nothing to prevent crime, they just make it eaiser to catch the criminal after the fact. So I guess the message this law is sending is, it's OK for children to be molested, as long as we can catch the repeat offenders after the fact, so they can be put through the system and let back out into the populous again with a shiny new tracker.
There is a big differnce here:
during probation != for life
We track criminals for the duration of their probationary period, but after that they are no longer tracked. This is part of the probation system. Basically, we let a well behaving convicted criminal out of jail early, with the caveat that he is not really a "free" citizen yet, and he must still report his whereabouts for the remaining duration of his sentance.
This system would track a criminal for the rest of his life. Potentially, for a long time after their proscribed punsihment has expired. While I agree that jail time is the wrong solution for the type of people this law targets, we still need to make sure that we are not allowing civil rights to be eroded on this front. Tell me, what's to stop this type of law being passed for "rapists and other violent criminals"? People would probably go for it. But tell me, what all is included in that "other violent criminals" bit? Do you really want a government deciding who it gets to track forever? Have you ever read 1984, Brave New World, Farienheit 451, or better yet, a little bit of history? Just because we claim to be a free and open society, doesn't mean we can't follow the path of Rome into imperialism.
That might be a good starting point, but I was kind of thinking about later in the story, where Lot's daughters got him drunk, so they could have sex with him.
Damn, you beat me to it.
Its the "100 hours of gameplay" which drove me away from the FF series. Even ignoring the fact that I have a life and would take months to put in that much time, I just don't enjoy spending 90 of those 100 hours doing pointless leveling and gold collection. And that sort of thing seems endemic to the FF series and SquEnix games in general.
You start the game, and have a long drawn out intro. You then take your character and spend a few hours leveling. Then you go through a little plot. Then a few more hours leveling. Repeat until you near the end of the game, then spend an absolutly ridiculous time leveling to fight the final boss (all three forms of him). And this is ignoring the constant random battle interuptions in trying to get to the plot locations.
I tend to view the FF games now as a form of gaming mastrubation, ya it's fun for a bit, but eventually, if you don't reach the end, it starts to get boring and chafe.
I realize it's kind of a repeat of the AC, but check out DosBox. So far, nearly every old game I have tried running in it has run great. And you don't have the jumpyness of MoSlo or the like. There are versions available for both Linux and Windows.
The United States should honor its treaties. There are consequences for the way our government acts, including the fact that we don't always honor our treaties.
No argument there. I'm not sayng that the US should just "go it alone", just that this is not really an impediment to a nuclear drive happening. Honestly though, I would prefer the US to work with other nations to create an exemption to the treaties , which are stopping this from happening. I'm willing to bet that most of the other signatories would be willing to work on it.
A pre-existing treaty no longer seems to be a reason to stop the US from doing something. Look at the treatment the Anti-Ballistic Missle treaty got when it didn't allow for the development of a missle defense system.
Bush, "Treaty, what, oh, look at the kitty."
Joking aside, an international treaty is only as good as the willingness of the signatories to give it force. Who, exactly, is going to stop the US governmant if it decides to burn the treaty and fire up a nuclear drive? The other signatories, not likely, they will yell and scream and complain about it, but in the end they will be impotent to do anything about it.
Having read the article, and also followed the author's advice to read the security bulletins, I found that the article is mostly bullshit, which stumbles upon lucid points occasionally, though I think this is mostly by accident.
I didn't bother to do a count of items in the bulletins, as this is an utterly worthless metric. Nor do I agree that percentage of complaints is a worthwhile way to judge two competing products.
Just to dispel that idea. Consider for a moment that in his example of 1000 users of A vs. 50 users of B, a 2 person anomoly would be a 0.2% shift in the numbers for A and a 4% shift in the numbers for B. That margin of error for product B is so large as to make the whole study worthless.
On the other hand, of the items in the bulletins, Firefox did have some serious flaw, e.g. the kind that end in "would allow a malicious user to execute arbitrary code." So, the author is right that Firefox is not some panacea for security, he just fails to explain the real reason why.
Now, is Firefox more secure overall? I haven't the slightest clue. I really don't have the time and or will to go through the bulletins, aggregate all of the flaws for each browser, assign a numerical value to each severity, and then come up with a score. I offer this idea to any of those who surf/. all day, have a desire to defend Firefox, and don't have a job.
The author also brings up the old argument of, its not currently a target, so its more secure because of obscurity. I think this argument was valid, right up until Firefox hit 1.0. Before that, it was an obscure little browser which didn't get much attention. However, once it hit 1.0 it got a lot of press; and, the way I see it, this would have given a huge incentive for the black hats to start hitting Firefox, for the right to say that they had one of the first working exploits for this new browser. So, I think this argument falls apart.
So, without a real study to backup and/or revoke the idea that Firefox is more secure than IE, the only thing I have to go on is antecdotal evidence. Right now I support about 100 computers. And, because of the way we do business, each user has administrative access to their own box (fun on a bun!). Now, because of this, I have a mix of IE users and Firefox users. For the most part, the computers which I am cleaning up spyware/adware on all of the time tend to be the IE user's computers. While I do have to do an occasional cleanup of a Firefox computer, the problems tend to come from other third party apps bundled with spyware, as opposed to the IE, browsed to the wrong page and got infected spyware.
Does this mean Firefox is more secure? No, one factor, which I can't really rule out, is that the people who use Firefox also tend to be the more knowledgable computer users; so, they may simply be better at avoiding infection. As a counter example, our network engineer runs IE, and doesn't have a problem with spyware/adware, so maybe its just the person at the keyboard making the difference. But, still the preponderence of the evidence would suggest that the Firefox machines tend to be less infected, so there is some correlation, if not outright causation.
One other thing, which helps keep me on Firefox, have you ever tried to re-install IE6 SP2? Fucking pain in the ass. Some spyware/adware will attach itself to the IE DLL's, and is near impossible to get rid of. Also, I have had more than one machine where the removal of the spyware/adware has broken the IE scripting engine. This is also ignoring that crapware that damages winsock as it gets removed. Thank <insert diety here> for the automated winsock repair tool.
MS has made re-installing IE harder and harder as they have released updates. In IE5 I could do an add/remove programs on it, and get a reinstall out of it. In IE6 SP1, I could futz with the registry and get it to allow a re-install. Now that seems to be broken, as the MS recommended registry change to allow a reinstall seems to be broken. Th
I think I failed to clarify part of my argument. I don't expect free speech rights to trump property rights. I don't think I made that clear. Included with this is that, if a group reserves a public venue for a function, they should be allowed to control access to that venue. However, that control should not extend beyond the venue reserved. Also, if you are dealing with private property, the owner should be allowed to kick out anyone they wish. Lawful police presence excepted. If a group reserves a park they should be able to bar entry to whomever they wish for the duration of the function. However, they should not be given any control over the surrounding area.
Can't you see that extending "free speech" rights of one group to including overshouting, harassing, and blocking others (in a second group) to the point where they are not allowed to speak ends up violating this 2nd group's free speech rights?
There are a couple of things in this, which I see as having different answers. First off, I'm not trying to argue that protesters should be allowed into a reserved venue. But, they should be allowed to do as they wish outside that venue. If that includes trying to overshout the speaker inside, then so be it. It is up to the organizer to make sure they have a large enough venue and proper sound system.
As for harrassing or blocking those trying to enter/leave a venue that should be handled on a per case basis by the police, as that is very obviously obstrucying the rights of the person trying to enter the venue lawfully.
Attaching a new name - "free speech zone" doesn't mean it never existed before 911 and that is my point. This has been going on all along, to a larger extent in the 1960's.
Just because something has been done for a long time, in one fashion or another, does not mean that it is right. I agree that there were some large abuses of government power in the 1960's. One needs only look as far as McCarthyism to see that.
What the court has said is that you do have a right to say what you want (and you still do today), you don't have a right to violate other people's rights.
No argument there. Pray, tell though, what rights are being violated by protesters being present outside an event? Yes, the people talking inside have a right to free speech as well, that is not being violated. Nothing about peaceful protesters outside an event prevents those inside the event from speaking their minds. They may have to talk louder, but there is no right to silence while you are speaking.
Now, I will agree that, if the protesters are preventing people from entering or leaving freely, and/or threatinging people, or violating any other of a myriad of actual rights of other people, then the violators should be arrested and charged with a criminal act. However, to suppress the free expression of a class of people, just because some of them might violate the rights of the attendees, is absolutly abusive. Remember the Japanese concentration camps of WWII? Would you argue that it was right to suspend the civil rights of everyone of Japanese heritage because some of those people could be saboteurs? That is the problem with allowing the suspending of rights of a class of people based on the possible actions of some of the individuals in tha group. Even ignoring the logical fallicy inherent in doing that, it opens the door to way too much abuse of governmental power.
Having said all of that, there is a new twist in that some local's (as I have said before) implemented what amounts to a cage as you talked about. They don't seem to care which side you are on as I mentioned before - they had a barbed wire cage (like something out of the soviet era) for the Republican protesters at the Democratic convention. In the past they simply arrested you and put you on a bus or some other detention area. So instead of you being out of site and out of mind you can stand in a cage and get that photogenic picture for your cause on the front page of the paper.
I will agree that the police have been overzelous in the past with arrests, but usually some level of protests continued in the area. Obviously, there have been times in the past where this was taken to an extreme and protests were suppressed, violently at times, but on the average peaceful protests have been allowed to occur outside events.
The bottom line is I have yet to hear one single issue that has somehow been not voiced. Maybe you have an example? Keep in mind that people not agreeing with you doesn't mean they didn't hear your message. Maybe you think the President (whoever that happens to be at that time) never reads the papers or would know what would be on your sign? They do. Keep that in mind, it does matter, they do know.
The problem here isn't about being heard, its about the supression of the right to speak when, where and how I wish. I have no doubt that the presendent knows exactly what those protesters wanted to say to him. What was denied them was the right to say it. If a person had walked up to the cordon line outside the event and yelled, "The President is wrong!", they would have been arrested for not protesting in a "free speech zone". Which, in essence, means that they are being arrested for expressing a political opinion, not for causing harm or creating a dangerous situation through negligence.
P.S. No, I don't think you are simply defending this administration. Nor am I attacking solely the current administration. This is a government problem, which extends well beyond the executive branch. I just use the president as an example, since it is one of the most visible parts of government.
No, they didn't. The whole point of demonstrating against somone as they give a speech is to be seen and/or heard by those attending the speech. By pushing the protesters out to a "safe" distance, this was denied them. While the US Constitution only protects the right to speak, not the right to an audience, it also never provides any protection to peace and quite in a public venue. The president has no more right to silence when he is giving a speach than the protesters have a right to silence when protesting. Yes, the whole thing would have devolved into a shouting match, as both sides should have been allowed to be as loud as they wished (except when reaching the level where actual ear damage might occur). Most likely the president would have won, as he had a sound system.
Limiting the location of free speech is the same as limiting free speech itself. What is to prevent the government from pushing free speech out of any venue it wishes? Don't like the message protesters are presenting about the current administraton, move their protests to a place where they won't be seen and/or heard. Or, better yet, move them somewhere where they feel intimidated to the point of silencing themselves out of fear of reprisal.
The entire country is supposed to be a "free speech" zone, not just the places where it is inconsequential.
I think the thing which is usually missed in all of the "US vs. Them" discussions about free speech is that, we're all fucked to some degree. No matter where you go, to which "free" western contry your travel, there will be things which you are not allowed to say.
US: Threats against the president or other public figures.
France/Germany: Support for the Nazi ideas
Canada: From the parent's antecdote, it would seem that questioning the healthcare system is a no-no.
Spain: Not sure on this one, but I would bet that decrying the reconquista is a no-no.
I'm sure there are a lot more, and with enough time, we could find examples in every country. Sure, we may not agree with certain speech (Nazi's, KKK, Rush Limbaugh) but if we censor any of it, we are just opening the door for the government to ban anything it wants, all it has to do is figure out how to classify the undesierable speech as part of the restricted speech.
Jefferson was right, if you allow any restrictions, you might as well just forego the whole pretense, because you'll get there eventually. The trick to it, which is often ignored, is to make people responsible for their speech. If you yell "fire" in a crowded theater, when there was, in fact, no fire and many people are hurt or killed, you should go on trial for malicious negligence and face civil penelties for the injuries caused by your actions.
You can still do whatever you want just as you could before
Not really. As has been pointed out, repeatedly, "free speech zones" are a wonderful oxymoron. Until recently, I could stand anywhere outside an area where the president was giving a speech, and peacefully demonstrate against him, his agenda, his beliefs, or even his personal smell if I wanted to. Now, I must do so in a designated "free speech zone". How this hasn't been destroyed in court baffles me, the First Amendment reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Unless I am horribly behind on my english, the legislative branch cannot make any law which would prohibit me from speaking my mind. Imposing limits on when or where I can speak my mind is still a form of prohibition on free speech, and a literal reading of the First Amendment would seem to disallow such a thing being done.
Part of the problem here is that the courts have made the decision that freedom of speech can be abridged in cases where such speech is likely to cause a safety issue (e.g. yelling "fire" in a crowded theater). While this seems like a reasonable restriction, it has opened the door for abuse. The argument for the "free speech zones" today is that there is a security concern. Unfortunatly, there really isn't any evidence to back this claim up, unless you count damage to the message being preached by the demagogues on both sides of the asile. But, because the "post 9/11" world is supposed to be different somehow, the courts seem willing to roll over on this issue and allow political speech, that which was supposed to be most protected, to be abridged in this fashion.
What people want to do isn't a crime, and never should be. It's what people actually do which should be criminal and requiring action. Did any of these people do anything illegal? If so arrest the offending person(s). Allowing an entire class of people to have their rights stripped because they do not hold the correct belief set is not something you really want to let a government get away with.
You bad, evil, vile, person you. You know that you shouldn't be making content of your own. You should only view MPAA Approved(TM) media. By making your own videos, you have shown that you are are willing to circumvent the usual process by which you are force fed the MPAA's crap. And, yes, if your friends are downloading it, they should have their interenet connections yanked, as they are probably pirates and bad people as well.
And you all probably support terrorism as well.
I think part of it is that, at least in US culture, we have come to believe there is some equivilence between intellectual property rights and physical property rights. Whether this is true or not is open for debate, and I won't claim to have the answer. If we ignore this sticking point, and assume that there is some equivilence, then the laws pertaining to copyright are, in effect, just securing the copyright holder's property rights; and, therefore, a proper use of government power.
This also assumes that property rights, of any kind, are actually valid. Though this is pretty much a given in Western culture. Even places, such as the now defunct USSR, where socialism was the norm, there was still some respect for property rights. In all, Marx was probably dreaming to assume that anyone, even the most downtrodden proletariat, would willingly give up all property rights.
Just a random thought, which hit me while reading your post. Piracy is a capitalistic force.
The main idea behind a capitalistic economy is that, consumers will shop around and get the best product for the lowest price possible. With music this has not really been possible. If I want to buy the AC/DC "Back in Black" CD set I can technically shop around a bit, but in the end, I'm going to pay somewhere between US$10 and US$20 (bn.com has it at US$15). I can also go to iTunes and get just the 10 songs from it for roughly US$10 (Not been to iTunes, so I might be off a bit). the point is, the price is pretty fixed. I also cannot get a similar product at a lower price. Music is like that, it's either the band singing its songs, or it isn't.
This is where piracy comes in. The cost to duplicate the work, is very low. All I need is a computer with a CD drive, and an Internet connection. Each of those items does have a cost, but when that is broken over the various uses and number of CD's which can be copied, the price per unit drops to a pitance.
Now, what we have is a monopolized market (the legal kind, we're dealing with a copyright here), and the technology to undercut the monopoly significantly. the problem is, that there is no legal way to undercut the monopoly and make money, so an alternative needs to be found. That alternative, which is what Sharman, et al. are capitalizing on, is to make available the method for accessing this cheap alternative to the monopoly and collecting ad revenue from marketers who want access to their large user base.
This is really capitalism at its dirtiest. A need was identified (cheaper access to music), filled (via piracy), and capitalized upon (via ad-supported P2P apps). The music industry is now having to compete. Yes, the competition is illegal, but only because of government interference in the market. Copyright laws are not capitalistic in nature.
I'm not trying to argue that piracy should be legal, moral, etc. Just that it is a capitalistic force. Because of the monopolized nature of music, and the overpricing which follows, a corrective force exists. Becasue there is no legal outlet for that force, it has been expressed as rampant piracy. If the current method is stamped out, that force will show up in a different fashion. Basically, as long as there is a legislated monoploy, which is pricing it products higher than people are willing to accept as reasonable, there will be a drive to circumvent that monopoly. The more unreasonable the price, the more willing people will be to break the law to circumvent it.
I'm with you on this. I wanted to try to learn more about Linux, so I decided to migrate my mail, web and FTP functions to a Debian based server. The first thing I did (which was actually stupid, but hey, I'm learning) was to download the entirety of the Debian Sarge disribution, all 4 CD's of it. Turns out I only needed the first one for what I was doing, but I had no clue up front. So, according to this agreement, I should have had my access cut off, twice actually.
1. I downloaded several GB of data over as short of period as my bandwidth would allow.
2. I'm running a server, which we all know must be used for some illicit purpose. And not for:
SPAM control, I have 50 or so aliases, any one starts getting too much SPAM, just axe the line out in the aliases file.
Hosting my own wedding web site
Transfering files between work and home as needed
Remote Desktop (on a windows XP box), so that I can test router configuration from outside my work network (Yes, I work in the ITS department).
So, basically, I'm a horrible person, who doesn't deserve internet access because I want to learn a new OS, and have a web presence. The authors of this "code of conduct" need to have their computers taken away, and never be let near any insturment by which the insanity inside their skulls will be allowed to leak out into the rest of the world and bother us.
It seems to me that privacy only matters if there is a threat of sanction for the private behavior. Hiding stuff tends to add a layer of unhealthy psych because of the continual threats to the integrity of the cloak.
The problem with this idea is that we never know what will provoke a threat in the future. Right now, people of Arabian descent are finding out that having associated with the wrong people in the past is enough to keep them from getting on a airplane. If they had been able to keep that information private, they wouldn't have to jump through hoops to prove that they should be allowed to fly.
Simply put, information which is not now going to cause you trouble if it is well known may in the future be enough to cause you trouble.
The real need is to roll back the ability of the mob to make your life miserable if you choose to think or do something that is unconventional.
This is a good goal, but it will never be sufficient by itself. Eventually someone might act on that information; leagl or not, the results of those actions are still real.
In the long run, which is going to leave us in a better position? Should we be fighting to maintain privacy in the face of increasingly efficient snooping, or fighting for freedom of thought and action?
Why not do both? If we have to choose, privacy is the better way to go. It's easy for a government to backslide into abusing information, which it has gathered, for a bad purpose. It's much harder for a backsliding government to utilize information which is doesn't have.
A simple way to look at it is to assume that any government will eventually devolve into some form of abbusive tyrany. Plan accordingly.
Not that anyone's really going sacrifice much to achieve either of those goals . . ..
I may be a bit of an optimist, but I imagine that some time around 2100 or so it will have gotten bad enough that people will start killing the members of their government. I don't expect an open armed revolution, just people reaching the breaking point, thinking they have nothing left to lose, blaming the government, grabbing a gun and shooting a representative.
I wonder if a more directed cooling might work better. For instance, change the rack/chassis design such that it expects airflow to come from the top and exit the bottom, then duct the A/C right into the top of each rack. While you would still keep the rest of the room cool, it just seems to be wasteful to keep a several hundred square foot room at 60 degrees the whole time when the real goal is to keep the equipment in the racks from baking itself into oblivion.
I also agree with the guy in the article, liquid cooling in the server room is going to happen eventually. I got to see the difference a simple watercooling system made on a P4 3.02GHz Extreme Edition chip, stuffed in the same case with a GeForceFX5950. Even with some serious fans the case was borderline overheating in games. Part of the problem being that the room it was in wasn't kept that cool, and the owner had it in a cabinet in his desk (it is what that cabinet was designed for). He dropped a liquid cooling system into it, and now the thing is always nice and frosty. And even with the jolts and jostling of taking the system to several LAN parties, the liquid cooling system is still leak free and rock solid. His experience has actually made me consider one for my own next system. For a server, where the system usually sits still long enough to collect a measureable amount of dust, water cooling may be a very good choice. If it's installed properly the likelyhood of leaks is low, and the performance can be very good. Heck, I can see it now, our server rooms will eventually have a rack or two devoted entirely to the radiators for the liquid cooling systems of servers, which run hot enough form plasma.
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I'm not familiar with lifetime parole. But, I'll take you at your word on it.
Perhaps it is a knee jerk reaction, but any time the government talks about giving itself the power to track any class of individuals, I start worrying. My problem is, where does it stop, and who's to ensure it stops? To be fully honest, I don't care much for the parole system as it stands, and the idea of lifetime parole bothers the hell out of me. I think there needs to be a very clear demarcation between convicted criminals serving their sentace and free citizens. Then again, I have a lot of disagreements with our current justice system.
I think if your daughter or son was brutally raped and killed because a sex offender was allowed to leave early, you would want to throw away any tests that gives the opinion they might fix themselves.
While true that if (had I one), my daugher was brutally raped and murdered, I would probably see to it that the offender met a grisly fate; I don't see how having a tracking device on the guy that did it would make any difference. That's the problem with this idea, it does nothing to stop recidivism. A GPS unit stuffed up someone's arse is not going to prevent them from raping and killing again.
Yes, sexual predators are vile scum which should be expunged from society, but tagging them isn't going to help the victims any.
- Go home
- Remove GPS unit
- Go find victim
- Go home
- Re-attach GPS unit
- Instant Alibi
- ???
- Profit!!
Ok, so the unit will probably have a tamper proof connector, and/or biometric interface to make sure it's attached. But, as I would assume allBesides that, how exactly does this prevent recidivism? Yes, it'll be faster to find the repeat offender, but they would still have the opportunity to repeat the offense. This is just like cameras for security, they do nothing to prevent crime, they just make it eaiser to catch the criminal after the fact. So I guess the message this law is sending is, it's OK for children to be molested, as long as we can catch the repeat offenders after the fact, so they can be put through the system and let back out into the populous again with a shiny new tracker.
There is a big differnce here:
during probation != for life
We track criminals for the duration of their probationary period, but after that they are no longer tracked. This is part of the probation system. Basically, we let a well behaving convicted criminal out of jail early, with the caveat that he is not really a "free" citizen yet, and he must still report his whereabouts for the remaining duration of his sentance.
This system would track a criminal for the rest of his life. Potentially, for a long time after their proscribed punsihment has expired. While I agree that jail time is the wrong solution for the type of people this law targets, we still need to make sure that we are not allowing civil rights to be eroded on this front. Tell me, what's to stop this type of law being passed for "rapists and other violent criminals"? People would probably go for it. But tell me, what all is included in that "other violent criminals" bit? Do you really want a government deciding who it gets to track forever? Have you ever read 1984, Brave New World, Farienheit 451, or better yet, a little bit of history? Just because we claim to be a free and open society, doesn't mean we can't follow the path of Rome into imperialism.
That might be a good starting point, but I was kind of thinking about later in the story, where Lot's daughters got him drunk, so they could have sex with him.
So, when do we get the hentai game based on Lot and his daughters?
Damn, you beat me to it.
Its the "100 hours of gameplay" which drove me away from the FF series. Even ignoring the fact that I have a life and would take months to put in that much time, I just don't enjoy spending 90 of those 100 hours doing pointless leveling and gold collection. And that sort of thing seems endemic to the FF series and SquEnix games in general.
You start the game, and have a long drawn out intro. You then take your character and spend a few hours leveling. Then you go through a little plot. Then a few more hours leveling. Repeat until you near the end of the game, then spend an absolutly ridiculous time leveling to fight the final boss (all three forms of him). And this is ignoring the constant random battle interuptions in trying to get to the plot locations.
I tend to view the FF games now as a form of gaming mastrubation, ya it's fun for a bit, but eventually, if you don't reach the end, it starts to get boring and chafe.
I realize it's kind of a repeat of the AC, but check out DosBox. So far, nearly every old game I have tried running in it has run great. And you don't have the jumpyness of MoSlo or the like. There are versions available for both Linux and Windows.
The United States should honor its treaties. There are consequences for the way our government acts, including the fact that we don't always honor our treaties.
No argument there. I'm not sayng that the US should just "go it alone", just that this is not really an impediment to a nuclear drive happening. Honestly though, I would prefer the US to work with other nations to create an exemption to the treaties , which are stopping this from happening. I'm willing to bet that most of the other signatories would be willing to work on it.
A pre-existing treaty no longer seems to be a reason to stop the US from doing something. Look at the treatment the Anti-Ballistic Missle treaty got when it didn't allow for the development of a missle defense system.
Bush, "Treaty, what, oh, look at the kitty."
Joking aside, an international treaty is only as good as the willingness of the signatories to give it force. Who, exactly, is going to stop the US governmant if it decides to burn the treaty and fire up a nuclear drive? The other signatories, not likely, they will yell and scream and complain about it, but in the end they will be impotent to do anything about it.
Having read the article, and also followed the author's advice to read the security bulletins, I found that the article is mostly bullshit, which stumbles upon lucid points occasionally, though I think this is mostly by accident. /. all day, have a desire to defend Firefox, and don't have a job.
I didn't bother to do a count of items in the bulletins, as this is an utterly worthless metric. Nor do I agree that percentage of complaints is a worthwhile way to judge two competing products.
Just to dispel that idea. Consider for a moment that in his example of 1000 users of A vs. 50 users of B, a 2 person anomoly would be a 0.2% shift in the numbers for A and a 4% shift in the numbers for B. That margin of error for product B is so large as to make the whole study worthless.
On the other hand, of the items in the bulletins, Firefox did have some serious flaw, e.g. the kind that end in "would allow a malicious user to execute arbitrary code." So, the author is right that Firefox is not some panacea for security, he just fails to explain the real reason why.
Now, is Firefox more secure overall? I haven't the slightest clue. I really don't have the time and or will to go through the bulletins, aggregate all of the flaws for each browser, assign a numerical value to each severity, and then come up with a score. I offer this idea to any of those who surf
The author also brings up the old argument of, its not currently a target, so its more secure because of obscurity. I think this argument was valid, right up until Firefox hit 1.0. Before that, it was an obscure little browser which didn't get much attention. However, once it hit 1.0 it got a lot of press; and, the way I see it, this would have given a huge incentive for the black hats to start hitting Firefox, for the right to say that they had one of the first working exploits for this new browser. So, I think this argument falls apart.
So, without a real study to backup and/or revoke the idea that Firefox is more secure than IE, the only thing I have to go on is antecdotal evidence. Right now I support about 100 computers. And, because of the way we do business, each user has administrative access to their own box (fun on a bun!). Now, because of this, I have a mix of IE users and Firefox users. For the most part, the computers which I am cleaning up spyware/adware on all of the time tend to be the IE user's computers. While I do have to do an occasional cleanup of a Firefox computer, the problems tend to come from other third party apps bundled with spyware, as opposed to the IE, browsed to the wrong page and got infected spyware.
Does this mean Firefox is more secure? No, one factor, which I can't really rule out, is that the people who use Firefox also tend to be the more knowledgable computer users; so, they may simply be better at avoiding infection. As a counter example, our network engineer runs IE, and doesn't have a problem with spyware/adware, so maybe its just the person at the keyboard making the difference. But, still the preponderence of the evidence would suggest that the Firefox machines tend to be less infected, so there is some correlation, if not outright causation.
One other thing, which helps keep me on Firefox, have you ever tried to re-install IE6 SP2? Fucking pain in the ass. Some spyware/adware will attach itself to the IE DLL's, and is near impossible to get rid of. Also, I have had more than one machine where the removal of the spyware/adware has broken the IE scripting engine. This is also ignoring that crapware that damages winsock as it gets removed. Thank <insert diety here> for the automated winsock repair tool.
MS has made re-installing IE harder and harder as they have released updates. In IE5 I could do an add/remove programs on it, and get a reinstall out of it. In IE6 SP1, I could futz with the registry and get it to allow a re-install. Now that seems to be broken, as the MS recommended registry change to allow a reinstall seems to be broken. Th
Yes, yes you are.
I think I failed to clarify part of my argument. I don't expect free speech rights to trump property rights. I don't think I made that clear. Included with this is that, if a group reserves a public venue for a function, they should be allowed to control access to that venue. However, that control should not extend beyond the venue reserved. Also, if you are dealing with private property, the owner should be allowed to kick out anyone they wish. Lawful police presence excepted. If a group reserves a park they should be able to bar entry to whomever they wish for the duration of the function. However, they should not be given any control over the surrounding area.
Can't you see that extending "free speech" rights of one group to including overshouting, harassing, and blocking others (in a second group) to the point where they are not allowed to speak ends up violating this 2nd group's free speech rights?
There are a couple of things in this, which I see as having different answers. First off, I'm not trying to argue that protesters should be allowed into a reserved venue. But, they should be allowed to do as they wish outside that venue. If that includes trying to overshout the speaker inside, then so be it. It is up to the organizer to make sure they have a large enough venue and proper sound system.
As for harrassing or blocking those trying to enter/leave a venue that should be handled on a per case basis by the police, as that is very obviously obstrucying the rights of the person trying to enter the venue lawfully.
Attaching a new name - "free speech zone" doesn't mean it never existed before 911 and that is my point. This has been going on all along, to a larger extent in the 1960's.
Just because something has been done for a long time, in one fashion or another, does not mean that it is right. I agree that there were some large abuses of government power in the 1960's. One needs only look as far as McCarthyism to see that.
What the court has said is that you do have a right to say what you want (and you still do today), you don't have a right to violate other people's rights.
No argument there. Pray, tell though, what rights are being violated by protesters being present outside an event? Yes, the people talking inside have a right to free speech as well, that is not being violated. Nothing about peaceful protesters outside an event prevents those inside the event from speaking their minds. They may have to talk louder, but there is no right to silence while you are speaking.
Now, I will agree that, if the protesters are preventing people from entering or leaving freely, and/or threatinging people, or violating any other of a myriad of actual rights of other people, then the violators should be arrested and charged with a criminal act. However, to suppress the free expression of a class of people, just because some of them might violate the rights of the attendees, is absolutly abusive. Remember the Japanese concentration camps of WWII? Would you argue that it was right to suspend the civil rights of everyone of Japanese heritage because some of those people could be saboteurs? That is the problem with allowing the suspending of rights of a class of people based on the possible actions of some of the individuals in tha group. Even ignoring the logical fallicy inherent in doing that, it opens the door to way too much abuse of governmental power.
Having said all of that, there is a new twist in that some local's (as I have said before) implemented what amounts to a cage as you talked about. They don't seem to care which side you are on as I mentioned before - they had a barbed wire cage (like something out of the soviet era) for the Republican protesters at the Democratic convention. In the past they simply arrested you and put you on a bus or some other detention area. So instead of you being out of site and out of mind you can stand in a cage and get that photogenic picture for your cause on the front page of the paper.
I will agree that the police have been overzelous in the past with arrests, but usually some level of protests continued in the area. Obviously, there have been times in the past where this was taken to an extreme and protests were suppressed, violently at times, but on the average peaceful protests have been allowed to occur outside events.
The bottom line is I have yet to hear one single issue that has somehow been not voiced. Maybe you have an example? Keep in mind that people not agreeing with you doesn't mean they didn't hear your message. Maybe you think the President (whoever that happens to be at that time) never reads the papers or would know what would be on your sign? They do. Keep that in mind, it does matter, they do know.
The problem here isn't about being heard, its about the supression of the right to speak when, where and how I wish. I have no doubt that the presendent knows exactly what those protesters wanted to say to him. What was denied them was the right to say it. If a person had walked up to the cordon line outside the event and yelled, "The President is wrong!", they would have been arrested for not protesting in a "free speech zone". Which, in essence, means that they are being arrested for expressing a political opinion, not for causing harm or creating a dangerous situation through negligence.
P.S. No, I don't think you are simply defending this administration. Nor am I attacking solely the current administration. This is a government problem, which extends well beyond the executive branch. I just use the president as an example, since it is one of the most visible parts of government.
Stripped? They still had free speech
No, they didn't. The whole point of demonstrating against somone as they give a speech is to be seen and/or heard by those attending the speech. By pushing the protesters out to a "safe" distance, this was denied them. While the US Constitution only protects the right to speak, not the right to an audience, it also never provides any protection to peace and quite in a public venue. The president has no more right to silence when he is giving a speach than the protesters have a right to silence when protesting. Yes, the whole thing would have devolved into a shouting match, as both sides should have been allowed to be as loud as they wished (except when reaching the level where actual ear damage might occur). Most likely the president would have won, as he had a sound system.
Limiting the location of free speech is the same as limiting free speech itself. What is to prevent the government from pushing free speech out of any venue it wishes? Don't like the message protesters are presenting about the current administraton, move their protests to a place where they won't be seen and/or heard. Or, better yet, move them somewhere where they feel intimidated to the point of silencing themselves out of fear of reprisal.
The entire country is supposed to be a "free speech" zone, not just the places where it is inconsequential.
- US: Threats against the president or other public figures.
- France/Germany: Support for the Nazi ideas
- Canada: From the parent's antecdote, it would seem that questioning the healthcare system is a no-no.
- Spain: Not sure on this one, but I would bet that decrying the reconquista is a no-no.
I'm sure there are a lot more, and with enough time, we could find examples in every country. Sure, we may not agree with certain speech (Nazi's, KKK, Rush Limbaugh) but if we censor any of it, we are just opening the door for the government to ban anything it wants, all it has to do is figure out how to classify the undesierable speech as part of the restricted speech.Jefferson was right, if you allow any restrictions, you might as well just forego the whole pretense, because you'll get there eventually. The trick to it, which is often ignored, is to make people responsible for their speech. If you yell "fire" in a crowded theater, when there was, in fact, no fire and many people are hurt or killed, you should go on trial for malicious negligence and face civil penelties for the injuries caused by your actions.
You can still do whatever you want just as you could before
Not really. As has been pointed out, repeatedly, "free speech zones" are a wonderful oxymoron. Until recently, I could stand anywhere outside an area where the president was giving a speech, and peacefully demonstrate against him, his agenda, his beliefs, or even his personal smell if I wanted to. Now, I must do so in a designated "free speech zone". How this hasn't been destroyed in court baffles me, the First Amendment reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Unless I am horribly behind on my english, the legislative branch cannot make any law which would prohibit me from speaking my mind. Imposing limits on when or where I can speak my mind is still a form of prohibition on free speech, and a literal reading of the First Amendment would seem to disallow such a thing being done.
Part of the problem here is that the courts have made the decision that freedom of speech can be abridged in cases where such speech is likely to cause a safety issue (e.g. yelling "fire" in a crowded theater). While this seems like a reasonable restriction, it has opened the door for abuse. The argument for the "free speech zones" today is that there is a security concern. Unfortunatly, there really isn't any evidence to back this claim up, unless you count damage to the message being preached by the demagogues on both sides of the asile. But, because the "post 9/11" world is supposed to be different somehow, the courts seem willing to roll over on this issue and allow political speech, that which was supposed to be most protected, to be abridged in this fashion.
What people want to do isn't a crime, and never should be. It's what people actually do which should be criminal and requiring action. Did any of these people do anything illegal? If so arrest the offending person(s). Allowing an entire class of people to have their rights stripped because they do not hold the correct belief set is not something you really want to let a government get away with.
You bad, evil, vile, person you. You know that you shouldn't be making content of your own. You should only view MPAA Approved(TM) media. By making your own videos, you have shown that you are are willing to circumvent the usual process by which you are force fed the MPAA's crap. And, yes, if your friends are downloading it, they should have their interenet connections yanked, as they are probably pirates and bad people as well.
And you all probably support terrorism as well.
I think part of it is that, at least in US culture, we have come to believe there is some equivilence between intellectual property rights and physical property rights. Whether this is true or not is open for debate, and I won't claim to have the answer. If we ignore this sticking point, and assume that there is some equivilence, then the laws pertaining to copyright are, in effect, just securing the copyright holder's property rights; and, therefore, a proper use of government power.
This also assumes that property rights, of any kind, are actually valid. Though this is pretty much a given in Western culture. Even places, such as the now defunct USSR, where socialism was the norm, there was still some respect for property rights. In all, Marx was probably dreaming to assume that anyone, even the most downtrodden proletariat, would willingly give up all property rights.
Just a random thought, which hit me while reading your post. Piracy is a capitalistic force.
The main idea behind a capitalistic economy is that, consumers will shop around and get the best product for the lowest price possible. With music this has not really been possible. If I want to buy the AC/DC "Back in Black" CD set I can technically shop around a bit, but in the end, I'm going to pay somewhere between US$10 and US$20 (bn.com has it at US$15). I can also go to iTunes and get just the 10 songs from it for roughly US$10 (Not been to iTunes, so I might be off a bit). the point is, the price is pretty fixed. I also cannot get a similar product at a lower price. Music is like that, it's either the band singing its songs, or it isn't.
This is where piracy comes in. The cost to duplicate the work, is very low. All I need is a computer with a CD drive, and an Internet connection. Each of those items does have a cost, but when that is broken over the various uses and number of CD's which can be copied, the price per unit drops to a pitance.
Now, what we have is a monopolized market (the legal kind, we're dealing with a copyright here), and the technology to undercut the monopoly significantly. the problem is, that there is no legal way to undercut the monopoly and make money, so an alternative needs to be found. That alternative, which is what Sharman, et al. are capitalizing on, is to make available the method for accessing this cheap alternative to the monopoly and collecting ad revenue from marketers who want access to their large user base.
This is really capitalism at its dirtiest. A need was identified (cheaper access to music), filled (via piracy), and capitalized upon (via ad-supported P2P apps). The music industry is now having to compete. Yes, the competition is illegal, but only because of government interference in the market. Copyright laws are not capitalistic in nature.
I'm not trying to argue that piracy should be legal, moral, etc. Just that it is a capitalistic force. Because of the monopolized nature of music, and the overpricing which follows, a corrective force exists. Becasue there is no legal outlet for that force, it has been expressed as rampant piracy. If the current method is stamped out, that force will show up in a different fashion. Basically, as long as there is a legislated monoploy, which is pricing it products higher than people are willing to accept as reasonable, there will be a drive to circumvent that monopoly. The more unreasonable the price, the more willing people will be to break the law to circumvent it.
Wow, there's video, music and games on the internet? When did this start?
1. I downloaded several GB of data over as short of period as my bandwidth would allow.
2. I'm running a server, which we all know must be used for some illicit purpose. And not for:
- SPAM control, I have 50 or so aliases, any one starts getting too much SPAM, just axe the line out in the aliases file.
- Hosting my own wedding web site
- Transfering files between work and home as needed
- Remote Desktop (on a windows XP box), so that I can test router configuration from outside my work network (Yes, I work in the ITS department).
So, basically, I'm a horrible person, who doesn't deserve internet access because I want to learn a new OS, and have a web presence. The authors of this "code of conduct" need to have their computers taken away, and never be let near any insturment by which the insanity inside their skulls will be allowed to leak out into the rest of the world and bother us.It seems to me that privacy only matters if there is a threat of sanction for the private behavior. Hiding stuff tends to add a layer of unhealthy psych because of the continual threats to the integrity of the cloak.
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The problem with this idea is that we never know what will provoke a threat in the future. Right now, people of Arabian descent are finding out that having associated with the wrong people in the past is enough to keep them from getting on a airplane. If they had been able to keep that information private, they wouldn't have to jump through hoops to prove that they should be allowed to fly.
Simply put, information which is not now going to cause you trouble if it is well known may in the future be enough to cause you trouble.
The real need is to roll back the ability of the mob to make your life miserable if you choose to think or do something that is unconventional.
This is a good goal, but it will never be sufficient by itself. Eventually someone might act on that information; leagl or not, the results of those actions are still real.
In the long run, which is going to leave us in a better position? Should we be fighting to maintain privacy in the face of increasingly efficient snooping, or fighting for freedom of thought and action?
Why not do both? If we have to choose, privacy is the better way to go. It's easy for a government to backslide into abusing information, which it has gathered, for a bad purpose. It's much harder for a backsliding government to utilize information which is doesn't have.
A simple way to look at it is to assume that any government will eventually devolve into some form of abbusive tyrany. Plan accordingly.
Not that anyone's really going sacrifice much to achieve either of those goals . . .
I may be a bit of an optimist, but I imagine that some time around 2100 or so it will have gotten bad enough that people will start killing the members of their government. I don't expect an open armed revolution, just people reaching the breaking point, thinking they have nothing left to lose, blaming the government, grabbing a gun and shooting a representative.
I wonder if a more directed cooling might work better. For instance, change the rack/chassis design such that it expects airflow to come from the top and exit the bottom, then duct the A/C right into the top of each rack. While you would still keep the rest of the room cool, it just seems to be wasteful to keep a several hundred square foot room at 60 degrees the whole time when the real goal is to keep the equipment in the racks from baking itself into oblivion.
I also agree with the guy in the article, liquid cooling in the server room is going to happen eventually. I got to see the difference a simple watercooling system made on a P4 3.02GHz Extreme Edition chip, stuffed in the same case with a GeForceFX5950. Even with some serious fans the case was borderline overheating in games. Part of the problem being that the room it was in wasn't kept that cool, and the owner had it in a cabinet in his desk (it is what that cabinet was designed for). He dropped a liquid cooling system into it, and now the thing is always nice and frosty. And even with the jolts and jostling of taking the system to several LAN parties, the liquid cooling system is still leak free and rock solid. His experience has actually made me consider one for my own next system. For a server, where the system usually sits still long enough to collect a measureable amount of dust, water cooling may be a very good choice. If it's installed properly the likelyhood of leaks is low, and the performance can be very good. Heck, I can see it now, our server rooms will eventually have a rack or two devoted entirely to the radiators for the liquid cooling systems of servers, which run hot enough form plasma.